In the absence of a functioning central government, various autonomous and semi-autonomous regions (such asSomaliland,Puntland andGalmudug etc ) have emerged and in the early 2000s, several fledgling interim federal administrations were created. The Transitional National Government(TNG) was established in 2000 and this was followed by the formation of theTransitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2004, which reestablished national institutions such as the military. In 2006 the TFG, assisted by Ethiopian troops, assumed control of most of the nation's southern conflict zones from the newly formedIslamic Courts Union (ICU). The ICU subsequently splintered into more radical groups such as Al-Shabaab, which battled the TFG and its allies for control of the region, with the insurgents losing most of the territory that they had seized by mid-2012.  During 2011 and 2012, a Roadmap political process providing clear benchmarks leading toward the establishment of permanent democratic institutions was launched and it is within this administrative framework that a new Provisional Constitution was passed in August 2012, which formally designates Somalia as a federation.  Following the end of the TFG's interim mandate the same month, the Federal Government of Somalia, the first permanent central government in the country since the start of the civil war, was also formed.