The first generation gangs, comprising the vast majority, focus on protecting their turf... Second generation gangs focus on drug market development and exploitation and are far more sophisticated than turf based gangs.
Third generation gangs are the most politicized, international in reach, and sophisticated of the gang generational forms. They will readily engage in mercenary endeavors and actively seek political power and financial gain from their activities. Certain terrorist groups
(such as the Red Brigades in Italy), drug cartels, and local warlords all have attributes and organizational structures akin to third generation gangs...
Gangs emerge, prosper, and solidify their position as a viable social organizational form in housing projects, neighborhoods, prisons, slums, cities, urban regions, and even entire countries that have undergone
(or are undergoing) varying forms of societal failure. The rise of newer forms of tribalism leading to gang emergence may be derived from combinations that include lack of jobs, high levels of poverty and drug abuse, low educational levels, an absence of functional families, along with high levels of crime and lawlessness, including that generated by domestic internal strife, which result in a daily threat of bodily injury. Further, newer forms of tribalism may readily mingle with older pre-existing forms of tribalism based on kinship, clan, and other extended family groupings...
Iraq has been essentially overrun by 3rd generation gangs and their criminal-soldier equivalents... readily fill[ing] the vacuum left by the absence of legitimate authority...
Societal strife generated by ethnic and religious intolerance—
derived from older forms of Middle Eastern tribalism— has resulted in neighborhood ethnic cleansing and the emergence of fortified enclaves.
Extra-judicial killings and torture (i.e. street justice) have become the norm as have home invasion robberies, carjackings, petty theft, assaults, and kidnappings for ransom. Shifting coalitions of former regime loyalists, foreign Jihadi fighters linked to al Qaeda, Shia and
Sunni militiamen tied to local clerics, criminal gangs of numerous types, competing Iraqi ministries and even active military and police units, along with foreign operatives promoting the interests of Iran,
Hizballah, and Syria make for a chaotic and ever-changing threat landscape..*
This is reminiscent of the nightmare scenario for the US
already starting to develop in Central and South America (and, to a lesser extent, within the US) with the emergence, growth, and expansion of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and other Maras. In many ways, the ‘Gangs of Iraq’ are a prelude to the ‘Gangs of the Americas’ that we will be increasingly facing in the Western Hemisphere.*
The guys we're fighting in Iraq have alternately been referred to as "insurgents," "guerrillas," and "terrorists." Lt. John Sullivan, a veteran counter-terrorism specialist with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, says the better term would be: gangs.
