Why This Small Iraqi Town Became A Breeding Ground For Jihadists - War News Media

Peter Schwartzstein, Quartz: The perfect recipe for making jihadis was developed in this small Iraqi town

No matter where you turn when covering ISIL’s two years of terror in Iraq and Syria, one name repeatedly crops up: Tal Afar.

The town, with an estimated 200,000 residents when ISIL (a.k.a. the Islamic State), captured it two years ago, is perched on the dusty plains of northern Iraq, just shy of the Syrian border. Its native sons are thought to have taken a lead role in massacring Yazidis in nearby Sinjar during the summer of 2014. When ISIL seized the Mosul Dam for 12 days that August, a water engineer who’d previously managed Tal Afar’s drainage system was put in charge of it.

Even now, with ISIL on the back foot, Afaris have cultivated a reputation as fierce guardians of the caliphate’s shrinking territory. Last month an American airstrike reportedly killed Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, a deputy to the self-declared “caliph” of ISIL, who had spent much of his career in Tal Afar. It is thought to have provided at least half a dozen ISIL commanders and hundreds of foot soldiers.

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WNU Editor: The scourge of tribalism and sectarianism .... the Jihadist/Iraqi model. And here is an easy prediction .... when ISIS is eventually defeated .... places like Tal Afar are going to be punished severely.