PKK FUNDING OPERATIONS AND METHODS



PKK FUNDING: OPERATIONS AND METHODS

STRATFOR

Robert Fragnito

Key Objectives and Sources of Revenue:

• PKK Budget Estimated at $86 Billion.

• PKK’s objective is to create international pressure and antipathy against Turkey.

• PKK uses heroin production and trafficking to support its acts of terror (1996 INCS).

• Engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering activities and is well-established in the production of almost all kinds of opium products and their smuggling. Other sources of revenue of the PKK as extortion, robbery and counterfeiting.

• The revenues used for purchasing firearms, munitions and other equipment used by the terrorists.

• Narcotics smuggling therefore constitutes a major part of the PKK's financial apparatus, alongside extortion, blackmailing, robbery, arms smuggling and illicit labor trafficking.

• The revenues gained from illicit drug dealings and marketing are channeled to funding its arms purchases, which is required to sustain its terrorist activities.

Individuals:

• Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, as head of the Russian External Intelligence Service (SVR), has long been a PKK supporter, and once persuaded Saddam Hussein to allow the PKK to use Iraqi territory.] (American Foreign Policy Council 1996)

• Danielle Mitterand, the radical widow of the former French president, from addressing Ocalan as "Dear President Ocalan" in a 1998 letter, which ended "[R]est assured, Abdullah, that I am committed to be beside you in the bid for peace. Sincerely yours, Danielle Mitterand."

Nations:

• As Ocalan's [founder of PKK] attempts to find political asylum in 1998 and early 1999 proved, he also enjoyed the support of leftist parties in Italy, France, and Greece. The most insidious, if not necessarily surprising, support came from Germany's and Italy's Marxist terrorists, which supported and occasionally even joined in PKK combat operations.

• The PKK long received covert support from the KGB for guerrilla and

terrorist attacks against Turkey.

• The group receives safe haven and aid from Syria, Iraq and Iran

and has turned to urban terrorism in the past few years, according to

the State Department.

• Greece:

o U.S. intelligence has uncovered evidence linking the Greek government to covert training for an international terrorist group that until recently operated on a Greek island, according to CIA sources. (Washington Times September 10, 1996).

o State Department terrorism report, issued in April (1996), said Greece

denied Turkish charges that the PKK conducted training in Greece denied Turksh charges that the PKK conducted training in Greece and received aid from the Athens government.

o Still not clear if Greece is supporting the PKK at present.

Media/Public Relations:

• MED-TV: a satellite television channel that operated first under a British license from London and later from Brussels.

o Although it ostensibly existed to promote Kurdish culture, the channel was such a blatant propaganda outlet for the PKK (at a cost of some $200 million per year) that it was eventually expelled from Britain and later lost its operating license in Belgium as well.

• Public relations proved so adept at generating money that European assessments generally placed its annual income at between $200 and $500 million in the mid-1990s.

• Income came from two major sources in Europe:

o West European Kurdish militants among the emigre population, especially in Germany.

▪ In 1997 Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior estimated the number of PKK sympathizers in the country at 11,000, and claimed that the PKK possessed an ability to mobilize "tens of thousands" among the 500,000 resident Kurds. The German government further stated that the PKK collected millions of marks at its annual fundraising events, including 20 million marks in 1996-97.

o The more important source of funds has been criminal activity, especially in Germany, Switzerland, France, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries.

Drug Trafficking:

• The PKK is actively involved in all phases of narcotics trafficking, from the producing and processing of the drugs to their smuggling and marketing.

• It is stated that the PKK is engaged in producing, refining and marketing of drugs and has contacts in numerous countries.

• PKK's involvement in narcotics trafficking through Turkey, reiterates that the PKK not only uses "taxes" extracted from narcotics traffickers and refiners to finance its operations, but "may be more directly involved in transporting and marketing narcotics in Europe" as well (INCS 1998).

• The PKK's "turnover" from drug trafficking is estimated at "millions of US dollars".

• Narcotics trafficking has entered Parisian suburbs thanks to the PKK, is responsible for 10 to 80 percent of the heroin smuggled to Paris.

• Routes:

o Interpol, British NCIS and the national police agencies of the EU member states, notes that the narcotics route that runs through Turkey to the Balkans and western Europe benefits the "separatist" organizations of Turkish/Kurdish origin and the PKK militants and their intermediaries.

o The "Balkan route" and emphasizes that the terrorist organization has started using Romania and Moldavia, positioned along this route, as its rearward bases.

o ERNK business group in Romania, called the Association of Eastern Businessmen, is an excellent cover for the illicit activities of the PKK which has tight control over the drug deals as the local PKK leader also heads the ERNK.

o Drugs are sent to Europe by sea from the Libyan El Abde Mina Harbour, controlled by Syria, and another drug smuggling route goes through Turkey. The PKK organization gains $300-400 million yearly from drug smuggling.

