It will be at least three months before it is safe for Somalia’s new President, Abdullahi Yusuf, who was sworn in on Thursday, to go home.
Even then he might opt to run his new government from somewhere apart from the country’s capital, Mogadishu.
Exhausted negotiators are hailing his election last weekend as a breakthrough for a country that has been tearing itself apart for the past 13 years.
That the suffering is not over is illustrated by the fact that the election had to be held in neighbouring Kenya — Somalia itself being far too dangerous.
Observers are intrigued that the representatives opted for a warlord who has been fighting for more than 30 years.
Yusuf has ruled the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, first as elected leader until 1991 and then as de facto boss when he refused to step down after defeat in an election.
His ascendancy to the presidency has nonetheless been welcomed by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and by Ethiopia.
But northern neighbour Somaliland, which did not participate in the Kenya process, has warned it will go to war if aYusuf tries to drag it in or seize disputed land in the Sool and Sanaag regions that run along their common border.
Somaliland, which broke from Somalia in 1991, has managed to develop both politically and economi-cally during the latter’s descent into chaos.
It is now pushing to share an observer status at the African Union and UN with the newly emerged Somali government.
The transitional government of Somalia grabbed the spoils of international recognition even though it was only able to exert control over more than a few blocks of the capital.