2017 — Somalia's Hangar Election

On February 8, 2017, Somalia's parliament elected Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed "Farmaajo" president inside a heavily fortified hangar at Mogadishu's airport. Al-Shabab attacks made a normal vote impossible, so the ballot took place behind blast walls at the airport.

The former prime minister, a dual Somali-American citizen, defeated the incumbent. His victory completed Somalia's first functioning central government since 1991, ending a quarter-century without one. That an election had to be held in a hangar says much about the danger surrounding it; that it happened at all marked a milestone in Somalia's long rebuilding. A hangar at an airport stood in for a parliament house that day.