Somalia’s new president vows to beat back jihadists, then talk to them

entered Villa Somalia as president in 2012, his writ ran little farther than the sandbagged gates of the bullet-pocked, Italian-built, Art Deco palace of the head of state. Though the central government had recently wrested control of most of Mogadishu, the capital, and had recaptured some strategic towns here and there, vast swathes of the country’s centre and south remained in the hands of al-Shabab, a jihadist group with links to al-Qaeda.Terrorist attacks were routine: just two days after his election, Mr Mohamud narrowly survived an assassination attempt. After two decades of anarchy and civil war, Somalia then looked less like a country than a gaggle of warring fiefs. “We started from scratch,” says Mr Mohamud of his first term as president.