The Road To War: Family feud that sparked Sydney’s gang wars

How a Sydney gang planned to use stolen rocket launchers to annihilate their rival has been revealed in an exclusive new doco series.

Sydney’s underworld has exploded in recent months in an escalation in the city’s underworld wars.

The most recent was a triple shooting in the heart of Sydney’s west, which critically injured a female kebab shop worker who was caught in the crossfire.

Alleged underworld figure and the man at the “epicentre” of a simmering underworld feud, Samimjan Azari, 26, was targeted for the fourth time last Monday when two masked men stormed a Turkish food outlet at Auburn and opened fire on him and another man acting as his bodyguard.

The underworld war that has been ongoing since late-2020 has escalated to a new level, something many who have followed closely in recent years would have thought was impossible.

WATCH NOW: The Road To War episode 1: ‘Til Death Do Us Part

The Daily Telegraph's The Road To War

But gang wars are not a new thing for the suburbs of the Harbour City, in fact, they have been raging - with highs and lows - for the best part of the last 20 years.

A new doco-series from The Daily Telegraph delves into Sydney’s first gangland war between the Razzaks and the Darwiches.

The conflict between the two began in the wake of the Sydney Olympics as the two families went toe-to-toe, gunning each other down in public and spraying the opponents’ homes with more bullets than police could count.

At one point, the Darwiches even considered using a rocket launcher to annihilate their rivals.

The Road to War is the latest docu miniseries from The Daily Telegraph, taking you inside the biggest gang conflicts this city has seen.

Episode one ‘Til Death Do Us Part - which was released today - looks at how a drug dealer being robbed in 2001 sparked the city’s first gangland war.

It started when Bilal Razzak robbed a drug dealer who worked for a rival crime family, the Darwhiches in early 2001. Tensions simmered for two years before an all out war broke out the likes which Sydney had never seen.

Adnan Darwiche.

Abdul Razzak.

How to watch The Road To War

After Bilal Razzak robbed the drug dealer he was confronted by Adnan Darwiche and his enforcer, Khaled Taleb and bashed at a Bankstown shopping centre.

Tit-for-tat drive-by shootings followed before Ali Abdul-Razzak, who was married to the sister of Adnan Darwiche, arranged a sit-down of the two factions. It failed and violence reigned on Sydney’s streets for the next eight years.

In 2009, the final chapter played out when Abdul Darwiche was shot in front of his family as he walked out of a restaurant in Bass Hill.

“It was unprecedented. There had been nothing like this before. The underworld killers like Neddy Smith and the like did their business quietly. They more often than not disposed of the bodies in shallow graves,’’ says retired Detective Superintendent Stuart Wilkins.

“This was in your face, confronting intimidation and violence against police and the public. They would shoot and leave bodies in car parks, outside restaurants and service stations. Wherever, wherever they decided to attack somebody, they were shot and killed.”

Originally published as The Road To War: Family feud that sparked Sydney’s gang wars