Baghdad, Iraq ? The killers started early.

Just after sunrise, they tracked the imam to his modest brick mosque, where he was praying on a green carpet. Three masked gunmen muscled past a handful of worshippers and pumped four bullets into the chest of Sheik Adbul Rahman Jawhar al-Karbouli.

His murder Feb. 16 in a village near the Syrian border was barely noticed in Iraq’s daily body count. But – like a vivid footnote in a dry collection of statistics – it helps bring the violence among Iraqi into sharper focus.

To much of the world, the meltdown in Iraq is a two-act spectacle: insurgents versus U.S.-led forces and Iraqi allies, and the sectarian bloodletting between Sunni Muslims and the majority Shiites. Yet out in the desert of the western Anbar province there is another story – told one attack at a time – of an internal struggle among Sunnis, between militant factions and those who have stood up against them.

It’s a fratricide that may be escalating.

A suicide truck bomb killed more than 50 people Saturday leaving a mosque in the Anbar village of Habbaniyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad. The mosque’s imam – like the slain al-Karbouli – had spoken out against the insurgents, which include extremists inspired by al-Qaida.

The showdowns in Anbar demonstrate how the battle for Iraq can reach into every home and mosque. Political and religious leaders are being pushed to choose between the insurgency or the U.S.-backed government.

Wild Anbar

No place, it seems, shelters more outlaws than wild Anbar, a huge wedge of badlands and dunes with the Euphrates River as its lifeline.

Supply lines from Syria are thought to lace this vast empty landscape, bringing weapons and goods to Sunni insurgents. Among the militant groups operating here are those loyal to the former regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as al-Qaida in Iraq – which has committed suicide strikes, kidnappings and beheadings, in addition to attacks on U.S.-led forces.

Anbar’s capital – Ramadi – is often referred to as Iraq’s “wild west.” It’s the scene of near daily battles that produce a steady flow of U.S. body bags.

As insurgents clash with government forces, Anbar’s clan leaders are caught between them.

Clan chiefs often act as judges, policy makers and intelligence chiefs for entire neighborhoods and villages. They also have the firepower to enforce their decisions. Both the government and the insurgents need their support.

Some clans have thrown in with the insurgents – providing them with safe houses and protection along the suspected smuggling lines. Others have spurned the al-Qaida inspired “mujahadeen” – such as Jordanian-born leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed by a U.S. airstrike last June – as foreign interlopers.

Armed militants drive through Ramadi, Iraq. Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, is located in Anbar province, where many Sunni-Arab insurgent groups are based. The showdowns in Anbar demonstrate how the battle for Iraq can reach into every home and mosque.

The result for Anbar’s Sunnis has been division and bloodshed.

“Anbar represents the breakdown of Iraq at its most basic levels. It has forced tribes and families to pick sides,” said Mustafa Alani, an expert in Iraqi affairs at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

The imam al-Karbouli was a victim of this splintering of Anbar along clan lines, one of perhaps hundreds of similar killings since 2003.

Members of his tribe had publicly denounced the insurgents. Al-Karbouli often used his Friday sermons at the Ameen mosque in Karabilah to warn worshippers against joining the “terrorists,” said residents of the town, located about 240 miles west of Baghdad.

The 45-year-old al-Karbouli spoke out in other prominent forums. As a member of the municipal council, he tried to rally young men to join the police or military. As a lawyer, he mocked the declarations by al-Qaida in Iraq to establish an Islamic state.

Resident of Karabilah say his opposition to the insurgents cost him his life. “The only reason for this brutal act was his stance against al-Qaida,” said one resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals.

Family members refused to release a photograph of the imam. They are worried that insurgents may attack the four children he left behind.

The impact of Anbar’s clan-against-clan violence on the people living in this desert landscape is difficult to measure.

On Feb. 19, gunmen ambushed a minivan on the main highway from Baghdad to Anbar. The attackers accused the 13 aboard of opposing al-Qaida in Iraq. All 13 were executed, including an elderly woman and two boys, police said.

The same day, a suicide bomber tried to kill Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of clans backing the government.

Little progress

What progress has been made has come – in part – because the Pentagon has learned some painful lessons about dealing with the insurgency here.

During the 2003 invasion, the province was largely bypassed as U.S.-led columns pushed toward Baghdad. Small detachments were sent into the Anbar desert to try to block Scud missile batteries from moving within range of Israel.

But Anbar’s expanses were too vast and its population too small to draw much attention after Saddam Hussein’s fall.

That all changed in March 2004 when mobs in Fallujah ambushed U.S. security contractors and displayed the mutilated remains of two victims on a bridge over the Euphrates. The intense street-by-street battles that followed foreshadowed the bloody struggles ahead for U.S.-led forces across Anbar.

The Pentagon struck back with offensives to try to block the cross-border networks of suspected foreign fighters. These were the first major campaigns joined by the new Iraqi Army and another allied force: Several hundred Anbar tribesmen pledged to fight against the insurgents, who called themselves the Desert Protectors.