Munazzama

The Munazzama (Arabic: المنظمة al-munaẓẓamah; lit. "the organisation"), known colloquially as the Arab Mafia (المافيا العربية al-māfiyā al-‘arabīyah), is a major international organised crime syndicate based in the Arab Union. Arguably the largest criminal organisation in the nation, the Munazzama controls the bulk of the illegal drug trade domestically as well as the main transnational component; it is also a major player in the gambling industry (gambling is illegal in the Arab Union), arms trafficking, human trafficking, prostitution (procuring), money laundering, financial and political blackmail and other forms of corruption, contract murder, and other violent crime and racketeering activities. Large sections of the political opposition (both legal and illegal) are suspected or known to receive significant funding from the Munazzama, such as the Nationalist Party (largest member of the Democratic Front, the official national opposition) as well as the Phalange, a neo-fascist, Christian fundamentalist party and armed group (which was outlawed as a political party in 1990 and designated a terrorist organisation by the Arab Union in 1999).

The Munazzama maintains a strong presence throughout the black economy and criminal underworld of the Arab Union, with large, permanent branches in all major cities of the union and several in neighbouring countries, in which it is the pre-eminent criminal organisation, with virtually all other local organised crime factions compelled to work for the Munazzama or be violently suppressed. In addition to its multiple illegal enterprises and operations (such as trafficking and contract murder), the organisation is a major facilitator and benefactor of institutional corruption within nominally legal sectors, including construction and related industries, manufacturing, transportation and shipping, labour unions, banking and the civil service: in many cities, entire sectors are virtually helpless to do anything without the Munazzama's sanction and direction, such as Dubai, where no construction project is financed (let alone began) absent the organisation's approval, or Port Said and Suez, where all contractors serving the Suez Canal are directly chosen by the Munazzama (despite the canal being a state enterprise, with contracts thus awarded by the government). In 2020, the Joint Security Committee estimated the size of the Munazzama at 8500–11,000 formal members, in addition to a minimum of 100,000 associates (including de facto members, employees, members of closely allied gangs, corrupt officials and businessmen, contractors and others on payroll).

The organisation was established ca. 1955 in Cairo by associates of Syrian mobster Michel Abu Jamia, who at the time was serving a ten-year prison sentence after being convicted in 1951 on multiple counts of money laundering and bribery by the Supreme Court of Egypt. Hanna Abdullah Idris, Abu Jamia's eldest son, had de facto control of the newly established organisation from late 1956, which he led on behalf of his father who was expected to assume the leadership following his release. Idris took formal control shortly after his father's murder in prison by poisoning in February 1959, widely suspected to have been a professional hit ordered by one or more founding associates seeking to wrest control of the organisation from his son. In response, all nine associates present at the 1955 founding, as well as at least 25 additional senior members sympathetic to the nine suspected usurpers, were killed between early 1960 and mid-1962 on Idris' orders, and immediately replaced by newly promoted, fiercely loyal members. By the mid-1970s, the Munazzama had become one of the largest and most powerful criminal organisations of the Arab world, rivalled only by the Gulf Clan and the Ultranationalists, both of which it began to eclipse by the start of the 1980s.

Adnan Hanna Abdullah, Idris' only son, has held the leadership of the Munazzama since his father's death from lung cancer in 2006. He is better known by his kunya Abu Jamia, after his paternal grandfather Michel Abu Jamia, original patriarch of the organisation.