Middle East & Africa | Better luck this time

Somalia’s new president vows to beat back jihadists, then talk to them

An interview with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

DOLLOW, JUBALAND, SOMALIA - 2022/04/14: A tuktuk with a Somali flag drives during a sandstorm in Dollow, Jubaland, southwest Somalia. People from across Gedo in Somalia have been displaced due to drought conditions and forced to come to Dollow, in the southwest, to search for aid. Somalia has suffered three failed rainy seasons in a row, making this the worst drought in decades, and 6 million people are in crisis levels of food insecurity. The problems are being compounded by the rising costs of food prices because of the Ukraine war. Hence, hundreds of thousands of livestock have died from hunger and thirst. (Photo by Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
|Mogadishu

When hassan sheikh mohamud entered Villa Somalia as president in 2012, his writ ran little farther than the sandbagged gates of the bullet-pocked, Italian-built, Art Deco palace of the head of state. Though the central government had recently wrested control of most of Mogadishu, the capital, and had recaptured some strategic towns here and there, vast swathes of the country’s centre and south remained in the hands of al-Shabab, a jihadist group with links to al-Qaeda.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Better luck this time”

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