PLAN Shalli joined
SWAPO's military wing, the
People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) in 1971 in exile and eventually was trained as an anti-aircraft artillery battalion commander in the
Soviet Union before eventually becoming a PLAN
platoon commander, he was then appointed to Detachment commander. Shalli was then promoted to the position of Chief of Air Defence at the North Eastern front, afterwards he was made Chief of Staff of the North Eastern Front. By the end of the war he was the PLAN Chief of Operations.
NDF When PLAN merged into the military structure to help create independent Namibia's military, the Namibia Defence Force, Shalli was given the position of Policy and Operations Director with the rank of
Brigadier General. He was then promoted to major general and appointed NDF Chief of Staff in 1995 replacing Major General Charles Namholo. Between 2000 and 2005 he was the
Army Commander with the rank of major general. He was then appointed in 2005 to 2006 as the Namibian High Commissioner to Zambia. In 2006 he was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed to Chief of Defence Force,
Namibian Defence Force. In 2009, Shalli was suspended from the NDF due to allegations of fraud. He allegedly had large amounts of money given to him by a company working in Namibia from the
People's Republic of China from which the NDF bought equipment. Major General
Peter Nambundunga was appointed to act in position. ==Honours and decorations==