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Islamic leaders worry Somali moneylords

In this sandy wasteland of palm trees and wrecked seaside villas, there are warlords and then there are moneylords.

Yusuf Muhammad is a moneylord, a shipping magnate who threw his weight -- and men and money -- behind the Islamic militias and helped bring them to power in June.

"The cost of doing business had simply become unacceptable," Muhammad said of the days of anarchy before the Islamists took control. "So we made a move."

The move was initially celebrated by Mogadishu's people who, for the first time in 15 years of unrelenting clan warfare, enjoyed a modicum of peace. But three months into the new Islamic fiefdom, things are changing. While the millionaires of Mogadishu (and at 14,000 Somali shillings to the US dollar, there are quite a few) continue to bankroll the Islamists, poorer people here are increasingly ambivalent. They describe a harsh and brazen regime, whose troops bullwhip women for not wearing veils and summarily execute political enemies.

The much appreciated stability may be cracking. On Sunday, an elderly Italian nun was gunned down in front of a Mogadishu hospital where she had served for years. Hospital staff identified her as Leonella Rose Scorbatti and said she might have been shot by Islamic gunmen in revenge for Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks on Islam.

Mogadishu is still an edgy place, where machine guns and bazookas are sold openly in the market and the signs of war are everywhere.

Razor-straight avenues mapped out by the Italians decades ago are corridors of ruin, with crumbling, bombed-out houses lining the streets and giant cactus plants exploding from the ground floor windows. White plaster storefronts are freckled by bullet holes. Junked pickup trucks lie half-buried in sand.

It is as if every single inch of this city of 2 million people, the country's capital when there was a functioning government, was at some point violently contested.

"That," said a truck driver, pointing to a pile of scorched white blocks sitting on top of a hill, "is the old parliament."

The new parliament, as it were, is the Shura Council, 91 sheiks from the major clans who have sworn their allegiance to the Council of Islamic Somali Courts, the new name of the Islamic government. They meet in a red-brick building.

In a way, this is a watershed for Somali politics. Somalia is a thoroughly clannish society, split by rivalries that go back to the days when the clans roamed the deserts and fought over pasture land. The Hawiye clan, Mogadishu's most powerful, dominates the Shura Council, but the Islamists seem to have done a better job than any previous government of uniting the major clans and subclans. Almost all Somalis are Sunni Muslims, and several business leaders said religion may prove to be the Somalis' elusive connective tissue.

But it is not all smooth sailing. One complication is the transitional federal government, based in the inland town of Baidoa and internationally recognized. Despite two rounds of peace talks, the two sides have yet to figure out a way to share power.

Inside Somalia and out, the Islamic Courts have been likened to the Taliban, who rose to power in Afghanistan by bringing order, then turned to repression and terrorism.

It is a comparison the Islamic leaders do not necessarily mind.

"The Taliban are our brethren," Modei said.

The business leaders, though, have a different view.

"People here are free, freer than they have been for years," said Muhammad, the shipping magnate.

He said he had faith the Islamists would continue to deliver peace -- and prosperity.
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