The Road To War: A Sydney gang war like we’d never seen before

Gang wars are a fact of life when it comes to Sydney and its underworld. But one underworld war was unlike any we’d seen before.

The Daily Telegraph’s The Road To War is out tomorrow.

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Gang wars are a fact of life when it comes to Sydney and its underworld.

From the razor gangs of the ’30s to the drug-dealing killers of today, there has been a constant stream of gangland violence making headlines with monotonous regularity.

Now, as the city reels from yet another public shooting with three people gunned down at an Auburn kebab shop at lunchtime, the public are screaming for action, claiming this city has never been so unsafe.

How wrong they are.

There have been times just as bad if not worse when crime gangs were shooting at each other indiscriminately and cops were too frightened to walk down certain streets alone. There was even a time when the cops believed one gang would use military-grade weapons against them.

As Sydney basked in the glory of the Olympic Games in 2000 it was lucky the world did not see what was about to unfold.

One of the bloodiest, most public wars that set the tone for the next two decades erupted when the Darwiches and Razzaks began their hostilities on the streets of southwest Sydney.

The city got its first taste of the violence and total disregard for public safety carried out during a Middle Eastern blood feud.

The gangs armed themselves with machine guns, assault rifles, glocks and even a stolen rocket launcher.

Retired cop Stuart Wilkins was second-in-command working on the Darwiche-Razzak war and had no doubt they were potential cop killers.

“I distinctly remember working in the Ferguson Centre (at Parramatta) … I was always concerned they would use the rocket launcher to put a missile into the side of the building,” Wilkins recalls.

The so-called rules of the underworld were gone. Drive-by shootings into homes were commonplace.

Rivals were gunned down outside mosques and petrol stations in the morning and afternoon sunlight.

It left the gangland war of the ’80s for dead.

The Darwiche-Razzak war introduced a new type of organised crime and public violence to Sydney, one from which we have never recovered.

You can watch The Road To War episode one ‘Til Death Do Us Part from Monday, June 23 on The Daily Telegraph