Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed (born December 15, 1934) is a veteran Somali politician, and the current transitional President of Somalia.

Ahmed was born in the town of Gaalkacyo, in the Mudug Region. He was elected as President of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), by a session of the Transitional Federal Parliament (TFP) held in neighbouring Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, on October 10, 2004, and sworn in on October 14, 2004.

He was among the first cadet officials sent to Italy in 1957, together with Mohamed Farrah Aidid and others. Since then he remained in the Army and participated in the war of 1964 and the Ogaden War of 1977, and was decorated for bravery in both wars. In 1978 Ahmed, together with a group of officials mostly from his own Majeerteen (Darod) clan, participated in a failed coup attempt against the regime of Siad Barre. He escaped to Kenya, then to Ethiopia where he started a rebel movement called SODAF which later became the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF)

Disagreements arose from Mr. Yusuf and his Ethiopian host when Somalia and Ethiopia signed 1984 a pact not support oppossing militias who were based on each other’s country. For his refusal to obey Ethiopian generals, Mr. Yusuf was sent to jail where he served for five years until his release when the Dergue was overthrown in 1991.

Later he became President of Puntland state. In the 2004 election he defeated all the notable leaders of Somalia including Abdiqasim Salad Hassan, Cadow and all the warlords of Mogadishu. His government, backed by considerable Ethiopian forces, successfully defeated the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) led by Hassan Dahir Aweys. The Somali and Ethiopian forces marched into Mogadishu on the last day of 2006. However the Islamists regrouped and have reversed most of the gains the TFG and the Ethiopian forces made in December 2006. The Insurgency are a real threat to the Somali government who need the Ethiopian occupation to stay in power.

Assassination attempt

On September 18, 2006, a suicide car bomber smashed his vehicle into the President’s convoy outside the National Parliament in Baidoa. The attack killed four of the President’s bodyguards, as well as the President’s brother. Six attackers were also killed in the subsequent gun battle. The President’s life was most likely saved by the fact that he travelled in the second vehicle in the convoy rather than the front one, a decoy. The Islamic Court’s Union, which had recently taken control of much of the country were blamed for the attack.

After the beginning of the War in Somalia on December 21, 2006, with the help of Ethiopia, the TFG forces took control of Somalia and the capital, Mogadishu, from the hands of the Islamic Courts Union. By 28 December the Transitional Federal Government captured Mogadishu as the ICU forces fled.

On January 8, 2007 as the Battle of Ras Kamboni raged, TFG President Ahmed entered Mogadishu for the first time since being elected. It was announced the government would be relocated to Villa Somalia, in Mogadishu, from its interim location at Baidoa. This marks the first time since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991 that with the help of the Ethiopian troops, a Somali government controlled the most of the country except the breakaway republic of Somaliland in the north. How ever it wasn’t to last. The Islamists regrouped and took back most of their territories. If the Ethiopian troops withdrew, the Somali government would collapse because its national army is not well trained.

Wikipedia