Somalia Has A New Government -- Will This Stop the Civil War?

Rich Clabaugh/Christian Science Monitor Staff

Moderate Islamists Take On Hard-Liners In Battle For Somalia -- Christian Science Monitor

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a moderate, was elected president last week by Somalia's transitional parliament. But hard-line militant Islamists are fighting to take over the country.

Nairobi, Kenya - The Ethiopian peacekeepers have withdrawn from Somalia and the radical Islamist militia called Al Shabab is rapidly moving in to take control of the war-battered country.

Perhaps the only thing standing in Al Shabab's way is an unlikely enemy: an army of citizens and clerics who are fighting to preserve what's left of the Somalia that they have known for generations.

Western experts call them moderate Islamists; they call themselves Ahlu Sunna wa Jamaa.

Compared with the highly trained, well-funded Al Shabab, which took the transitional capital of Baidoa last week, Ahlu Sunna is poorly armed, but popular. And although the moderate Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was elected president of Somalia by a transitional parliament last week, Ahlu Sunna knows that its time is running out.

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