In one way, the series of events that led to Sweden becoming the violent-murder capital of Europe, held up its accession to NATO as Russia circled, and allowed Iran a terrorist foothold in Europe began with an image that appeared on September 2, 2015.
It shows a tiny figure in a red T-shirt and blue shorts, lying face down on the beach in Bodrum, Turkey, a landing spot for migrants attempting to enter Europe in small boats. Alan Kurdi was two. He had drowned fleeing civil war in Syria. The waves lapping at his face indicate that he is dead. Everything else about him—his chubby arms, his tiny shoes—feels like you could just pick him up and make it better.
The image went viral. And Syrian refugees—all refugees—were briefly turned from statistics, or debating points, into people. Donations to the Swedish Red Cross increased 100-fold virtually overnight.
That year, Sweden let in 163,000 refugees, primarily from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq—the equivalent of the United States allowing in about five million—and the rate of immigration remained much higher than the historical average until the pandemic. At this writing, about 20 percent of the Swedish population is foreign-born. It’s a startling turnaround for a nation once so starved for global citizens that Indian restaurants were often run by Chinese immigrants.
As sympathy for the migrants faded, public sentiment split into two bitter factions: one held all immigrants were angels, another that they were all devils. And thus inadequate provision was made for the practical reality of integrating millions of traumatized and dislocated people into a very unfamiliar society.
Lou Reed once said that New York didn’t scare him. But Sweden did. “It’s kind of empty. They’re all drunk, everything works. If you stop at a stop light and don’t turn your engine off, people will come over and talk to you about it. You go to the medicine cabinet and open it up and there’ll be a little poster saying: ‘In case of suicide, call…’ You turn on the TV, there’s an ear operation. These things scare me,” he said.
Sweden is kind of empty: almost twice the land area of the United Kingdom, for one-sixth of the population. And everything really does work. It’s a traditionally agrarian nation, and farmers are great inventors and engineers. Two of its biggest exports are elegant engineering solutions: Tetra Pak cartons and flat-pack Ikea furniture. In Swedish, if something fortunate happens to you, you are said to have your “turn.” Life in Sweden, it suggests, is a fair and orderly system.
At this writing, about 20 percent of the Swedish population is foreign-born. It’s a startling turnaround for a nation once so starved for global citizens that Indian restaurants were often run by Chinese immigrants.
But a complex one. Even the language only seems simple. Misplace those dots and circles, or fail to get the music of the words, and chaos results. One recent immigrant was advised to feed her new baby mostly “råkost,” which means a diet heavy with raw fruits and vegetables. She read instead “räkost,” which is a kind of liquid cheese flavored with shrimp.
Sweden is homogeneous and conformist like only Japan or the fictional town of Stepford. Any failure to observe intricate but absolutely unspoken social codes—ask a Swedish friend about the ritual associated with clinking glasses—will often be met with unexpectedly humorless disapproval.
Norrtäljeanstalten is a maximum-security prison near Stockholm, reserved for the most dangerous inmates. One night in early August 2006, the guards forgot to lock the cell doors in one area. The prisoners broke out, went to a common room, baked themselves a chocolate fondant cake, built a blanket fort, and watched movies before returning to their cells. It would have been surprising to some Swedes if they hadn’t. They were asked to stay in a place. So obviously they would.
Sweden is the home of eugenics, the ultimate ethos of conformity. From 1934 until 1974, 63,000 Swedes were sterilized against their will—for having mixed blood, being promiscuous, having poor eyesight or a bad memory. It was done in the name of society—of progress—so it was accepted by society. (And nobody can argue that Swedes do not have fabulous genes.)
“The Kurdish Fox” vs. “the Strawberry”
Shortly after the new wave of immigration began, an unusual new ailment began to strike the children of asylum seekers. They stopped walking, talking, or even opening their eyes. Some older children were fed through tubes or used diapers. There was nothing medically wrong, doctors concluded. The children had just withdrawn completely from reality. Acceptance—bureaucratically and in myriad other ways—into society appeared to be the only cure.
Other lost souls manifested their distress differently. In 2010, an Iranian-born Kurdish immigrant named Rawa Majid, a long-term resident of Uppsala, a leafy town near Stockholm that had previously been most famous as the historical home of the biologist Carl Linnaeus, was convicted for handling a shipment of Dutch cocaine and sentenced to eight years. Nearly a ton of drugs were seized.
On EncroChat, an encrypted-messaging service, his name was Foxkurdish. So, he became known as the Kurdish Fox. When he was released, Majid fled to Iraq and then Turkey, where he effectively bought citizenship.
Like a blend of Pablo Escobar and the Pied Piper of Hamlin, Majid stands accused of leading an astonishingly violent gang named Foxtrot, staffed predominantly by the children of immigrants. Prior to that, Sweden’s most notable organized-crime group was probably the musical trio Swedish House Mafia.
