I wrote a really long post on this a few weeks ago, but it went down the rabbit hole when I accidently closed the browser window before saving it. I haven't had the energy to re-write the whole thing (it took hours), but here's what I remember (I'll fill in links when I have time to find them on my computer. I'm publishing first this time so I don't lose the whole thing again.)

It was Syed's parents (as opposed to Syed) who published his profiles on dating/matrimonial sites. They wanted him to find a wife and settle down. They went to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrimage with Syed in October, 2013. Malik apparently had family who lived near the pilgrimage site and Malik's father met Syed's parents there. They talked about their children getting married.

The Farooks returned to the U.S. Syed applied for a fiance visa for her. The next year, around July, he went to Saudi Arabia to bring her back to the U.S. They took out a marriage application in Riverside County in August, 2014. They got married in San Bernadino in a religious ceremony. They had a child together.

Her family does come from the Karor Lal Esan in Southern Pakistan. But she left there when she was a toddler, to move to Saudi Arabia with her parents and siblings. She and one sister both went back to Pakistan to go to pharmacy school in Multan. Tafsheen attended pharmacy school (it's a five year program) from 2007 to 2012, when she graduated. She then went to a more religious school for a while but dropped out saying she was getting engaged (which she did.)

No one knows where or when she got radicalized. Her relatives in Pakistan are trying to distance themselves from her and her father. Saudi Arabia is claiming she barely spent any time there (which doesn't seem possible.) It seems she grew up in Saudi Arabia from about the age of 2 until 2007 when she returned to Pakistan to attend pharmacy school. The religious school she attended is conservative, but not a terror front. I think it's more likely she was recruited by Pakistani intelligence than a school. I wouldn't be surprised if Pakistani intelligence encouraged her to attend the school, all in a plan to find an American husband. A spy thing, if not a direct terror thing.

It seems like it shouldn't be too hard to find her grade school records from Saudi Arabia which would put an end to the discussion about where she grew up.

She has two brothers and two sisters. One sister is a doctor. The other went to the same pharmacy school as Tashfeen. The brother works in Saudi Arabia. He says their mother is very ill. The father, Gulzar Malik, lives in Saudi Arabia but has a house in Multan. He worked for a while as a postman in Taunsa which is in the Dera Ghazi Khan District in the Punjab province of Pakistan, before moving to Karorr Lal Essan. He has a brothers and a cousin in Punjab. The cousin, Malik Ahmad Ali Auolakh, was a political official until 2013. The brother may be named Anwar Ahmed and may not have seen each other in 30 years. Most of the negative information about her father is coming from his stepsister who appears to begrudge him he didn't return to Pakistan when their mother died.

Tashfeen lived in a university hostel the first two or three years of pharmacy school. She then moved to a house for her last two years (probably the one owned by her father, and although he may have visited, it appears he still resided in Saudi Arabia.) She returned to Saudi Arabia at least twice during pharmacy school and after, presumably to visit her family.

So it seems the dour-looking couple met when she responded to the application his parents posted on the web. They decided to have the families meet, and the Syeds went to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage, when they met her father. It seems logical since Syed went on the trip as well, that he met Tafsheen in person on that trip.

None of this justifies Syed's and Malik's terrorist killings. But I'm not seeing proof she was improperly vetted. As I said, I'll return later to fill in links. I remember the news reports were very inconsistent, and after reading many more of them than I intended to, I went with the ones that came from the most official sources ( e.g. a press conference held by pharmacy university officials in Multan who had rechecked her records) rather than the gossipy accounts by relatives in Pakistan who either had never met her or hadn't seen her in 20 years, or the Saudi Foreign Ministry, which claimed she never spent much time there and only visited a few times.

One thing I'm still puzzled by is her death photo where she's wearing shorts. I assume the cops stripped off her black terror garb and go pro camera before taking her out of the car she was killed in, but given her other photos, those shorts seem like an odd choice of clothing for her. Since Syed's former neighbor who bought at least two of the guns used in San Bernadino shootings gave daily interviews to the feds while at the mental health center or after his arrest, I'm sure we'll learn more about the role she played soon. But I think it's too early put blame on the visa process. And my eye is still on Pakistani Intelligence, and by extension, al Qaida in Pakistan, not ISIS.

As to the official photo above, I wonder which one it is. Unlike most of the published photos we've seen of her, in this one her nose and mouth are covered.

Update: Why I hate writing about this woman so much: Her name is the most dyslexic I've ever seen. I've typed it at least 100 times and I apparently have some mental block against it. I always have to go back to a source material to see if its Tashfeen or Tafsheen. I've never had that problem with any other name, and it slows down the writing process so much I just hate writing about her.