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Backgrounder: Somalia's Transitional Government

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Eben Kaplan, Assistant Editor
January 23, 2007

On January 8, 2007, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed set foot in the capital city of Mogadishu for the first time since taking office more than two years ago. His arrival symbolized a victory by Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) over a fundamentalist Islamic militia that for the past year had grown so powerful, it brieflycontrolled much of the country’s territory. With the Islamists routed, international observers hope the TFG can bring stability to the war-torn nation, enabling it to throw off the “failed state” mantle it has worn for the last sixteen years.

What is the Transitional Federal Government?

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. Parliament did not convene on Somali soil until February 2006, when it met in a converted grain warehouse in the western city of Baidoa because security concerns kept the legislature from entering Mogadishu. Even when it did convene, the TFG lacked cohesion, which undermined its power.

Because TFG members earned their posts through protracted negotiations, rather than elections, Somalia is not a democracy. That is set to change in 2009, when Somalis are scheduled to vote in the first elections in more than twenty years. Few experts, however, anticipate the government will last that long.

Who is represented in the Transitional Federal Government?

The negotiators who established the TFG tried to give fair representation to each of Somalia’s clans through the so-called “4.5 formula.” The four major clans—Darood, Hawiye, Dir, and Digil-Mirifle—all received sixty-one parliament seats, while the remaining groups together received thirty-one seats.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.