Saturday May 8, 2021
Mogadishu (HOL) - Veteran Somali diplomat, Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail, passed away in Mogadishu on Friday.
Ismail began his diplomatic career back in 1972 as a secretary and the Somali Embassy in Cairo. Over the years he served in various top level positions in Europe, the Middle East, USSR and North Africa until the fall of the central government in 1991.
He was multilingual and spike Arabic, English and Italian.
He returned to Somalia in 2004 and entered politics where he remained until his death. During the Transitional Federal Government, Ismail was the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minster of Foreign Affairs.
In 2005 he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of Somalia.
He was appointed as a cabinet minister again in 2015 when he served as the Minister of Transport in 2015 under Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke. At the time of his death he was a sitting MP.
Ismail was widely euoglized across the political spectrum in Somalia.