Karazawi drug cartels
The Karazawi Cartels, also known in Karazawa as La Mafia, The Clubs or the Rogue Clans, is a generic term that usually refers to several rivals or allied criminals organizations that are combated by the Caconzicua police forces and armed forces.
Some of the Cartels are now international organizations that have bases in multiples countries, such as Cirdia, Alemannia, East Cortoguay and Campenia and Lorania (where it is called the Aomoian Connexion). This relatively recent extensions either emerged from the Karazawi Diaspora or from already presents minorities such as the Chichimeca peoples or the Aomoy peoples and are either part of larger cartels or independents criminals organizations by themselves.
Today, the Cartels main activities are drug trafficking, Extortion, Prostitution and Sports betting.
History
The Origins
The Cartels in Karazawa emerged during the Cuyamel War from impoverished communities of farmers in the form of Civil Protection Groups composed of bands of farmers united to protect their lands. With the Caconzi loosing influences over the isolated regions of the country, such as the mountains or the borders, thoses CPG started to enact their own laws, their own justice and to attends to the daiy matters of the territories they considered under they protection. They also collected their own taxes and cut most contacts with the central government. Some of theses groups allied themselves with Malnonfi and joined the Coaltion and once the war was over, the Junta installed the leaders of theses militias as mayors or representative of their towns.
Members of a same CPG kept relations with one another after the war. They mostly secured for themselves and their families new lands for their farms and fixed tariffs for their products. Thoses who were left out by theses organization were forced to emigrate to the cities, were they participated in the growing of the ghettos and the slums.
Conflicts emerged between thoses different clans and not even a year after the war, the first deaths due to thoses proto-cartels were registered in Este Pais. Meanwhile, the Malnonfi Junta was called by some of theses mayors and representatives of mostly agriculturals regions to enact administrative reforms to stop this crisis. THe government did enact reforms, but the main criteria seems to have been bribes and relationship with locals chiefs and not justice or the pacification of the tensions.
The first time the word Cartel was employed to speak of such organization was when many local Chieftains of Ostramar who had their power diminished by the Malnonfi Reforms gathered and agreed to form an alliance between their clans. La Cabala as it was called by its rivals, performed assassinations and executions of various government officials and private citizens, and scared farmers into selling at low prices their lands or paying an important protection fee. Local traders were also forced to buy from locals producers and couldn't operate without paying their due to the Cabal.
Other clans soon mimicked La Cabala modus operanti. The Cartels were born.
The Lazarene Clique was the first Cartel to do in drug traficking. At first importing and selling foreign products, it soon made agreements with other Cartels, such as the Four Hundreds Soldiers, La Familia, The Standards Bearers and the Bones of Blood, to product locally certain drugs, be it in laboratories held by the Lazarene Clique or in farms far away in the mountains. From there, during the 60s, the Lazarene Clique became the main exporter of Canabis, Cocaine, Ecstasy, Ketamine and methamphetamine in Nordania and Conitia.
During the same period (1950-1970), the illegalisation of the Clubs by the Malnonfi Government forced many politicians or public personalities members of theses organizations to go into hiding. Some used their friends or families in the Cartels to gain protection for them and the members of their groups. As such there was a politization of some cartels, especially thoses already opposed to Malnonfi Reforms. The Gashgashs Liberation Front was revigored by this influx of thinkers and resumed the fight against the Caconzi, which led to the First Gashgash War.
The Great Street War of 1985
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The Lazarene Clique introduced the concept of the Cartels in the cities, notably Santa Fuego, Ostramar and Santa Rio, and adapted it to its knew urban environment. Michael Orjuela, leader of the Lazarene Clique during the 70s, is credited for theses reforms of his organization, judged more "buisness-like" by the police force and the historians.
Other organizations mimicked the Clique and started to contest its power over the countries ports. The main one was the Ledher Agency. Founded in 1972, the Agency started in the town of Kali by producing cocaine for the Lazarene Clique but started to infiltrate the city of Santa Fuego, so they could sell their production themselves. Most notably, the Ledher Agency did not hesitate to pactize with the already present low-level criminals of the slums, while the Clique mostly ignored them.
The Ledhers officialy cut all ties with the Lazarenites in 1984, when they refused to sell their production to the organization. Finding allies in other cartels, the Ledhers opposed the Lazarenites and became their economical rivals. While the year 1974 saw an augmentation in the number of homicides, the war was yet to be declared.
