Photo by The U.S. Army | CC BY 2.0
Tal Afar is a small city notorious for sectarian hatred and slaughter, which may soon be engulfed by a final battle between Isis and its bitterest enemies. Shia paramilitaries seeking revenge for past massacres of their co-religionists may soon assault the place which has provided many of the most feared Isis commanders, judges and religious officials.
“Isis is full of killers, but the worst killers of all come Tal Afar,” says a senior Iraqi official who did not want his name published. Abbas, a 47-year-old Shia Turkman from Tal Afar living in exile in the Kurdish city of Zakho, agrees, saying that several of the senior military commandersof the self-declared Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi come from there. He adds that officers from the Shia paramilitaries have been told that they will soon attack the city. The Turkmen are on of Iraq’s smaller minorities but important because of their links to Isis and to Turkey.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 Shia Hashd al-Shaabi are now massing to the south and west of Mosul with Tal Afar in their sights. A spokesman for them said on Tuesday that they were within twelve miles of Tal Afar airport.
The paramilitaries.often referred to as militia, include an estimated 3,000 Shia Turkmen from Tal Afar who were forced to flee in 2014 when Isis seized the city, though it had long been infamous for its death squads operating on behalf of both the Sunni majority and Shia minority. Sectarian killings began in…