Manbij Cartel

The Manbij Cartel (Arabic: عصابة منبج ‘iṣābat manbij) is a major international drug trafficking syndicate founded in Manbij, Syria in 1989. In addition to drug trafficking, it also has significant illicit arms trafficking, money laundering, racketeering/extortion, and other organised crime operations. It is considered one of the most powerful organised crime groups in the world, and is classified as a terrorist organisation by the government of the Arab Union and many foreign governments.

The cartel's drug trafficking operations involve importing and distributing primarily cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamines, and illegal anabolic steroids into the Arab Union and Europe, including Russia, and is considered Eurasia's foremost supplier of illegal narcotics. It is thought to control most of Afghanistan's poppy fields via agreement with the Taliban, as well as most other regional centres of illegal drug production. The Manbij Cartel has also been implicated in the trafficking of narcotics to North American countries on a smaller scale, competing with the larger local operations of Mexican and South American cartels through lower prices. The cartel is said to control the illegal drug trade throughout the Arab Union from the transnational all the way down to the street level.

The Manbij Cartel is the primary source of arms and other weapons systems for rebel and terrorist organisations operating within the Arab Union, including Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, and also supplies foreign armed groups in Africa and Asia. During the 2011–19 civil war, the cartel, which had formerly been targeted only by regular and special police, came under an intense crackdown by the Arab Union's Joint Security Committee and the Arab Army due to its arming of rebel belligerents, many of which also gained financial support from the cartel by assisting directly in its trafficking operations. These operations caused severe decimation of the cartel's ranks and field of operations, as well as a degree of internal competition which almost lead to a schism following the arrest of several top leaders including Marwan Barzani; as of 2020, however, the Manbij Cartel remains the largest organised crime operation in the Arab Union and one of the largest in the world.