The Economist June 4th 2 022 41
Middle East & AfricaSomalia
Better luck this time
W
hen hassan sheikh mohamuden-
tered Villa Somalia as president in
2012, his writ ran little farther than the
sandbagged gates of the bullet-pocked,
Italian-built, Art Deco palace of the head of
state. Though the central government had
recently wrested control of most of Moga-
dishu, the capital, and had recaptured
some strategic towns here and there, vast
swathes of the country’s centre and south
remained in the hands of al-Shabab, a
jihadist group with links to al-Qaeda.
Terrorist attacks were routine: just two
days after his election, Mr Mohamud nar-
rowly survived an assassination attempt.
After two decades of anarchy and civil war,
Somalia then looked less like a country
than a gaggle of warring fiefs. “We started
from scratch,” says Mr Mohamud of his
first term as president.
Today he finds himself in a similar po-
sition. On June 9th he will be sworn in as
president again, the first time since inde-
pendence in 1960 that a Somali has held the
office twice. But since he handed over the
reins in 2017 to Mohamed Abdullahi Mo-
hamed, better known as Farmaajo, the
country has slid backwards. Last year a cri-
sis sparked by Farmaajo’s attempt to stay in
office by delaying elections threatened a
return to full-scale civil war. Though the
outgoing president eventually handed ov-
er power peacefully, he left behind a coun-
try more divided, more diplomatically iso-
lated and less secure than it has been for
years. Many Somalis and their country’s
foreign allies have welcomed the return of
the seasoned Mr Mohamud as the man to
fix the violent mess. Can he do so?
Speaking to The Economistin a heavily
fortified hotel in Mogadishu, he says it was
the sight of his successor ripping up thefragile gains of the previous decade that
prompted him to run for office again. The
populist Farmaajo sidelined the leaders of
Puntland and Jubaland, two powerful re-
gional states, and wangled loyalists into
running the other three. He lashed out at
critics and packed his cronies into the fed-
eral security forces, which then threatened
to disintegrate violently along clan lines.
Whoever has run Somalia, a labyrinth of
clan loyalties has long prevented the emer-
gence of a true sense of national unity.
Farmaajo upset foreign allies, too. He
drew closer to Qatar and Turkey at the ex-
pense of other influential states in the
Gulf. He picked fights with neighbouring
Kenya and Djibouti. His cosying up to Eri-
trea and its vicious dictator, Issaias Afwer-
ki, was particularly unpopular.
By contrast the avuncular Mr Moha-
mud, an academic and civil-rights cam-
paigner, has a more conciliatory flavour.
He has moved fast to mend bridges with
opponents at home and abroad. Said Deni,
president of Puntland, the oldest and
strongest of the five federal states (exclud-
ing the breakaway would-be country of So-
maliland), notes that one of Mr Moha-
mud’s first moves after winning the elec-
tion was to invite all Somalia’s regional
leaders to a meal together. He promised
them he would share power and complete
a new federal constitution. “It was a good
speech,” concedes Mr Deni grudgingly (the
two ran against each other in the election).MOGADISHU
A new president says he will beat back the jihadists, then talk to them
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