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March 23, 2012

Former Somali President Yusuf Dies at 77

March 23, 2012

Former Somalia President Abdullahi Yusuf attends a cultural performance at the inauguration of a week-long Saudi cultural exchange in the Yemeni capital Sana'a, February 24, 2009 (file photo).

The former president of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government has died at a hospital in the United Arab Emirates at the age of 77 following a long battle with liver disease. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a former warlord, was elected president in 2004, but had few friends left in Somalia by the time he resigned four years later.

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed spent a lifetime fighting. He famously led an attempt to overthrow Somali President Mohammed Siad Barre in 1978, but failed, fled to Kenya and then to Ethiopia. There, he formed a rebel force to fight against the Barre regime.

But the Ethiopians turned against him and he was imprisoned in the mid-1980s until 1991, when Siad Barre was finally forced from power.

The Somalia he went home to was chaotic and violent. Warlords were fighting throughout the country for control of territory and resources.

In his homeland, in the northeast, Yusuf put together his own forces and became one of the founders of the autonomous region of Puntland, where his legacy is best remembered.

On the news of his death, the current Minister of State Planning for Puntland, Abdulkadir Hashi, wrote on Twitter that he was "saddened by his passing" and called the late president a "great patriot & friend."