http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/120324/somalia-ex-president-abdullahi-yusuf-ahmed-dies-exile
Luke Browne March 24, 2012 10:32
Somalia: Ex-President Abdullahi Yusuf dies in exile
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the divisive first president of Somalia’s interim
government and a veteran politician, strongman and warlord has died at the
age of 77 in Abu Dhabi.
LONDON, UK – Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the first president of Somalia’s
interim government, has died in exile at the age of 77 after years of ill
health.
The veteran politician, warlord and strongman died on Friday due to
complications of pneumonia in Abu Dhabi where he was receiving treatment,
The New York Times reports. He had undergone a liver transplant operation
in 1996.
Yusuf was chosen as the first president of Somalia’s Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) by a parliament established in 2004 with UN assistance
after years of peace talks in Kenya.
But he failed to engender any meaningful reconciliation between Somalia’s
warring clans and factions, and was viewed as an obstacle to peace over his
refusal to negotiate with Islamist groups and tendency to carve up
positions of power along clan lines, the BBC reports.
While popular in his home area of Puntland in north-eastern Somalia, he was
rejected by many Somalis for inviting Ethiopian forces into the country to
help him crush the Union of Islamic Courts, a loose alliance of sharia
courts and clans which gained control over much of southern and central
Somalia – including the capital, Mogadishu – in 2006, the Agence France
Presse reports.
He was forced to resign two years later as the country sank further into
chaos, and was granted asylum in Yemen following his departure.
Yusuf’s political career spanned 50 years. Once Somalia’s military attaché
to the former Soviet Union in the 1960s, he spent time in both Somali and
Ethiopian prisons under the respective dictatorships of Siad Barre and
Mengistu Haile Mariam, and survived several assassination attempts,
including one in 2006 which led to the death of his brother and several
bodyguards, according to the Associated Press.
----[Mailing List for Eritrea Related News ]----
Received on Tue Mar 27 2012 - 14:18:55 EDT
