Word: tfg
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...respond? In Somalia, authority is notionally held by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), led by an Islamist who preaches pragmatic engagement with the West. The TFG was installed by Ethiopia, a principal U.S. ally in Africa, after its forces invaded Somalia in 2006 and toppled an earlier Islamist government whose more extreme members had unwisely declared jihad on Somalia's bigger and more Christian neighbor to the west. But many members of the TFG seem to effectively live in Nairobi. (Exceptions include President Sheik Sharif Ahmed and his Defense Minister, Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a veteran warlord who survived an assassination...
...Somalia means "further deterioration." Increasingly bold ways of dealing with al-Shabab are being considered. The A.U. peacekeeping force is being expanded, with the hope of creating a "green zone" in Mogadishu. Hundreds of al-Shabab fighters have been pouring into Mogadishu recently in anticipation of a rumored TFG offensive. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has gone further, proposing invading Somalia, occupying the southern port of Kismayu and using it to take the fight to al-Shabab. Memories of the disastrous intervention in 1993 remain sharp, so that is not a proposal that seems likely ever to gain much U.S. support...
...choice of targets appears to have been a demonstration of the group's power because it occurred in one of the few remaining areas of Mogadishu that the Transitional Federal Government still controls. Al Shabaab fighters have advanced steadily across the country in recent months, while the TFG has been unable to expand its own control despite the backing of the United States, other western powers and neighboring powers Ethiopia and Kenya...
...international Jihad against the enemies of Allah, so here on the ground we are all the same - we do not say this is al-Qaeda, this is foreign. We are all the same," he said. "Our next step is to continue the jihad until the foreign troops and TFG is removed together from the country...
...Federal Government so that it can wrest control of the country back from the militants. President Barack Obama mentioned Somalia as one of the next battlegrounds in the fight against al Qaeda in his December 1 speech on Afghanistan. The United States supplied 40 tons of weapons to the TFG in June, but a security expert has told TIME that those guns ended up for sale in downtown Mogadishu...