Gabe Joselow
December 25, 2012
NAIROBI — In the last 12 months, Somalia has approved a
new constitution, selected a new parliament, president and prime minister,
making way for the first stable government in over 20 years.
In August, members of Somalia's new parliament took the
oath of office in a parking lot outside the Mogadishu airport.
The selection of the 275-seat body represented one of the
most substantial achievements in ending the country's eight-year political
transition and ushering in a new, representative government.
The political progress has inspired confidence in the
international community.
Iran reopened its embassy in Somalia this year, Britain
appointed an ambassador and the United Nations says it will move more of its
staff to Mogadishu. Turkish Airlines began regular flights to the Somalia
capital in May as Ankara leads the charge to boost investment in the country.
Abdirahman Aadle, a politician with the Unity party in
Mogadishu, says this has been an historic year.
“The government accomplished the most difficult tasks
during the period,” he says, “It has changed a lot in our nation’s history,”
Aadle said.
As one of its first tasks, the new parliament elected
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, an educator and civil society leader with few
ties to the outgoing, and notoriously corrupt, transitional government.
He has since appointed a new prime minister who has
selected a cabinet that includes the
country's first female foreign minister.
However, the government has not been universally
well-received in Mogadishu. Somali political analyst Ibrahim Adow says the
political newcomers leading the government are unprepared for the job.
"We can say 80 per cent of them don’t know about
democracy," he says, "because its not one of the things people have
practiced in the country before and the constitution itself is built on the
basis of democracy." Abdow says that means it can be problematic for doing
things that require political experience.
Security remains the biggest challenge for the new
government. Just days after the new president was sworn into office in
September, three suicide bombers struck outside a hotel in Mogadishu where he
was meeting with a delegation from Kenya.
At the time, he said security would be his first, second
and third priorities.
The situation has improved as the African Union
peacekeeping force, AMISOM, working with Kenya and Ethiopia, has driven
al-Shabab militants out of their strongholds in Mogadishu and south-central
Somalia.
But Somali analyst, Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamed says
Somalia's own national army still remains a remarkably weak institution,
divided by internal clan rivalries.
“If today, God forbid, the AMISOM left abruptly, Somalia
would go back to the clanism, clan competitions, warlordism, and so on and so
forth. So, the current military personnel, mainly they came from the Hawiye
clan, those around the Mogadishu areas, so are they loyal to the government?
[It] is a question everyone is asking for himself,” Abdisamed said.
Another challenge for the new government is how to
administer territory being reclaimed from al-Shabab. The port city of Kismayo
in southern Somalia is one of the most economically important claims in the
last year.
Clans in the area are competing for control of the city,
and trying to establish a new state in the area like the autonomous regions of
Puntland and Somaliland in the north, challenging the central government which
is trying to establish a stronger presence outside the capital.
The political struggle for control over Kismayo and the
Jubaland region highlights the tension between Mogadishu and other regions of
Somalia, an issue that could undermine the political progress made in the past
year.
source: VOA
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