Iraqi-Kurdish leaders whose region is tied to the majority of small boat crossings to the UK must be sanctioned by the British government, a former senior Foreign Office official has said.
After the number of migrants illegally crossing the English Channel hit its highest single-day level for 2026 on Wednesday, pressure is growing on the Labour government to extend a clampdown on the alleged Kurdish crime bosses who run the smuggling gangs.
"The government should use sanctions on Iraqi-Kurdish officials to show we are serious," said Ben Judah, a former adviser to the Foreign Secretary. "I do not believe they take us seriously when we say in meetings it's one of our number one concerns."
Downing Street “needs to ramp up the pressure on Iraqi Kurdistan” because small-boat operations were “almost entirely controlled by mafias from that region”, Mr Judah said on Friday.
A French court has heard a high-profile arrest in 2022 should come to trial in a few weeks. Hajar Mina Abdullah has been detained in Iraqi Kurdistan and is due to stand trial soon in Iraq.
Mr Judah said that despite a campaign by Labour ministers soon after coming to power in 2024, the pressure for action against the mafias has little success to show.
The French beaches where the small boats leave for the UK are divided into patches related to different regions of Iraqi-Kurdistan, he said, confirming investigations by The National into how the gangs operate.
Mr Judah's former boss, David Lammy, put significant pressure on the Kurdistan Regional Government to clamp down on gangs when he was Foreign Secretary, and Yvette Cooper visited the region when she was Home Secretary with the same objective.
Leading officials in the autonomous region have boasted strong political and personal links to the UK stretching back decades.
“I strongly believe, from my time in the Foreign Office, that the political clans that rule that territory are biting the hands that feed them by not taking people smuggling seriously at source,” Mr Judah told the BBC.
Following the change of prime minister in July, he insisted that Andy Burnham’s administration should issue sanctions.
“Progress has been glacial,” said the visiting fellow at Chatham House think tank. “Very little has been done and we need to ramp up the pressure now."
There has been greater co-operation between Britain and France since Labour came to power. Officials say this has seen a 40 per cent drop in arrivals – 18,500 migrants have arrived this year, down from 32,000 last year. This week has seen a sharp spike with 1,085 arriving on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The increase could be attributed to the unusually warm and calm weather, but smugglers might have moved their operations away from the shortest crossing points to avoid French police patrols.
That might account for two boats reaching the Kent coast undetected this week. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood described the failure to intercept them as “not acceptable” and ordered an urgent review.
The recent spike in small boat arrivals – while far below the record of 42,000 in 2022 – has been seized on by far-right activists to push forward their anti-migrant agenda.
Anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo, has pleaded not guilty to criminal damage after a video appeared to show him slashing at a dinghy in the Channel with a knife.
His balaclava-clad followers, who have recently held demonstrations in Dover and Portsmouth, protested outside the police station where he was being held in Basingstoke.
