President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed faces a litany of challenges: a powerful Islamist insurgency; a rancorous Parliament that is threatening to impeach him; a united front of Western diplomats who say he has gone from the being the solution for Somalia to being the problem; and neighboring countries, such as Kenya, that have gotten so fed up with him for blocking peace efforts that they are preparing sanctions against Yusuf and his family.
“Yusuf was an obstacle to peace,” Ibrahim Isaaq Yarow, the transitional government’s deputy information minister, said on Wednesday. He said members of Parliament “were congratulating one another” upon hearing that the president was resigning.
The question is, will Yusuf’s resignation, if it takes place, make a difference?
Somalia’s government controls no more than a few city blocks in a country nearly the size of Texas. Islamist insurgents with varying agendas control much of the rest. Famine is steadily creeping toward millions of people, the victims of drought, displacement and nearly 18 years of anarchy.
Since 1991, Somalia has not had a functioning central government.
The 13 previous attempts at forming one all failed, disappearing down a vortex of clan-driven violence and suspicion. A further problem is Somalia’s deeply entrenched war profiteers – the gunrunners, the importers of expired baby formula, the squatter landlords renting out former government property – who will most likely resist any government because they do not want to pay taxes or deal with regulations.
Yusuf struggled with all this. He often favored military might versus negotiations, which increasingly seemed out of sync with what many analysts have said Somalia needs. While many other Somali leaders recently agreed to share power with moderate Islamist insurgents, Yusuf refused, calling the Islamists terrorists. He tried to block a measure that would bring moderate Islamists into the government and double the size of Parliament, from 275 seats to 550. Ethiopia, which has several thousand troops inside Somalia, had recently fallen out with Yusuf, and the Ethiopians have said they will withdraw all their firepower in the next few weeks.
One of Yusuf’s aides said the president had had enough.
“He has been thinking of resigning for some time but decided that now is the opportune moment,” said the aide, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. “Everyone is talking about peace. Maybe this will help.”
Yusuf, who is in his late 70s and in delicate health, was selected president in 2004 by his colleagues in the government. His expected exit now kicks off what is surely to be a clan-based succession battle.
Under the transitional government’s charter, the speaker of the Parliament assumes the presidency for a maximum of 30 days until Parliament selects a new leader. Many Western diplomats have said that this could be a golden opportunity to give the Islamists and other opposition groups a new role in Somalia’s government and, possibly, decrease the country’s violence.
— Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, and Mohammed Ibrahim from Mogadishu, Somalia.
