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Somalia, officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under communist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory. The internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government controls only a small part of the country. Somalia has been characterized as a failed state and is one of the poorest and most violent states in the world.

Somalia lies in the eastern-most part of Africa. It is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Kenya to the southwest, the Gulf of Aden with Yemen to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east, and Ethiopia to the west. It has the longest coastline on the continent, and its terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains and highlands. Hot conditions prevail year-round, along with periodic monsoon winds and irregular rainfall.

Somalia has been inhabited since the Paleolithic period. Cave paintings said to date back to 9000 BC have been found in the northern part of the country. The most famous of these is the Laas Geel complex, which contains some of the earliest known rock art on the African continent. Undeciphered inscriptions have also been found beneath each of the cave paintings. During the Stone Age, the Doian culture and the Hargeisan culture flourished here with their respective industries and factories. The oldest evidence of burial customs in the Horn of Africa comes from cemeteries in Somalia dating back to 4th millennium BC. The stone implements from the Jalelo site in northern Somalia were characterized in 1909 as "the most important link in evidence of the universality in Paleolithic times between the East and the West.

The Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) are the key foundations of the central government of Somalia. Created in 2004, they include the Transitional Federal Charter (TFC), the Transitional Federal Government, and the Transitional Federal Parliament. The Transitional Federal Charter outlines a five-year mandate leading toward the establishment of a new constitution and a transition to a representative government after national elections. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is the current internationally recognized federal government of Somalia. It constitutes the executive branch of government. The TFG is the most recent attempt to restore national institutions to Somalia after the 1991 collapse of the Siad Barre regime and the ensuing Somali Civil War.

Somali and Arabic are the official languages of Somalia, while English and Italian are designated "second languages" by the Transitional Federal Charter of the Somali Republic. The Somali language is the mother tongue of the Somali people, the nation's most populous ethnic group. It is a member of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and its nearest relatives are the Afar and Saho languages. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies of it dating from before 1900.

Most Somalis are Muslims, the majority belonging to the Sunni branch of Islam and the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence, although some are also adherents of the Shia Muslim denomination. Sufism, the mystical dimension of Islam, is also well-established, with many local jama'a (zawiya) or congregations of the various tariiqa or Sufi orders. The constitution of Somalia likewise defines Islam as the religion of the Somali Republic, and Islamic sharia as the basic source for national legislation.