An interview with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskTerrorist attacks were routine: just two days after his election, Mr Mohamud narrowly 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.
Farmaajo upset foreign allies, too. He drew closer to Qatar and Turkey at the expense of other influential states in the Gulf. He picked fights with neighbouring Kenya and Djibouti. His cosying up to Eritrea and its vicious dictator, Issaias Afwerki, was particularly unpopular. Foreign leaders have also rushed to support the new man. Kenya’s president is to attend the inauguration—a sign that diplomatic relations, so prickly under Farmaajo that they were severed entirely for several months, may be on the mend. “We cannot afford any outside enemies,” Mr Mohamud explains.
Al-Shabab is well entrenched in the territories it controls. Its people still extort cash from businesses and conscript children into their guerrilla units. They also run courts and provide basic goods and services. The new president says that al-Shabab today collects more tax revenue than the federal government does. Local businessmen say the group mediates legal disputes more cleanly and efficiently than the official courts. “They’ve established a state within a state,” says the president.
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