In the Cross fire

The great world powers would learn from local criminal groups about how to deal with brutally enforced occupation of land by gun-laden heavies and the subtle and sometimes savage negotiations and killings needed to move that group out and replace them with muscled-up rightful owners of the turf.

Kings Cross is now called Little Lebanon. It wasn't too long ago that it was under Jewish control by Abe Saffron, using independent local private security firms led by Lenny McPherson – the Australian equivalent of the US's Blackwater.

They ruled by means cruel but fair. Like all empires, it fell when those working under its umbrella worked out that they could do a better job, make more money and take the land back to its more traditional owners, in this case the Lebanese.

Louis Bayeh started as a bouncer for Saffron along Darlinghurst Road, the strip of strip clubs from Porkies to The Pink Pussycat.

Saffron was a dictator. Bayeh and his brother Bill and his crew of misfits filled the gaps created by poor policing, ageing crime lords and corruption.

The Bayehs were not a classy act like Saffron and running drugs, prostitution, protection and gambling was far beyond their meagre talents. Like many corporations in the 1980s they diversified by gobbling up random companies and enterprises to increase turnover. But lacking management, the Bayehs fell apart during the gentle probing of the Wood Royal Commission. The Bayeh group of rackets lacked the vital synergy that real diversity requires to succeed.

This is part of the terrifying landscape painted in Blood Money: Bikies, Terrorists and Middle Eastern Gangs, a dirty thumbnail sketch of the past decade of Sydney blue collar crime and its criminals written by 38-year NSW Police veteran Clive Small and journalist-author Tom Gilling. It brings Underbelly up to date in gripping detail and in unbelievable scenes and encounters that you wouldn't believe could happen unless you saw the CCTV footage.

Out of the south-west rode gangs in colourful souped-up WRXs who where born and bred on the sand dunes of Lebanon, who knew that pyramids were permanent because they had a point at the top, which dispersed power downwards in larger and larger amounts, all of which depended on the layers above them for purchase and the layers below them for subsistence and domination. At the lowest level of the pyramid were the drug runners, carrying small amounts at a time, lest they be busted for supply quantities, but enough for users, two or three deals at a time.

In a relatively small time, Kings Cross was patrolled by the Lebanese who collected rents, protection fees, management fees and the like from real merchants, scam merchants and skin merchants.

If one group of Lebanese were jailed, killed or retired, younger and more energetic gangs took their place. In the south-west of Sydney, the now traditional owners entrenched their domination.

Ahmed Fahda declared himself King of Punchbowl. Gang members controlled vehicle and pedestrian traffic along Telopea Street. They waited impatiently to purchase drugs at the drive-through set up by the Telopea Street boys.

The Lebanese are an enterprising, enthusiastic and passionate race. They have lived and thrived – and recently survived being bombed – for hundreds of years, on nothing but their wits and the smell of an oily rag worn by Saudi royalty. They have as much testosterone in their veins as blood. Young Australian-born women get swept up in their pearly smiles, lavish bling, fast cars and live-now-for-tomorrow-we-die-philosophy.

Kings Cross was now Little Lebanon and south-west Sydney was Lebland. The other way emperors fall is if they fall out with each other. The Darwiches and the Razzaks were thousand-year rivals back in the day, in the old country.

Rocket launchers were purchased from the army, through middle men, to aim at feuding family homes or pursuing police, whichever, whatever, came first. On one night, the rocket launchers were dispensed with because the house to be bombed was made of fibro and the rockets would go straight through and, heaven help us, hit an innocent home.

Instead reliable AK47s were used to spray-paint the house with bullet holes, killing two occupants, one a young woman asleep with her lover. The Dawiches were the gang that could not shoot straight although they had enough ammunition to shoot all day and all night. As in all Shakespearean tragedies, the families united briefly when the House of Darwiche, offered Adnan "Eddie" Darwiche's sister Khadige in holy matrimony to Ali Abdul Razzak, and blood ally Ahmed Fahda's sister Donna to Ramzi "Fidel" Aouad.

Inevitably the love turned sour. Eddie swore at Gehad Razzak (born on April Fools' Day, 1979) "to put holes in your head motherf---er, you and your whole family." The bully boys were called in, Crazy Khalid, Biggy Osman, Fidel Aouad and Eddie's best weapons were handed out. They stole a car for the drive-by-shoot-bye-bye-to-the-Razzaks.

Disaster struck. When you steal a car it has no warranty. The steering wheel locked and there were no keys to release it. The car stalled in the middle of the road. Two carloads of Razzaks bore down on the frozen mob. Just in time the lock broke and Eddie's embarrassed team fled with their heads down and their tails between their legs.

Another drive-bye-bye to the Razzaks was planned. This time the stolen car was driven by a complete idiot who hit three parked cars on the way down Razzak's street. This time the shootings went into walls of three of the four units in the block but miraculously no one got hurt. The Razzaks owned the fourth untouched unit in the block.

Not to be made fools of, yet another time the Darwiches stole two cars, loaded for bear and ready to roar and prepared for another attack. Upon approach they spotted an unfamiliar car near Eddie's house. It was full of Razzaks. They pulled up alongside and pointed a rifle at the driver, the Razzak car sped off with the Darwiches in hot pursuit but where Punchbowl Road meets Bouvardia Street, the pursuers suddenly became the pursued when the car did a handbrake turn and its occupants opened fire. Other members of the Razzak crew appeared from behind cars, from front yards and opened fire. The Darwiches were bushwhacked in an ambush of their own making. They were sitting ducks but the Razzaks were also a gang that couldn't shoot straight. Eddie and his crew fled. Police found 11 high-powered rifles and handguns in the vicinity.

Wahib Hannouf was a gun-slinging gangster who managed to shoot himself four times in the stomach, hand and legs, claiming the gun went off by itself once and ricocheted back and forth on the concrete walls and through him. He got $5000 compo from the owner of the gun, informally, without court proceedings, with an apology, according to the law of the jungle/desert.

Darwiche paid $15,000 compo to Bilal Razzak for shooting one of his kidneys out. Meanwhile, no one saw nothing. Eddie ordered Crazy who ordered an underling to shoot Haissam Yassine in the kneecaps, for intruding on a drug run and ripping off one of Eddie's primo drug runners.

Yassine was held down in Punchbowl Park, moving his legs about, refusing to assist in his own kneecapping. The shooter was in a lose-lose situation. Eddie would kill him if he accidentally killed Yassine. Eddie would kill him if he missed. His heart wasn't in it and he finally got a shot off straight into the leg as he dialled triple-0 for an ambulance.

Although I have had the honour of acting for many of Lebanese ethnicity, the portrait paraded of these few in Blood Money is as wrong as suggesting mafia movies like The Godfather are an accurate portrayal of Italian culture.

In Albury where I grew up, much of the main street was owned and operated by Lebanese immigrants who could turn their hand to anything – the haberdashery store of the Abakhairs, the clothes stores of the Nesires, the Fine Female Fashions of Farrah's, the auction house bargains of Batrouny's and so on. This home truth is still true today.

Despite all the tales of Blood Money, the cold Irish stew and English roast that were Australia are now infinitely more interesting and richer with the chilli, garlic and spices of Lebanon.