• Germany’s chief prosecutor asserted that 80 percent of narcotics seized in Europe have been linked to the PKK or “other Turkish groups,” which then have used the profits from illegal narcotics to purchase arms.

• Narcotics smuggling activities of several Kurdish clans based in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain and thought to have ties with the PKK.

Organized Crimes:

• Organized crimes: drug trafficking and arms smuggling, extortion, human smuggling, abduction of children and money laundering in an attempt to recruit militants and to obtain financial resources needed to carry out its terrorist activities.

• "Sputnik Operation" conducted in a coordinated fashion in some European countries in September 1996 exposed PKK’s links with organized crime and money laundering activities.

o Faysal Dunlayici, code name Kani Yilmaz, so-called representative of the separatist terrorist PKK organization to Europe was taken under custody by Belgian gendermarie special units.

o A research commission was established under the leadership of Jeroen Burm, Belgian Interrogation Judge, after ''Spoutnik Operation'' and this commission carried out an investigation related with the illegal money collection and money laundering of the separatist terrorist organization.

• The British weekly magazine "The Spectator" underlined this fact in its 28 November-5 December 1998 issue by saying that "…According to the British security services sources the PKK is responsible for 40 percent of the heroin sold in the European Union…" .

People Trafficking:

• PKK gets some profit from a sophisticated people-smuggling network that transports refugees from northern Iraq to Italy.

• Routes:

o Istanbul-Milan;

o Istanbul-Bosnia-Milan;

o Turkey-Tunisia-Malta-Italy

Transfer of Funds and Banking:

• According to anecdotal evidence, the PKK supplied arms to other Kurdish terrorist groups and to the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka.

• Banks in Belgium, Cyprus, Jersey, and Switzerland provide privacy for PKK funds; monetary transactions are done through the hawala system or by cash couriers.

Business Model:

• PKK cooperation with Kurdish criminal clans has been similar to the cooperation among Sicilian mafia families.

• The PKK is a multilevel business organization that is involved in all phases of the narcotics trade, from production to retail distribution.

o First Phase: laboratory production from a morphine base, usually obtained from Pakistan;

o Final phase: sale on the street in Europe through pushers employed by the organization.

• The PKK is known to operate laboratories in Turkey and northern Iraq.

• Distribution networks also are used to sell ready-made heroin, morphine base, cannabis, and anhydride acid, a raw material imported into Turkey from Germany for heroin production.

• Besides trafficking done by individual cells to support their operations, the PKK also “taxes” ethnic Kurdish drug traffickers in Western Europe.

WIKIPEDIA (UNCOMFIRMED):

• The PKK receives a proportion of its funding in the form of private donations, from both organisations and individuals from around the world.

o Some of these supporters are Kurdish businessmen in south-eastern Turkey, sympathisers in Syria and Iran, and Europe.

o Parties and concerts are organized by branch groups.

• Additionally, it is believed that the PKK earns money through the sale of various publications, as well as receiving revenues from legitimate businesses owned by the organization.

• During 1990s, Iran has provided PKK with supplies in the form of weapons and funds.

• Greece:

o Greek army general Dimitris Matafias has paid numerous visits and offered assistance.

o As of March 1999, allegedly, Greece had supplied PKK with 20,000 AK-47's and 30 Stinger missiles.

o Greek Cyprus also supported PKK by allowing its leaders to travel freely by providing them with passports. Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of PKK, has been caught with a Cypriot passport to the name of Mavros Lazaros.

o These could be potentially true seeing that Greece was accused of sponsoring the PKK in Greece for training during the 1990s.

Key Documents:

The March 1997 issue of "The Geopolitical Drug Dispatch," a monthly report prepared by the " Observatoire Geopolitique Des Drogues.”

International Narcotics Control Strategy (INCS)

Dr. François Haut of the Paris Institute of Criminology in Brussels on 25 April 1997.

UN International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) in Beirut from 29 June to 3 July 1998, noted that "there were clear linkages between some narco-terrorist organizations, for example, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and other organized transnational criminal groups."

"Political Violence and Narco-Trafficking", a booklet published by the Paris Institute of Criminology in October 1996, PKK's narcotics network and its functioning are detailed.

1995 report prepared by the Drug Enforcement Agency of the US Department of Justice.

THE NEXUS AMONG TERRORISTS, NARCOTICS TRAFFICKERS, WEAPONS PROLIFERATORS, AND ORGANIZED CRIME NETWORKS IN WESTERN EUROPE: A Study Prepared by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress under an Interagency Agreement with the United States Government December 2002

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PKK By Michael Radu Source: Orbis, Winter2001, Vol. 45 Issue 1, p47, 17p

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