Territory | Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Afghanistan, Netherlands, Belgium, United States, Switzerland, Norway, Belarus |
---|---|
Ethnicity | Kurds |
Criminal activities | Arms trafficking, assassination, assault, bombing, car theft, contract killing, drug trafficking, extortion, human trafficking, infiltration of politics, kidnapping, murder, people smuggling, police corruption, police impersonation, racketeering, witness intimidation, witness tampering |
Allies | PKK (alleged) Taliban (formerly) Russian mafia |
Rivals | Turkish mafia |
Kurdish mafia is a general term for organized criminal gangs that consist of ethnic Kurds. Kurdish crime groups are active worldwide, especially throughout Turkey, Europe, and sometimes in the Middle East.
Kurdish organised crime has its roots in banditry before Islam. Kurdish tribes robbed foreigners who crossed through their land, and raided villages of neighbouring nations before returning to their mountains which were hard to access. [1] [2] [3] Pre-Islamic Aramaic sources described how Kurds raided churches and monasteries. [4] Many Kurds later accepted Islam, although they continued to attack foreigners, including other Muslims, who entered their land, and while Islamic states from the Rashidun to the Ottomans had rule over Kurdistan, the Kurds enjoyed levels of autonomy as the authorities were either unwilling to engage in a deeper conflict with Kurdish tribes, or failed to. [5] [1] The Kurds demanded travellers to pay a tax in order to bypass their land unharmed. [6] Yaqut al-Hamawi, a renowned traveller, wrote that "the Kurds remain in the surrounding mountains terrorizing the travellers, stealing, and looting. Intimidations, attacks, and arrests do not stop them by any means, because it is ingrained in the nature of the Kurds." [7] Kurds were often associated with violence in historiography. [8] The Kemalists in Turkey, and the Pahlavis in Iran, urbanized and sedentarized Kurds, loosening their tribal system, and putting an end to much of the violence. [9] [10] [11]
Kurdish crime groups are operated by Kurds from all around Kurdistan, although the bulk comes from Turkish Kurdistan. Some of the crime groups carry out their activities in accordance to tribal customs. The main source of income for the Kurdish mafia is allegedly drug and weapon trafficking as well as contract killings. [12] [13] The Kurdish mafia also smuggles migrants into Europe in exchange for money, and are known for carrying heavy weapons. [14] The Kurdish mafia smuggles weapons and hard drugs all across Europe, and Süleyman Soylu accused them of making over US$1.5 billion per year for the PKK. [15] A British police report revealed that the Tottenham Boys, a Kurdish gang from London, did funnel their profits to the PKK. [16]
Afghanistan was a stronghold of the Kurdish mafia. [17] Kurdish criminals smuggled opiates from Afghanistan into Iranian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Syrian Kurdistan, which they would later smuggle into Turkish Kurdistan, and then transport it to Western Europe or Russia through the Balkans. [18] [19] In 2015, the Kurdish mafia trafficking of Afghan opiates were disrupted by the unrest in Turkish Kurdistan. [20] [21] Turkish police cracked down on the Kurdish mafia in the process. [21] The Taliban supplied the Kurdish mafia with opiates in exchange for a tax, and the guarantee that the opiates would not be sold to Kurdish civilians, but to Europeans or Russians only. [22] The Kurdish mafia also paid the PKK a tax to pass through their territory. [23] Despite the Taliban tolerating the opiate trade during their insurgency, they banned it in 2022, as part of their new reforms. [24] The Kurdish mafia also patrolled the Iran–Turkey border from both sides, and smuggled Afghan migrants into Turkish cities such as Istanbul in exchange for money. [25]
The Kurdish mafia is also active in Sweden, heavily involved in the drug trade but also bombings, assassinations, robberies, and assaults. [26] [27] [28]
The Albanian mafia was previously dominant in the people smuggling business, although the Kurdish mafia later took over the business, and a few years later, following the refugee crisis after the 2021 Taliban takeover, Afghan criminals dominated the business. [29]
In late 2022, the Kurdish mafia had several camps in Calais, which they used to house the migrants they smuggled. One camp housed around 1,500 people, and was described as being extremely dangerous, with a migrant confirming that the Kurdish mafia controlled both the camp and the trafficking route. [30]
