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Backgrounder: Somalia's Transitional Government

Council on Foreign Relations

Authors: Eben Kaplan, Associate Editor
Stephanie Hanson, News Editor

Updated: May 12, 2008

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. 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. In July 2007, after months of delay, the TFG convened a reconciliation conference. Key parties, including moderate Islamists, were invited to the conference but chose to boycott instead. As a result, most experts deemed the conference a failure. The TFG currently governs from southern Mogadishu, where the security situation remains dire.

Because TFG members earned their posts through protracted negotiations, rather than elections, Somalia is not a democracy.

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

Copyright 2008 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.