Somalia war turns sectarian - Sufis join the battle

After driving out the Ethiopians, Shahab insurgents turned their might inward, violently imposing a Wahhabist brand of Islam. In an odd twist, they managed to force Sufis to take up arms. In a further odd twist, in the central hinterlands where they've taken their stand, the Sufis are winning.

The several-hundred-square-mile patch of central Somalia that the Sufis control is not nearly as strategic as Mogadishu. But the Sufis have achieved what the transitional government has not: grass-roots support, which explains how they were able to move so quickly from a bunch of men who had never squeezed a trigger before — a rarity in Somalia — into a cohesive fighting force backed by local clans.

Many Somalis say that the Sufi version of Islam, which stresses tolerance, mysticism and a personal relationship with God, is more congruent with their traditions than the Wahhabi Islam espoused by the Shabab, which calls for strict separation of the sexes and harsh punishments like amputations and stonings.

...

Men like Mr. Siyad became the backbone of the new Sufi militia, which got a crate of AK-47s from one set of clan elders or a sputtering armored truck from another. In December, the Sufis, whose organization is called Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama, which roughly translates as the followers of the Prophet Muhammad, drove the Shabab out of Dusa Marreb. Since then, the Sufis have defended their territory several times against Shabab incursions.

Hassan Sheik Mohamud, the dean of a college in Mogadishu, said the rise of the Sufis was “absolutely, totally new historically.”

“They had a reputation for being peaceful,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world/africa/24somalia.html?_r=1&hp

Where two idiots are fighting over something and don't notice that the tide is slowly taking it out to sea.

Where the Wahhabists hold sway, Sufis are the first to be "cleansed". Sunni puritanism is the problem facing the entire region. Too bad no American leader will ever point that out, for fear of alienating not just Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, but oppressive Sunni regimes in Pakistan, Jordan, and Egypt as well.