Somalia's Transitional Government

Introduction

On January 8, 2007, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed set foot in the capital city of Mogadishu for the first time since taking office in 2004. His arrival symbolized a victory by Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) over the Islamic Courts, a group of fundamentalist Islamic militias that had grown so powerful over the preceding year that they briefly controlled much of the country’s territory. Though international observers had hoped the TFG would bring stability to the war-torn nation after sixteen years of “failed state” status, by mid-2008 experts said the TFG was fraught by internal divisions. Meanwhile, the Islamists have made a strong comeback, with an increasingly radicalized extremist movement holding sway over more moderate factions of the Courts.

What is the Transitional Federal Government (TFG)?

The product of two years of international mediation led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the TFG is the fourteenth attempt to create a functioning government in Somalia since the end of Muhammad Siad Barre’s dictatorial rule in 1991. Formed in late 2004, the TFG governed from neighboring Kenya until June 2005.Read More