Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was elected for a second term in mid-May 2022, is facing a set of challenges that will impact his administration’s performance. Among the most prominent of these challenges is tackling the continued state of instability arising from terrorist attacks by armed groups, infighting among security forces, and internal rivalries, within the government and between the central government and regional authorities. Somalia could possibly lose foreign aid unless a new government takes power soon, while it is experiencing its worst drought in forty years, leaving five million people at risk of starvation. A similar drought took place in 2011, killing 260,000 people, half of them children. One of Mohamud’s biggest challenges will be confronting the extremist Al-Shabab movement, which is linked to Al-Qaeda.
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud won his second presidential term in the election that took place on May 15, amid celebratory gunfire by security forces. After a frantic electoral race, long-awaited in this troubled country in the Horn of Africa, voting was limited to members of the national parliament, with the former Somali president receiving 214 votes, while outgoing president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo received 110 votes. This third round of elections took place amid an announced curfew in the capital, Mogadishu, and tight security. Mohamud had previously served as Somalia’s president from 2012 to 2017, before he was defeated by Farmaajo.
This is the first time that a former president has won the presidency of Somalia for the second time in 62 years. Moreover, Somalia has not held elections based on the principle of one man-one vote for more than fifty years, specifically since 1969. Those elections were followed by a military coup and unstable rule, as well as a military conflict between militias and Islamic extremists. This marks only the third time a president has been indirectly elected, with the previous two elections being held in neighboring Kenya and Djibouti. Somali elections follow a complex, indirect system, in which state legislators, along with clan representatives, select representatives of the national parliament, who in turn choose the president.
Parliament reduced the number of candidates for the presidency from 36 to four in the first round of voting, for which the African Union peacekeeping forces provided security. The AU forces were deployed in Somalia to confront armed and extremist movements. Competing in that round were Puntland State President Said Abdullah Deni, outgoing President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmaajo, former President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, and former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khairy.
In the second round, Mohamud won 110 votes, while Farmaajo received 83 votes. They moved to a third round, in which Mohamud won the presidency. The two had previously faced each other in the final round of elections in 2017, which Farmaajo won.
The latest elections were postponed for more than a year as a result of quarrels and disagreements within the government. They finally took place this month under the pressure of ensuring the continuation of the IMF’s USD400 million assistance program.
Supporters met the election result and Mohamud’s victory with cheers and gunfire in the air across the capital. Many Somalis hope that Mohamud’s election will put an end to a 15-month political crisis, since President Farmaajo’s term expired in February 2021.The new president, who was sworn in shortly after the announcement of the final results and will remain in office for the next four years, has pledged to transform Somalia into a “peaceful country, reconciled with the world”. However, the situation on the ground indicates that he will inherit many challenges from his predecessor, as a result of the multifaceted issues from which Somalia suffers. These can be summarized as follows:
Dealing with the legacy of protracted instability. This has been the result of terrorist attacks by armed groups, infighting among security forces, and internal rivalries, within the government, and between the central government and regional authorities. These are long-standing problems for Somalia, where government control does not extend beyond the capital.
Since late 2020, Somalia has been in a state of political tension as a result of disagreements between the government, regional heads, and the opposition regarding the electoral mechanism. Farmaajo’s administration plunged the country into a state of severe polarization, especially as a result of his standoff with Prime Minister Hussein Robley late last year. Consequently, it appears that Mohamud’s priorities on the political front would be to change the electoral system and draft a new constitution, and improving relations and cooperation between the country’s political factions, in addition to confronting the security situation.
The possibility of losing foreign aid. The aid that the Somali state could lose, is a three-year IMF aid package, worth USD400 million. It is assumed that the deadline for this aid will expire soon, and the Somali government, which is heavily indebted, requested a three-month extension until August 17th. It is still waiting for the IMF response. Somalia is suffering from a severe inflation in food and fuel prices, caused by the war in Ukraine, with more than 70% of Somalis living on less than USD1.9 a day.
The worsening drought. The elections took place amid the worst drought in Somalia in forty years, leaving five million people at risk of starvation. UN agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe unless quick action is taken, fearing a repeat of the 2011 famine, which killed 260,000 people, half of them children.
The current drought resulted in the death of large numbers of livestock and the drying up of land. Despite the unprecedented gravity of the current crisis, it has yet to attract global attention, with the focus still on the Russian war in Ukraine. More than half a million people have been displaced in the past two months, according to UN reports, prompting the Somali government to issue a distress call to the international community to provide aid to millions of people affected by the drought sweeping the country.
Confronting the extremist Al-Shabab movement. The Al-Qaeda-linked movement, which has been waging an insurgency in the country for the past 15 years, controls large parts of Somalia and launches frequent attacks in Mogadishu and elsewhere. It appears this will be Mohamud’s most substantial task, as the international community has long warned the Somali government that the political instability in the country over the past two years has allowed the movement to exploit the situation and carry out repeated attacks on a large scale.
The UN and the African Union are supporting the Somali government in its war against the movement with a force of 18,000 soldiers, as indicated by Saeeda Mohamed Omar in her 2020 book, The Problems of State Building in Somalia. The movement has previously threatened and kidnapped senior clansmen and condemned them for participating in elections it considers “un-Islamic.” The group’s reaction was more subdued in the last elections, raising fears that its members or sympathizers were planning to obtain parliamentary seats, or buy the support of some parliamentarians, to undermine the system from within, especially after news spread of suspected corruption in buying votes.
Parallel Policies
It is unlikely that Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, will be able to fundamentally resolve all these problems in the next four years. To make headway, Mohamud needs to expanding the partnership between all political components, reform the economy, as well as gain the confidence of Somalia’s international partners and donor countries, through the required transparency in how foreign aid is managed.