About two weeks ago, Iraqi Kurdish security forces (asayish) captured another ring of terrorists who were planning a deadly attack on Erbil city. Their ability to effectively obstruct this heinous plot, aided by the brother of one co-conspirer, saved lives and uncovered the identity of the perpetrators: Kurdish residents of Erbil who professed their loyalty to Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and were linked together by a mosque and the Internet. The local roots of the plotters — as well as previous ones — indicates IS’ societal reach beyond the front lines of Iraq’s disputed territories. The terrorist group has been able to feed off and radicalize Kurds not only through extreme Salafist ideology but deep grievances tied to economic and political conditions inside the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Since its onslaught on Mosul one year ago, IS has penetrated the Kurdistan Region on different fronts. The most evident has been along the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) new 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) front-line of the disputed territories, which has become a battlefield between radical Salafist-Sunni Arab nationalists, foreign fighters and Kurdish peshmerga. IS threats have also become embedded in the massive demographic shifts and spillover of Sunni Arab displaced persons into the Kurdistan Region — some 20% of the total Iraqi Sunni Arab population. These external threats have mandated vigilant KRG border security and travel limitations on mainly Arab populations to and within Iraqi Kurdistan.

Yet, IS has also targeted the Kurdistan Region by recruiting and radicalizing Kurdish youth. According to the KRG Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, at least 500 Iraqi Kurdish youths have thus far joined IS to fight on the battleground in Mosul and Syria. One vehicle of local recruitment is the Kurdish mosques, and through local extremist Salafist clerics. Two of the most influential of these cleric-recruiters are Imam Gailani from Sulaimaniyah and Mullah Shwan, a well-known mullah linked to a mosque in Erbil under the auspices of the KRG’s Ministry of Religious Endowments. Mullah Shwan’s defection to IS was particularly shocking because he was considered a moderate religious leader and friend to the KRG Ministry of Religious Endowments.

What explains this turn to IS by otherwise moderate Kurdish Sunni Muslims within the relatively prosperous Kurdistan Region? Radicalization is not a new phenomenon in Iraqi Kurdistan and is as much politically and economically inspired as it is ideologically motivated. It became salient before and during the Kurdish civil war (1994-98), when disaffected individuals and radicalized Islamists took advantage of the power vacuum to expand their influence. Some joined the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan while others turned to the mosques in Erbil where "night classes" were being conducted and in which extremist cells took root — the precursors to Ansar al-Islam. It is during this period that the term “teachers by day, terrorists by night” became popularized and referred to the average local people, including university professors, who became part of the radicalized groups.