Religion shifting Somalia conflict

DUSA MARREB, Somalia -- From men of peace, the Sufi clerics suddenly became men of war.

Their shrines were being destroyed. Their imams were being murdered. Their tolerant beliefs were under withering attack. So the moderate Sufi scholars did what so many other men have chosen to do in anarchic Somalia: They picked up guns and entered the killing business, in this case to fight back against the Shabab, one of the most fearsome extremist Muslim groups in Africa.

"Clan wars, political wars, we were always careful to stay out of those," said Sheik Omar Mohamed Farah, a Sufi leader. "But this time, it was religious."

In the past few months, a new axis of conflict has opened up in Somalia, an essentially governmentless nation ripped apart by rival clans since 1991.

Now, in a definitive shift, fighters from different clans are forming alliances and battling along religious lines, with deeply devout men on both sides charging into firefights with checkered head scarves, assault rifles and dusty Qurans.

It is an Islamist versus Islamist war, and the Sufi scholars are part of a broader moderate movement that Western nations are counting on to repel Somalia's increasingly powerful extremists. Whether Somalia becomes a terrorist incubator and a genuine regional threat -- which is beginning to happen -- or whether this country finally steadies itself may hinge on who wins in the next few months.

"We're on terra incognito," said Rashid Abdi, an analyst at the nonprofit International Crisis Group. "Before, everything was clan. Now we are beginning to see the contours of an ideological, sectarian war in Somalia for the first time, and that scares me."

For two years, Islamist insurgents waged a fierce war against Somalia's transitional government and the thousands of Ethiopian troops protecting it. In January, the insurgents seemed to get what they wanted: The Ethiopians pulled out; an unpopular president walked away; and moderate Islamists took the helm. But since then, the tiny bit of the city the government controls is shrinking, and Ethiopian troops have once again crossed the border and are standing by.

But out here, on the wind-whipped plains of Somalia's central region, the moderates are holding their own. And the newly minted Sufi militia is about the only local group to go toe-to-toe with the Shabab and win.