Immediately following al-Khoi's murder, al-Sadr militants surrounded the house of the grand ayatollah in Najaf, Ali Sistani, al-Sadr's main rival for influence. Sistani, a moderate, escaped and temporarily went into hiding, emerging only after being bolstered by reinforcements.

On August 27 2004, tensions were diffused somewhat when a deal between the American-led coalition and al-Sadr's forces was brokered by Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The keys to the Imam Ali mosque, which had been taken over and used as a base by insurgents, were handed over to Sistani. Al-Sadr ordered his militia to cease hostilities and stated that he would soon announce plans for his political future. Given al-Sadr's history of giving conflicting signals, his long-term plan were unclear. Yesterday's violence offers an indication that he is again prepared to resort to violence.

With the new Shiites-Shiites warfare, the Iraqi civil war is going to have many cross-currents and conflicting frontlines, Sunni Vs. Shiites, Shiites Vs Shiites, Governments forces Vs Insurgents, Arabs Vs. Kurds, Peshmerga Vs Ansar, etc., while the Coalition forces would have a hard choice to make about which side to back and in what way.

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The construction boom is part of what my personal observation convinces me is "the other jihad," the slow-roll attempt by fundamentalists from the Arabian Peninsula to reclaim East Africa for the faith of the Prophet. We dismiss Osama bin Laden's dream of re- establishing the caliphate, Islam's bygone empire, as madness. But Saudis, Yemenis, Omanis and oil-rich Gulf Arabs are every bit as determined as bin Laden to reassert Muslim domination of the lands Islam once ruled.

No region is as vulnerable as Africa. The differences between the Saudi ruling family and bin Laden aren't so much about goals as about methods. The Saudis were furious over the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam not because of the viciousness of the acts, but because the attacks threatened to call the West's attention to quiet subversion by fundamentalist Wahhabis in the region.

Lengthy ties

For the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula, ties to Africa's Indian Ocean coast go back more than a millennium. By the 14th century, trading cities such as Kilwa (now a ruin) and Mombasa were opulent outposts of Islam. One dream shared by the House of Saud and Islamist terrorists is the reclamation of the old Swahili Coast, where their ancestors grew rich trading ivory, gold and slaves.

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