Despite the so-called Somali New Deal Compact of September 2013, in which the country’s government pledged to international donors and its people that it would hold an inclusive election by the end of 2016, the process was highly imperfect in both design and execution. Once again, insecurity stemming from the jihadist al Shabab insurgency, clan rivalries, tensions among newly formed subfederal states, and violent criminality prevented a broadly participatory national election. Instead, the vote was left to 14,000 elders and influential political figures who, over the course of several months, elected 275 members of the Parliament and 54 senators. These officials went on to pick the new president. Extensive corruption and vote buying tainted the process. To secure support from the elders and influentials, potential parliamentarians were reputed to have paid tens of thousands of dollars for a vote. Intimidation and clan politics also marred the process. But the fact that the incumbent President Hassan Sheik Mohamud accepted defeat and stepped down is an important win, not just for Somalia itself but in the continent more broadly.
The new president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, has some strong credentials, not the least of which is a reputation for not being corrupt. He is a dual citizen of Somalia and the United States, with technocratic experience from both countries. But Mohamed, known by his nickname Farmajo (derived from the Italian word for cheese), is facing many tough challenges. These include fractious politics and entrenched corruption, a stubborn insurgency and insecurity, and an increasingly challenging external environment. [...]
Somalia’s formal legal federalism and its implementation, including the establishment of new federal states, is one of the main achievements of the past four years. The upper house of the Parliament is now made up of representatives from these states. The hope was that such devolution would lead to a more peaceful Somalia, but the new ruling elites of the states are not necessarily more accountable to their people than politicians in Mogadishu. Meanwhile, the shape of the new states continues to be contested, sometimes violently, by clan and regional groups within the new states and among the states as well. The balance of power among the states and between the states and the federal government will remain a work in progress. [...]
Salaries or not, it will be a long time before the Somali army will be able to stand on its own. And yet it may soon have to, since the AMISOM mission is set to end by 2020. Although AMISOM suffers from numerous problems, its departure will be devastating for Somalia. More immediately, the current 21,000-member force, comprising soldiers from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, will be decreased by 10,000 by the end of 2017. No one believes that the Somali army is ready to pick up the slack. A key priority for the new Somali president will thus be to halt the AMISOM exodus. When Ethiopia withdrew 4,000 soldiers who operated in Somalia separately from AMISOM (another 4,000 remain within the AMISOM framework), the vacated territories immediately came under al Shabab’s attack or influence.
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