The Lod Massacre the 23th of April 1985 is considered to be the official start of what is commonly called the Great Street War of 1975 or the Lod Underwar. It was followed by the explosion of a bar in Santa Fuego believed to have been a meeting ground for members of the Ledher Agency. In three months, more than 100 members of the two Cartels and affiliated criminal organizations died, and 500 civilians caught in the cross-fire either died or dissapeared in Santa Fuego, Zacapatu and Ostramar. The government lost 30 policemen, 5 politicians and 12 aides without being able to react or to stop the two cartels and their allies from figthing. The war only ended when Lukka Ledher was killed by the Lazarenite at the end of July. To this day, only the decapitated body of Lehrer has been found and his head was never found. Legends say that Michael Orjuela kept it in his office and never hesitated to show it to his guests.
The Aftermath of the Great Street War
The conflict between the Lazarenites and the Ledhers showed the inability of the Karazawi government to stop the drug cartels and it's complete loss of control over the distant regions and the slums. An important urban re-organization plan was drafted, as well as a complete reform of the police fundings. Meanwhile, the Ledher Agency was dissolved and, while victorious, the Lazarene Clique was greatly weakened by the war, but no one was left to challenge it. Michael Orjuela was nicknamed by the journalists the "Shadow Yrateq", but the multiplication of act of senseless violence against cartels members and civilians alike were proofs of the fragility of the Clique power over the underworld and its inability to trully control all the factions. Soon, militias of "Cartels-killers" appeared. Between the years 1986 and 1988, the Lazarenites executed a thousand civilians and criminals, while the Cartels-killers executed more than 500 Lazarenites, 365 of which had their heads or bodies hanged or impaled along roads or cities centers.
With the death of Michael Orjuela in 1988, supposedly killed by rival factions inside his own cartel, the Lazarene Clique broke into multiple smaller cartels, with the three most importants being the JSI-424, the Rivarro Family and the Lazarene Group.
The Uarhipenuichi Cartel and the Lazarene Wars
Surprisingly, the Lazarene Clique hegemony over the criminal underworld was concomitant to the recovery of the Karazawi executive. Special units were formed and trained to fight back against the cartels both in the street and economicaly. The creation of the bounty system also favored the apparition of the Cartel Killers that were often closely monitored by The Royal Service. The deliquescence of the Lazarene Clique also allowed the administration to replace corrupt officials with a new generation of cadres. The confiscation of the criminals properties also brought a new temporary source of revenues for the Yrateq's cabinet.
The division of the remnants of the Lazarene Clique and the multiplication of smaller gangs, changed the situation. After five years of relative peace, a large scandal of corruption among the policeforce and the specials units created specifically to fight against the cartels was brought in the daylight. A non-negligeable part of the police under the commandment of officer Kallus Kuiripeska decided to go AWOL to avoid facing the charges. Officer Kuiripeska and his men in peticular were recruited by the Rivarro Family to act as enforcers against the Lazarene Group and the Five Banners Cartel. This group became known by the name of the old unity of Kuiripeska : the Uarhipenuichi, the fighting dogs.
The betrayal of the Uarhipenuichi and of others groups affiliated with either the police or the army rekindled the problem of violence in the criminal world. in the years 1993-95, the Uarhipenuichi have been considered responsible for more than 200 kidnapping and 500 murders with relations to the cartels, the cartels killers, or of civilians and innocents.
Kallus Kuiripeska and his men gave the advantage to the Rivarro Family against the other cartels. But they also unified the resistance against the organisation, in the form of the Lazarene Alliance and made it so the government couldn't ignore their criminals activities anymore. In 1994 Leon L. Rivarro is captured during a police raid, and in the following months so are two of his three sons : Paolo and Yanos. The last of the Rivarro brothers and elder, Leon Junior, was forced to flee, with bounties on his head from both the government and the Lazarene Alliance. This created a vaccuum in power in the cartel and while a trusted lieutenant took over the Family, tensions between the Family and the Uarhipenuichi started to appear.
in 1995, conflicts for the control of important corridors and production centers, mostly of amphetamines, methamines, and crack cocaine, and of some illegal casinos, turned into a war between the Rivarros and their old enforcers. But instead of joinging forces with rivals of their old employers, the Uarhipenuichi continued on their own, fighting both sides of the conflict that newspapers came to call the "Lazarene Wars".