In Nashville, Tennessee, during the 1990s and 2000s, Kurdish organised criminals began operating in the city. Their main actions were drug distribution and armed burglaries. Jiyayi Suleyman, who was the first Kurdish officer of the Metro Nashville Police Department, was arrested in 2018 for assisting the gang. [31] [32]
Kurdish mafia gangs in Germany were also reported to extort German businessmen, making them pay a tax every month in exchange for protection, and even threatening police saying "we outnumber you." German authorities had avoided targeting Kurdish mafia leaders due to fears of streets being filled with Kurdish protestors who will not allow the police to proceed. Some German municipalities even avoided arresting Kurds due to fears of a riot or retaliation. [33]
Kurdish people or Kurds are an Iranic ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. There are exclaves of Kurds in Central Anatolia, Khorasan, and the Caucasus, as well as significant Kurdish diaspora communities in the cities of western Turkey and Western Europe. The Kurdish population is estimated to be between 30 and 45 million.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement which historically operated throughout Kurdistan but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Since 1984, the PKK has been involved in asymmetric warfare in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. Although the PKK initially sought an independent Kurdish state, in the 1990s its goals changed to seeking autonomy and increased political and cultural rights for Kurds within Turkey.
The Kurdistan Islamic Movement is a Kurdish Islamist party founded in 1987 by mufti Osman Abdulaziz and several other Kurdish Islamic scholars who were all part of the non-political "Union of Religious Scholars" group. The party's main support comes from in and around the town of Halabja.
Village guards, officially known as Türkiye Güvenlik Köy Korucuları, are Gendarmerie General Command-aligned border guards involved in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict. They are mostly Kurds but also Circassians, Turks, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz people. Originally they were set up and funded by the Turkish state in the mid-1980s under the direction of Turgut Özal. Their stated purpose was to act as a local militia in towns and villages, protecting against attacks and reprisals from the insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The rationale behind the establishment of the village guards was that it would be helpful to the Turkish Army to have an additional force of people who knew the Southeastern Anatolia Region and the language in order to assist in military operations against the PKK. In 2019, the force consisted of approximately 54,000 village guards in total.
The Golden Crescent is the name given to one of Asia's two principal areas of illicit opium production. Located at the crossroads of Central, South, and West Asia, this space covers the mountainous peripheries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, extending into eastern Iran.
The history of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) began in 1974 as a Marxist–Leninist organization under the leadership of Abdullah Öcalan. In 1978 the organization adopted the name "Kurdistan Workers Party" and waged its low-level Urban War in Turkish Kurdistan between 1978 and 1980. The PKK restructured itself and moved the organization structure to Syria between 1980 and 1984, after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict began in earnest in 1984. The rural-based insurgency lasted between 1984 and 1992. The PKK shifted its activities to include urban attacks against Turkish military bases between 1993–1995 and later 1996–1999. Öcalan was captured in Kenya in early 1999. After a "self declared peace initiative of 1999", hostilities resumed in February 2004. 2013 saw another ceasefire, but the conflict resumed again in 2015 and has continued since.
The Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK, is a Kurdish leftist anti-Islamic Republic of Iran armed militant group. It has waged an intermittent armed struggle since 2004 against the Iranian Government, seeking self-determination through some degree of autonomy for Kurds in Iran.
Turkish Kurdistan or Northern Kurdistan is the southeastern part of Turkey where Kurds form the predominant ethnic group. The Kurdish Institute of Paris estimates that there are 20 million Kurds living in Turkey, the majority of them in the southeast.
