For the next few weeks, war-torn Somalia will be the country to watch as it enters the homestretch toward a new form of nationhood. August 20 is the deadline for the handover of power from the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to a more permanent administration after a 20-year-roller-coaster of attempts at pacification of the world's most failed state. 

Why are the next 50 or so days super crucial for Somalia? Foremost is the fact that if the roadmap for transfer of power from a transitional arrangement to a permanent administration fails, all the milestones made this far would go up in smoke. With a society characterized by a penchant for divisive clan-based violence, awash with weapons and fuelled by elites with vested interests, renewed violence would almost be impossible to contain. The disillusionment that the failure of the transition would engender is too costly to imagine for fatigued Somalis and the world community.

At the June 1 Istanbul conference, a follow-up to a similar event held in London in February, delegates were upbeat about the anticipated establishment of a functional government while taking stock of the challenges that lie ahead. This buoyancy has created momentum for peace like never before.   

Imperfect and meager as the gains on the path to returning Somalia to normalcy are, the peace dividends made this far are forming substantial building blocks for the future. If nothing else, the fact that guns have literally fallen silent in the battered capital – Mogadishu – and in many other parts is a major achievement of the TFG, with the support of the international community. If the transfer of power fails, and if this undesired eventuality sparks off a new round of violence, it's most unlikely that new commitments and sacrifices by the international community would be forthcoming.

At this point in time, cautious optimism is being entertained particularly because transitional President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali have stayed the course of the transition roadmap. That there have been no attempts for extension of the negotiated mandate of the TFG is a good sign. Significant players in the Somalia body politic are either keen to see a new leadership evolve or they are constrained by factors within and without Somalia to keep faith with the transition.

However, for a country that has oscillated between "warlordism," weak-kneed provisional administrations and terrorist-linked control for two decades, many challenges lie in the path to establishment of a system that can be recognized as a national government. The roadmap itself is strewn with minefields such as who should make the list of the 825 elders from the feuding clans, to the constituent assembly that would then ratify a new constitution. This is a dicey step on the roadmap considering that the constitution will determine whether the country takes a unitary or federal form or indeed other forms of devolution of power – an issue on which opinion is quite divided.

Assuming the 825 elders surmount the hurdle of crafting a provisional constitution acceptable to a sufficiently large number of Somali stakeholders, the next steps will be the reduction of parliament from the current 550 to 225, followed by the election of a speaker who will then oversee parliament's election of a president.  

The president will then appoint a prime minister who will in turn appoint ministers and their deputies and proceed to form and run a new government.

Navigating these steps is fraught with pitfalls precisely because it calls for consensus against the background of deep seated inter and intra clan feuds hacking back to the immediate post-independence in the 1960s. For instance, will ambitious current MPs who fail to be in the leaner parliament go away quietly? Will presidential contestants rise above personal interests after the selection process?

Equally, the real stakeholders of the transition – the citizens – will have to cede their national rights to the elders and subsequently to the "selected" leaders, an imperfect situation that could complicate matters in the post-transition period. Suggestions have been made that the new administration after August would have to think through how Somalis can reclaim their citizenry rights by endorsing another constitution at a referendum.

Such is the significance attached to the transitional process that quite a number of issues are being swept under the rug in hopes the new administration would have its plate full once it's in place in August.

As Much as many grey areas are evident in Somalia's path back to a semblance of internationally acceptable stability, the momentum seems to be on projecting the factors that would create the right environment for a new government. Whether this optimism will translate into tangible gains remains to be seen.