Brothers took different paths to violence
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The younger brother was slender and serious, a former bodyguard for Saddam Hussein. He became a Muslim fundamentalist, grew his beard, and prayed five times a day. The older brother was a used-car salesman who told off-color jokes and made 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 river Euphrates. For years, their paths diverged. That changed the moment Ali died in Yarmouk Circle, in the center of Mosul.
The story of the Mashhandani brothers offers a glimpse into the lives of two 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 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 practiced," said Hania Mashhandani, the men's sister. ''And he was a mujahideen prince."
Khalid Mashhandani was more of an opportunist. He created his own group of 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.
The brothers represent two major strands of the insurgency: one organized, deadly, and internationally connected; the other less practiced and more individualistic, but just as dangerous.
As an American convoy rumbled through Yarmouk Circle in January, a bullet pinged off a Humvee's armor cladding. The response was immediate. US soldiers fired ragged bursts toward the sound. According to his sister Hania, when the gunfire subsided, Ali lay in the dust, the life gushing out of him.
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, 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.
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 coordinated attacks with Al Qaeda.
When the Americans invaded, Hania said, her brother Ali was initially glad that Hussein 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," Hania said.
Ali formed a cell of between 10 and 20 members. They staged most of their attacks in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.
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. Army Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill confirmed that Ali had been ''detained as a security risk" on Oct. 23, 2003, but declined to specify the charges. Ali spent about six months in Abu Ghraib before being transferred to the Camp Bucca detention facility in southern Iraq. In October, he was released.
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 slain by US troops a short distance from Khalid's home, she said.
''Do you want to know why Khalid joined the resistance?" she asked.
''It is because Ali died slowly," she said. 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."