Afghanistan has long had a history of opium poppy cultivation and harvest. As of 2021, Afghanistan's harvest produces more than 90% of illicit heroin globally, and more than 95% of the European supply. More land is used for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca cultivation in Latin America. The country has been the world's leading illicit drug producer since 2001. In 2007, 93% of the non-pharmaceutical-grade opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. By 2019 Afghanistan still produced about 84% of the world market. This amounts to an export value of about US $4 billion, with a quarter being earned by opium farmers and the rest going to district officials, insurgents, warlords, and drug traffickers. In the seven years (1994–2000) prior to a Taliban opium ban, the Afghan farmers' share of gross income from opium was divided among 200,000 families.
Kurdish nationalist uprisings have periodically occurred in Turkey, beginning with the Turkish War of Independence and the consequent transition from the Ottoman Empire to the modern Turkish state and continuing to the present day with the current PKK–Turkey conflict.
Kurds in the United States refers to people born in or residing in the United States of Kurdish origin or those considered to be ethnic Kurds.
Crime in Afghanistan is present in various forms, and includes the following: corruption, contract killings or assassinations, bombings, kidnapping, drug trafficking, money laundering, black marketeering, and ordinary crimes such as theft and assault.
The Iraqi Kurdish Civil War was a civil war that took place between rival Kurdish factions in Iraqi Kurdistan during the mid-1990s, mostly between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Over the course of the conflict, Kurdish factions from Iran and Turkey, as well as Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish forces, were drawn into the fighting, with additional involvement from American forces. Between 35,000 and 40,000 fighters and civilians were killed.
The Iran–PJAK conflict is an armed conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), which began in 2004. The group has carried out numerous attacks in the Kurdistan Province of Iran and provinces of Western Iran. PJAK is closely affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the primary opponent of the Republic of Turkey in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. PJAK has been designated as a terrorist organization by Iran, Japan, Turkey, and the United States.
Kurds in Germany are residents or citizens of Germany of full or partial Kurdish origin. There is a large Kurdish community in Germany. The number of Kurds living in Germany is unknown. Many estimates assume that the number is in the million range. In February 2000, the Federal Government of Germany estimated that approximately 500,000 Kurds lived in Germany at that time.
Organized crime in Pakistan refers to the activities of groups of organized crime in Pakistan, The Pakistani mafia is spread in many countries. Pakistani mafia groups are mostly ethnically based. The Pakistani mafia is involved in drug trafficking, assassination, land grabbing, arms smuggling and various other illegal activities.
Kurdish separatism in Iran or the Kurdish–Iranian conflict is an ongoing, long-running, separatist dispute between the Kurdish opposition in Western Iran and the governments of Iran, lasting since the emergence of Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1918.
Illicit drug trafficking in the West Indian Ocean (WIO) has increasingly become a major security concern for many States in the region, and is gaining international attention. The Indian Ocean borders 24 states, and accounts for a third of the world’s ocean area. Until recently, other challenges, such as piracy off the coast of Somalia, has been at the forefront of international action. However, the utilisation of the Southern route by drug traffickers, and the consequent issues this has caused, has led to increased focus on how to tackle this issue.
The single largest community in the United States of ethnic Kurds exists is in Nashville, Tennessee. This enclave is often called "Little Kurdistan" and is located in South Nashville. The majority of Nashville's "Little Kurdistan" comes from Iraqi Kurdistan, however there are sizeable communities of Kurds from Syria, Iran, and Turkey. It has been estimated that there are 15,000 Kurds living in Nashville, although more recent estimates place the number at around 20,000, the largest in the country.
Rawa Majid, known as the Kurdish Fox, is a Iran-born Swedish criminal. Since 2018, he has been a resident of Turkey. Majid is suspected of being the main leader of the Swedish criminal organisation Foxtrot, which is linked to numerous shootings and bombings in Sweden. The violence has generally involved the Stockholm and Uppsala regions, and was often carried out by children. Victims have included children, the relatives of rival criminals, former friends of Majid's, and many unintended targets. Majid is in conflict with several other criminal gangs as well as former Foxtrot members. He has been wanted internationally since 2020 for major drug offenses and the planning of murders, and has been named one of Sweden's most wanted criminals. Majid was detained by the police in Iran, near its border with Turkey, on 6 October 2023.