Britain and Iraq will directly target people-smuggling gang bosses, it has been announced at the first international summit on migration.
Human trafficking is a “global security threat similar to terrorism”, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared at the London meeting where money was pledged to help take down criminal kingpins, such as mastermind smuggler “Bakhtiar”, exposed in a special investigation by The National this month.
His base in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region will likely be one of many examined at the Organised Immigration Crime Summit of 44 countries holding their inaugural meeting in London on Monday.
The UK Home Office confirmed to The National that an extra £1 million ($1.3 million) will be used to help British investigators track down gang kingpins in Iraq.
Targeting kingpins
Such plans have already proved successful, with Mr Starmer citing a “major operation” by French, German and British law enforcement that “smashed an Iraqi smuggling network, with multiple arrests and the seizure of dozens of boats and engines”.
Opening the conference on Monday, he said resources must be combined to tackle the problem “at every step of the smuggling journey” from North Africa and the Middle East.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, who has previously visited Iraq to discuss people smuggling, said the international task force would go to “source countries” to root out the problem.
The National named Bakhtiar as the mastermind of an international people-smuggling network who had gone into hiding after a crackdown on the trade in the Kurdistan region.
His operation was centred on a web of money-exchange outlets in the lakeside town of Ranya, 130km from Sulaymaniyah, that are used to arrange illegal journeys from Iraq to the far side of Europe.
Global insecurity
Mr Starmer told ministers, including some from Iraq, the Kurdish regional government, the US, China and Albania, that illegal migration was a “massive driver of global insecurity” in which the vulnerable are exploited by “vile gangs”.
“It pits nations against one another and profits from our inability at the political level to come together,” he added. But now there was the gathering of countries to build a “truly international effort to defeat organised immigration crime”, he said.
He also announced that Britain will pay foreign prosecutors to track down smugglers across the world.
With a £33 million fund, he will set up an international squad from the Crown Prosecution Service to go after criminal gangs that send thousands of migrants across Europe into Britain each year.
The migration issue has played a significant role in recent British politics, with many voters turning to hard-right parties such as Nigel Farage’s Reform after an increase in asylum seekers from around the world in some British towns and cities.
No silver bullet
While Mr Starmer admitted there was no “silver bullet” to stop people smuggling, “multiple levers” would be used to combat the trend, such as a new law to seize immigrants' phones when they arrive to gather intelligence on smugglers, as well as taking down thousands of social media accounts that facilitate the business.
Senior figures from social media companies including X, Meta and TikTok are attending the two-day summit to help tackle the problem.
The Home Office announced that new National Crime Agency investigators will go after smugglers’ finances, supply chains and trafficking routes across Europe, the western Balkans, Asia and Africa.
Similar to terrorism
Mr Starmer promised to take the same approach to smugglers as he did when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service between 2008 and 2013 when he prosecuted Al Qaeda terrorists.
“We need to treat people smuggling as a global security threat, similar to terrorism,” he said. “We've got to bring to bear all the powers we have at our disposal in much the same way that we do against terrorism.”
Mr Starmer will hope international co-operation will have more success than his predecessor Rishi Sunak’s £700 million “Stop the Boats” campaign to deport illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda. Only four were taken to the African country under the scheme, all of them voluntarily.
Explore more
Investigation: Hunting trafficking's big boss inside Kurdistan's smuggling hotspot
Underground: Kurdish trafficker sending migrants to Europe in hiding after crackdown
Podcast: Are UK crackdowns deterring Iraqi Kurdish smugglers?
