Tal Afar
In the mid-1990s, al-Anbari returned to Tal Afar, where he taught in a school and became the imam of a mosque. Tal Afar is a city populated by Shiites and Sunnis. As an imam, al-Anbari violently attacks Shiites, as well as Sufis. He is also beginning to associate with Kurdish jihadists active in the mountains of northern Iraq.