Picks on Sheikh Sherif's TFG:One Year On

The international community makes promises that remain unfulfilled

 Picks from Medhane Tadesse’s Latest Analysis on “Sheikh Sherif’s TFG: One Year On”
 

On Sheik Sherif

As carefully as Sheikh Sherif prepared for it, the presidency has held insurmountable challenges and even some surprises for him—some foreseeable, some not, and some of his own making. The TFG, pretty much like its precursor, could be described as a "corrupt and ineffective administration without resources”.

On External Players
While the AU and the Americans are the most important external players, the most intrusive foreign official in Somalia is Ould Abdalla, the UN Special Representative to Somalia whose more-than passionate meddling borders the role of a non-Somali warlord. The international community makes promises that remain unfulfilled, only to remake them a few months or years later, freshly packaged.

On the Shabaab-Clan Axis
The otherwise-puzzling reality is that Al-Shabaab seems to be at a relative ease to use disenfranchised tribes in its bid to thwart the challenge it faces from major clan alliances. A continuation of old practice with new agendas. The slight difference being that the insurgency in Somalia is not currently fully supported by one major clan, as was the case before.

On the ASWJ
As much as the Ahlu Sunna Wal Jame’ia appears to be a moderate religious movement projecting power and resources against the Shabaab, it is also a sub-clan construct. If the group’s rise to military machinery was a surprise, its entry to the political/clan intricacies was even much faster.