Somalia’s parliament elected a moderate Islamist leader as the country’s new president early yesterday, handing over the elusive task of stabilizing a country wracked by violence and anarchy for nearly 20 years.
Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed was elected in neighboring Djibouti after the last president — a former soldier, rebel and warlord named Abdullahi Yusuf — resigned in December after failing to pacify the country during his four years as president.
Ahmed was chairman of the Islamic Courts Union that ran Mogadishu for six months in 2006 before Ethiopian soldiers drove them from power. His election raises hopes that he will bring many of Somalia’s Islamic factions into a more inclusive government.
But the Western-backed government wields little control in Somalia — just a few blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, where African Union peacekeepers patrol. An Islamic insurgent group called al-Shabab, who say they don’t recognize the government, have taken over most of Somalia.
The US considers al-Shabab a terror organization with links to al-Qaeda.
Somalia’s parliament has been meeting all week in Djibouti to choose the new president. Sharif won easily with 293 votes after the other front-runner, the prime minister, withdrew.
The second-place candidate received 126 votes.
Sharif was due to be sworn in later yesterday, then fly to the Ethiopian capital for an African Union summit.
The arid and impoverished Horn of Africa country of some 8 million people has not had a functioning government for a generation, since clan-based militias overthrew a dictator in 1991 then turned on each other.
Pirates prey on international shipping freely from Somalia’s lawless shores, and analysts fear an extremist Islamic administration could become a haven for international terrorists.
There have been more than a dozen previous peace efforts and three previous governments were formed, but they never managed to take effective control over most of the country.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS