In Somalia, Islamic Militias Fight Culture Wars

MOGADISHU, Somalia,
June 18 — Flush from a military victory earlier this month that caught
Washington and the world by surprise, Islamic militiamen have begun
waging smaller battles — cultural, not military ones — in and around
Somalia's shellshocked capital.

A week ago, when Mexico and Iran
were still playing the first half of their World Cup soccer match,
gunmen allied with the Islamic courts burst into a tiny theater in the
Hiliwaa neighborhood of north Mogadishu, condemned the place as ungodly
and angrily switched off the television set.

When they caught
sight of a man with a trendy Afro, with lines shaved into it, they tied
his hands behind his back, took out a pair of scissors and evened it
out into a scalp-revealing buzz cut.

"They said, 'Your hair is
against our culture and is not Islamic,' " recalled the man, Abdi
Fatah, 26. They whipped him with a belt, then jailed him for three days.

With
the old warlords gone, Mogadishu is safer, and more dangerous, too. It
is a happier place, and a more oppressive one. It is a capital city
that is also a rundown shantytown, churning with change. Where exactly
it is headed nobody knows.

In the old Mogadishu, militiamen would barge into a home and haul a
girl or woman away and rape her. Bullets rang out routinely, and gunmen
set up roadblocks and charged taxes on anybody who happened by.

Fewer
guns are visible now. The man-made roadblocks have disappeared, leaving
livestock and huge craters as the main obstructions to navigation. But
a new, more silent battle is under way, for control of the Islamic
movement in Somalia....

(..)

The scramble for power in Mogadishu is taking place behind the
scenes, in mosques and private rooms where clan elders gather. It
filters to the surface only in the mixed signals that are being given
about what people can wear now, and what they can do.

The
capital's Islamic leaders find themselves in an unfamiliar spot. No
longer can they just preach about the way things are supposed to be.
Now they face the challenge of running a broken-down city of two
million suffering souls.

(..)

When they could manage to track down the gunmen running rampant in
the streets, some courts adopted stringent forms of Shariah, cutting
off thieves' hands, executing killers and doling out lashes for lesser
crimes.

Soon, the clan-based courts merged in a powerful alliance
that eventually took on and toppled the warlords who had been ruling
and running roughshod over Mogadishu residents.

But those courts
owe part of their strength to the Bush administration, which tried
secretly to undermine them. In recent years, American intelligence
agents paid warlords to root out Islamic militants operating in
Mogadishu. The United States said a small cell of Al Qaeda,
made up of foreigners, had set up shop in Mogadishu after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks and were being protected by court leaders.

(..)

But there have been other confrontations. Earlier this year, Islamic
militiamen stopped Ismahan Ali Mohamed, 18, on the street and ripped
the long, tight-fitting skirt she was wearing. They ordered her to wear
a looser garment next time.

Now, she wears a flowing hijab on the
streets that covers all but her face. "It feels heavy and it's not
comfortable," she said, removing it inside a hotel restaurant to reveal
a bright pink outfit that still covered her but allowed more of a
glimpse of what was underneath. "With this, I feel happy and beautiful
and free," said Ms. Mohamed, an aspiring actress.

A friend, Ubah
Mohamed, 34, who runs a beauty shop, said she feared the new rules. "If
these Islamic people get their way, we'll have to cover all the way,"
she said. "I'm a beautiful girl and I like to show others how beautiful
I am. Behind the veil, no one can tell."

Malyun Sheik Haidar, 31,
who publishes a small newsletter devoted to women's issues, heard from
a man involved in one of the Islamic courts that her publication would
probably be shut down. "He said, 'Women have a right to sit in your
house and do domestic things,' " she said. " 'You don't have a right to
do a journal on human rights.' "