Iraq: Two Iraqi brothers from a poor suburb of Mosul became insurgents for different reasons - one out of ideology, the other for revenge, writes Solomon Moore in Baghdad
The younger brother was slender and serious, a former bodyguard for Saddam Hussein who became a Muslim fundamentalist, grew his beard and prayed five times a day. The older brother was a used-car salesman who was fond of telling off-colour jokes and making regular trips to a Baghdad hotel for drinks.
The brothers, Ali and Khalid Mashhandani, grew up together in a poor suburb of Mosul, a cluster of small stone houses with wooden and metal roofs along the Euphrates River. For years, their paths diverged. But that changed the moment Ali died in Yarmouk Circle in central Mosul.
The story of the Mashhandani brothers offers a glimpse into the lives of two lethal Sunni Arab insurgents, their different motivations and the toll their actions have taken on their family in Mosul, a northern city that has become a bastion of the insurgency.
With his radical Islamic convictions and his membership in Ansar al Sunna, a militant group based in northern Iraq, Ali Jassim Mohammed Mashhandani was fighting for an ideological goal. "Ali was much more serious, much more practised," said Hania Mashhandani (43), the men's sister. "And he was a mujahideen prince."
Khalid Mashhandani was more of an opportunist. He created his own group of unaffiliated insurgents, she said, and set about smuggling cars, kidnapping for ransom, and hiring others to attack US convoys. He allegedly raped and killed at least two Iraqi women. He awaits trial in a Mosul jail.
As an American convoy rumbled through Yarmouk Circle in January, a rifle report echoed like a dry cough and a bullet pinged off a Humvee's armour cladding.
The response was immediate. US soldiers fired ragged bursts towards the sound. One soldier firing a tank-mounted machine gun raked .50-calibre fire across a footpath where Ali Mashhandani stood.
When the gunfire subsided, Ali lay in the dust, the life gushing out of him. His sister Hania, who witnessed the shooting, said he was hit accidentally. She insisted she didn't know who fired on the Americans.
Although the soldiers in the field that day didn't know it, they had fatally wounded a local cell leader of Ansar al Sunna. Her brother, Hania said, had orchestrated the December suicide attack on a US base near Mosul in which a man wearing an Iraqi military uniform detonated a bomb vest in the mess tent, killing 22 US and Iraqi troops and civilian contractors.
At Ali's funeral, Hania said, her 46-year-old brother, Khalid, abandoned the mourners to carry out the first of his own insurgent attacks in a quest for revenge.
A sympathiser if not an agent of the insurgency, Hania said her close contact with her brothers had made her a fugitive from Iraqi justice, "though I am guilty of nothing except being a sister of Khalid and Ali".
Another sister, Khalida, disapproved of her brothers' activities.
The Mashhandanis are from Hammam al Alil, a Mosul suburb, devoid of any organised police force or government, that has become known as a stronghold of Sunni Muslim insurgents.
Several years ago, Hania said, Ali became a member of Ansar al Islam, the parent group of Ansar al Sunna. The group is known to have co-ordinated attacks with al-Qaeda and has taken responsibility for a number of kidnappings, videotaped beheadings and deadly strikes on US and Iraqi forces, including a May 4th car bombing at an Irbil police recruiting station that killed at least 60 people.
When the Americans invaded, Hania said, her brother Ali was initially glad Saddam had been deposed. But as time passed, he became increasingly angry about the US-led occupation.
"He said the occupation gave Iraqis too much freedom. He said the occupation reopened the liquor stores and allowed women to go out of the house. Ali was opposed to all of that," she said.
Ali formed a cell whose membership fluctuated between 10 and 20. The cell bought weapons - machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, mines and other explosives - from people who had looted Saddam's many munitions storehouses after the invasion, Hania said. They staged most of their attacks in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.
"He hit two Humvees in his first operation. This happened in the summer of 2003 - they showed this on television," Hania said.
"And he booby-trapped oil tankers that exploded on American forces.
In October 2003, Ali was arrested for filming US military bases in Iraq, Hania said, and was detained at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad where he spent about six months before being transferred to the Camp Bucca detention facility in southern Iraq.
He was released in October and, once free, spoke of his renewed hatred for America.
"He used to say: 'The Americans insulted and mistreated us. When they woke us up, they would kick us. In the winter, they made us take our clothes off and they would throw water on us. When it was hot, they made us stay outside,"' Hania said.
After his brother's release, Khalid tried to persuade Ali to stop his attacks. "Khalid used to tell him to stop resisting," Hania said. "He used to ask him, 'Are you the only man in Iraq who can resist the Americans?"'
That all changed when Ali was killed.
"Do you want to know why Khalid joined the resistance? It is because Ali died slowly. He was calling us for help, and the soldier wouldn't let Khalid go to him. He was lying alone in the street for an hour. By the time we got to him, he was no longer moving."
Khalid was never really cut out for the insurgency, Hania said. Though he learned about munitions and weapons handling during his service in the Iran-Iraq war, he was not an extremist.
Rather, he was a salesman and tribal mediator, skilled at negotiation and compromise. He hadn't said his daily prayers for years.
Khalid's group was less an insurgent cell than a motley gang of part-time criminals, Iraqi authorities say. One man managed a Mosul hotel. Another ran a bathhouse.
Hania denied that Khalid had taken part in attacks on other Iraqis, but she said he had kidnapped people for ransom and at least twice used cars to pay people to attack US convoys.
"Our mother tried to tell him, 'How can you do these things after Ali has recently been killed? I don't want to lose you as well. Do you want to destroy your family as Ali has destroyed his family?'"
By early March, US and Iraqi military units had raided the homes of Khalid's family several times, but he had fled to Syria, Hania said.
"Three members of my family have been arrested," said Hania, who insisted that none of her other relatives had taken part in the insurgency.
She said Iraqi authorities beat her sister on the legs and back with telephone cables to force her to identify Khalid's co-conspirators and confess to organising Khalid's terrorist operations while he was in Syria.
Khalida was publicly exonerated last month after her allegations of police abuse came to light. He returned to Iraq last month and surrendered.
"Khalid sent a message through us to the chief of police in Mosul that he will surrender himself to prove that his family has done nothing," Hania said.
"Khalid will be imprisoned and maybe even executed, but he will sacrifice himself for his family."