JOWHAR, Somalia, 27 July 2005 — Somalia’s Transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed arrived yesterday in the central town of Jowhar, which he insists will host the federal government as the Horn of Africa nation emerges from 14 years of anarchy.
“I came to Jowhar and operate from here,” Yusuf told a gathering here. Yusuf and his Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi maintain that their administration, which was created last year in neighboring Kenya and remained in exile in Nairobi until mid-June, cannot move to bullet-scarred Mogadishu for security reasons.
Instead, they vowed to set up shop in Jowhar, where Gedi has been since June 18, and the town of Baidoa, 250 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu. Unfortunately, Baidoa remains in the hands of an hostile warlord.
Parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden and warlords, also ministers in the federal government, have insisted that Mogadishu would remain the capital of Somalia at any cost.
The president left exile in Kenya on June 13 amid a fallout with Aden, but never arrived on Somali soil, instead proceeded to Djibouti, Qatar and Yemen.
After failing to resolve the dispute at negotiations in Yemen last month, Aden decamped to Mogadishu while Yusuf went to Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in Somalia.
“My government made compromises to bring all the federal institutions together but that effort was undermined by the speaker of Somali Parliament Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden,” Yusuf said.