EncroChat turned into a law-enforcement sting that led to 6,500 arrests across the continent, according to Europol. With the competition cleared out, Foxtrot and a new generation of smaller gangs now had the nation to divide among themselves.
Like a blend of Pablo Escobar and the Pied Piper of Hamlin, Majid stands accused of leading an astonishingly violent gang named Foxtrot, staffed predominantly by the children of immigrants.
An ongoing, hyper-violent turf war began between Majid and his competitors, including one gang run by a former ice-hockey player known as “the Greek.” But perhaps the most vicious feud is with one of Majid’s alleged former partners, a man named Ismail “The Strawberry” Abdo (his gang sells strawberries by the roadside) also resident in Turkey, whose group is known as Rumba. Nobody is safe. Last September Abdo’s mother was killed in Uppsala.
The drumbeat of headlines tells the story of what happened next:
- “In Sweden, 2 Explosions Rip Through Dwellings and at Least 1 Is Reportedly Connected to a Gang Feud”
- “Deadly Shooting of Woman Carrying Child Shakes Sweden Awake”
- “A 13-Year-Old Boy Found Shot in the Woods Was a Victim of Sweden’s Gang Violence, Prosecutor Says”
- “Swedish Teen Rapper Killed in Stockholm, Intensifying Concern over Gang Violence”
- “Sweden’s Narco Wars Dominate Election Campaign”
- “Teenage Boys ‘Tortured, Raped and Buried Alive in Cemetery’”
In 2022 Sweden had 60 shooting deaths. Denmark and Norway had four each. Finland had two. Hand-grenade attacks, which have become something of a signature move for the gangs, are less well tracked. But one study found that there were more than 30 in Sweden in 2016.
Until 2003, Sweden ranked near the bottom of statistical tables for violent crime in Europe. But it began to climb steadily. According to a report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, shooting deaths doubled between 2011 and 2019, and the country has been at the top of the rankings since.
Functionally, what this meant was a lot of spectacular and heartbreaking violence in neighborhoods—particularly the Stockholm suburbs—that had simply never seen anything like it.
Swedes are all the more frustrated because their government, like so many in the West, seems politically paralyzed when it comes to resolving the duality of immigration (essential, wonderful, scary, complex), not to mention quelling the gang warfare that has turned its peaceful streets bloody. More ominously still, its domestic issues have recently shaded into the murkier waters of geopolitics.
Until 2003, Sweden ranked near the bottom of statistical tables for violent crime in Europe. But it began to climb steadily. Shooting deaths doubled between 2011 and 2019, and the country has been at the top of the rankings since.
Sweden is closer to Russia than you think, and many of its outlying islands are strategically vital. Since the Cold War, Russian submarines have made incursions into Swedish waters. But when Sweden sought to join NATO in order to protect itself from the possibility of increased aggression, Turkey ended up with one of the deciding votes.
It sought concessions, including the designation of the Kurdish Worker’s Party as a terrorist group. And it seems to be using Majid and Abdo as leverage. Or, at least, that would explain its reluctance to extradite the two.
At around the same time that Sweden was celebrating a big step toward NATO membership, police found and destroyed a hand grenade in the grounds of the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm. Swedish intelligence, in collaboration with Israel’s Mossad, concluded that the Foxtrot gang was behind the attempted bombing.
Foxtrot had been funded by Iran, Mossad alleged, to become a kind of terrorist group and to carry out attacks on Jewish targets in Europe. Majid was reported to have been arrested in Iran in late 2023. But there is no evidence he was ever held. It is not clear where he is now, or whether Turkey has any intention of enforcing the Interpol Red Notice (the equivalent of being on America’s most-wanted list) accusing him of narcotics offenses and of participation in murder.
In May of this year, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for shooting at the same embassy. He was a member of the Rumba gang. Abdo, Mossad found, had also been recruited and Rumba funded by Iran.
The problem is spreading through the region. According to Reuters, there have been 25 instances since April in which Swedish gang members were hired to commit violence in Denmark. In August, Denmark tightened its border controls with its closest neighbor.
This month, the Swedish government said it would soon offer up to $34,000 for immigrants to voluntarily return home. “We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our migration policy,” a minister said, on announcing the move.
In May, a few months after Sweden officially joined NATO, Abdo was arrested in Turkey, wearing body armor and with a loaded gun. But he was released on bail that was reported as $620 and remains free.
There are a few quirks of human nature, and one notable facet of Swedish culture, that offer a slim reed of hope.
For as long as immigrants have arrived in new places, the locals’ first reaction has been: Are they a threat? But the second is usually: Can we have sex with them? Closely followed by: What do they eat, and is it good? And: What is that music?
That holds especially true in a nation where to call something “osvenskt,” or “un-Swedish,” can be a compliment. It means surprising, delightful, adventurous, wonderfully out of the ordinary. All the things we want to appreciate, on our most generous and open days.
Ravi Somaiya is a New York–based writer and editor and the author of The Golden Thread: The Cold War and the Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskjöld
