Somalia's Western-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has been wracked by infighting for the past several months, with President Sharif Ahmed pitted against a pair of rival politicians and an Islamist militia. This complex power struggle has prevented the already-weak Somali government from even considering going on the offensive against Somali jihadist group al Shabaab, and has resulted in an ongoing, low-intensity conflict in the capital. The TFG's foreign backers prop it up as a bulwark against jihadist groups like al Shabaab , which could use Somalia's ungoverned territory to train for and to launch transnational attacks . While the TFG is able to perform this function (thanks in large part to an African Union peacekeeping force), it is incapable of actually rolling back the jihadists . And Somalia's power struggles have seen the government's foreign backers begin to shift their support away from Ahmed toward other proxies.