He admitted that there had been problems between the PMU and the peshmerga forces in the past, but that this would not affect their collaboration in the northern sector. In Tuz Khormato, for example, several people were killed in fighting earlier this year between the PMU and the peshmerga forces.
Early that evening, young men who told Al-Monitor that they were from Nasiriyah and Basra stood on the rooftop of a building in Zargah, one holding a pair of binoculars. In preparation for the night, they put out piles of blankets and various other necessities.
At one point, a plume of smoke rose in the distance from what they said was a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) that they had targeted before it could get to Zargah. When Al-Monitor was leaving, one fighter said they had information that two more car bombs were heading in their direction.
A few weeks later, on the lengthy trip to Tal Afar airport, along a road that had been cut up at regular intervals to prevent VBIEDs, followed by dusty tracks through desert land, some PMU fighters seemed confused about the area they were in.
On Nov. 20, during a stop in the village of Dallawiyah, situated 329 kilometers (204 miles) northwest of Baghdad, to refuel and request permission to proceed toward Tal Afar airport, Al-Monitor asked a small group of fighters who were filming the journalists traveling in a small convoy what the name of the town was. "Yazidiye," one of them said, with three others nearby nodding. "There were Yazidis here."
However, the Yazidi towns are only found much further to the north. The fighters said that they were from Nasiriyah and Basra, both Shiite-majority cities in the south.
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