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LAURA EWAN: When you first meet reformed gang member Abdul Kadir Sharif, you can't help but notice his constant struggle to breathe.

ABDUL KADIR SHARIF: So a lot of people, they don't have no-- they don't have a chance to be better than self. But I had the chance to be better myself, so I'm taking advantage of it.

LAURA EWAN: Those strained breaths tell the story of how two years ago, a rival gang member stabbed Sharif in the neck, forever altering one of his vocal cords. A Y-shaped scar that goes down Sharif's torso shows where doctors operated to save his life. Now 30, wearing a button down shirt and an African cloth hat, Sharif is standing on a sidewalk in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. Looming behind him are the high rise towers where thousands of Somalis live. This is the spot where his would-be killer walked toward Sharif with the greeting, Somali power.

ABDUL KADIR SHARIF: I say power to you. When he walked walk past me, I make only three steps-- 1, 2, 3. Then there goes my neck. I felt like something bite me.

LAURA EWAN: Sharif now spends most of his time at a Saint Paul storefront mosque known as the Minnesota Dawah Institute. How he got here is a long story. Sharif first landed in the United States in 1996. He was 17. With his father still in Africa, Sharif rebelled against his older sister who was caring for him. He dropped out of school. To this day, he still cannot read in any language.

Sharif says he started fighting African-American kids who were beating him up because he was Somali. His Civil War survival instincts kicked in. The gang life also enticed him with the money and the jewelry and the hip hop clothing that it could buy. Sharif says he helped establish the Somali gangs known as the Hot Boys and the Somali Mafia and rallied them to violence.

ABDUL KADIR SHARIF: I tell them, we are organization strong, wise, powerful. We fight. We fight until all of us dead, all of us win.

LAURA EWAN: While Somali gang members only make up 1% of known gang members in Minnesota, they still are a concern to law enforcement. Last October, Minneapolis Police created a position for a Somali liaison officer who focuses solely on these issues. The shootings have cooled off in recent months, but police say they've picked up on a disturbing trend. Somali gangs are beginning to divide themselves across the same clan lines that destroyed their homeland.

There were early signs that the streets of Cedar-Riverside would be ground zero for bloodshed. Shukri Adan studied Somali youth issues as a community organizer back in 2006 for a report she authored for the city of Minneapolis. At the time, people were worried about a series of armed robberies in uptown. While doing her research, Adan remembers seeing groups of Somali kids idly hanging out in Cedar-Riverside.

SHUKRI ADAN: You could just see that they had nothing to do, and there was all that tension that something was going to happen. You just didn't know when.

LAURA EWAN: Adan says many of those kids quit school and formed cliques because they wanted to belong to something. The cliques eventually evolved into gangs with their own initiation rites. They carried guns and robbed Somali-owned businesses. Adan was able to interview a number of young gang members with the help of Mohamed Jama who worked as a youth mentor at the nearby Brian Coyle Community Center. Last year, Jama was gunned down in Brooklyn Center. The shooting still brings Adan to tears.

SHUKRI ADAN: And I just feel that his death has no meaning. That I stood there out there with him on Cedar-Riverside talking to all these gang kids. He knew what was coming. He talked about it. He was shouting about it and nobody was paying attention. Nothing has changed.

LAURA EWAN: Even Somalis in the suburbs were wary of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Hindia Ali of Columbia Heights recalls her mother worrying when she learned her son, Hindia's younger brother Ahmednur, had applied for a volunteer job as a youth mentor at the Brian Coyle Center last year.

HINDIA ALI: She thought it was really dangerous. Being a mom hearing that there's violence around that area, no mother will ever want to send her kids over there. But he was a man, and he really wanted to help the community. So for her is, how am I going to stop my son from helping his community?

LAURA EWAN: Ahmednur was a third-year student at Augsburg College. Last September, he was shot to death while working at the Brian Coyle Center. The teen charged in the crime allegedly gunned down Ahmednur because he wouldn't let him play basketball. Hindia Ali says her parents felt a painful irony that their son would be slain in the United States.

HINDIA ALI: We never thought that that was going to happen to us, that our son will be killed with violence in the Twin Cities when we left our home because of violence.

LAURA EWAN: She thinks her brother's death also took a toll on one of his best friends, Mohamud Hassan he helped bury Ahmednur Ali. A couple months later, the University of Minnesota student left for Somalia. He's now on the list of missing young men believed to be fighting in Somalia's Civil War. Some experts say schools and Somali community leaders need to do more to help troubled refugee kids integrate and stay in school. Community activists blame cuts in education resulting in fewer bilingual teachers who could help Somali students adapt.

HASSAN MOHAMUD: 1 2, 3.

LAURA EWAN: One spiritual leader thinks his hands on approach is working. It's 11 o'clock on a Wednesday night in Saint Paul. A small pack of young men and high schoolers are jogging along a gritty stretch of University Avenue. Their Imam, Hassan Mohamud, is leading the pack. One of Mohamud's missions is to save the streets one physically wounded young man at a time. Men from Mohammed's mosque run every few nights right after their prayers.

HASSAN MOHAMUD: You see in Islam, we say, religion of Islam is balanced religion. We balance between the spiritual and physical exercise and mental exercise, which means to read also.

LAURA EWAN: Mohamud also leads his students on hospital visits. That's how he met the former gang member Abdul Kadir Sharif. It was right after the stabbing, so Sharif couldn't talk. The imam didn't think Sharif would make it. He says he wanted to make Sharif a cautionary tale of what would happen to his students if they made poor choices. Mohamud then read the Quran and held Sharif's hand.

HASSAN MOHAMUD: I said that, OK, you're promising this. In case that you survived, will you join the mosque? Will you be part of us and then we'll save the rest of the members of the gang people? We'll try to clean the streets. And he said nodding, yes, I promise.

LAURA EWAN: After Sharif got out of the hospital, he did show up at the mosque. He became a youth counselor and one of Mohamud's right hand men. But Sharif's divorce from the gang culture hasn't been entirely smooth. In his low points, he has thought about returning to the streets.

ABDUL KADIR SHARIF: Now I'm a soldier. Before, I was little.

LAURA EWAN: Yet he reminds himself he's a soldier on a mission to do good. Sharif says he's already persuaded five young men with troubled pasts to follow him on his journey. Laura Ewan, Minnesota Public Radio News, Minneapolis.