What The Fall Of Tikrit Looked Like From The Inside

11:06

May 14, 2015

This image posted on a militant website on Saturday, June 14, 2014, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, appears to show militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) taking aim at captured Iraqi soldiers wearing plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq. (AP Photo via militant website)

When the self-proclaimed Islamic State occupied the Iraqi city of Tikrit last summer, it was "a disaster without precedent in the city's modern history," Zaid Al-Ali writes in the New York Review of Books.

Worse yet, the city fell in moments - the time it takes for an afternoon nap, as one Tikriti told Al-Ali. And though it's been liberated, Tikrit is a hollow shell now. Al-Ali discusses Tikrit with Here & Now's Meghna Chakrabarti.

Guest

Zaid Al-Ali, lawyer and author of "The Struggle for Iraq's Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy." He tweets @zalali.

This segment aired on May 14, 2015.