The So­ma­lia gov­ern­ment has launched a ma­jor se­cu­rity shake-up on Mon­day af­ter an emer­gency meet­ing held by cab­i­net min­is­ters in Villa So­ma­lia.

Im­me­di­ate changes were made to the top brass of So­ma­li­a’s se­cu­rity ap­pa­ra­tus with new com­man­ders in the in­tel­li­gence, po­lice and cus­to­dial corps.

The gov­ern­ment has ap­pointed Os­man Sheikh Hus­sein as the na­tion’s new spy chief, re­plac­ing For­mer NISA head, Ab­dul­lahi Mo­hamed Ali ‘San­balool­she’. Hus­sein pre­vi­ously served as the Deputy Min­is­ter of Health.

Gen­eral Bashir Abdi Mo­hamed has been pro­moted from the deputy po­lice chief to then Chief of Po­lice.

Finally, Gen Bashir Mohamed Jama “Gobe” returns to his post as the chief of the Custodial Corps. “Bashir Gobe” previously served as the Director of Somali National Intelligence Agency (NSA) in 2013.

So­ma­li­a’s se­cu­rity ap­pa­ra­tus has seen shuf­fles be­fore. two days be­fore the in­fa­mous Oct 14 bomb­ing, the na­tion’s de­fense min­is­ter and army chief both abruptly re­signed amid cred­i­ble re­ports of in­fight­ing within the se­cu­rity es­tab­lish­ment.

An­a­lysts have fore­casted that the se­cu­rity sit­u­a­tion in So­ma­lia will re­main dif­fi­cult. They pre­dict that un­less se­ri­ous re­forms are made in the se­cu­rity struc­ture, So­ma­lia will con­tinue to re­main vul­ner­a­ble to Al-Shabaab at­tacks.

There are 22,000 AMI­SOM troops in So­ma­lia who re­ceive hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars from in­ter­na­tional donors to prop up So­ma­li­a’s frac­tured se­cu­rity ap­pa­ra­tus.

Many fear that So­ma­lia will be ill-equipped to take over the AMI­SOM’s se­cu­rity re­spon­si­bil­ity – es­pe­cially in the wake of the Ethiopian protests and state of emer­gency – should the African Union de­cide to pull it’s troops out too soon.