Inna lillahi wa inna ilehi rajewoon (- To Allah, we belong and to Him we return).

May Allah accept this and forgive his short comings. O’ Allah, grant him mugfira’t and Janna’t.

Brother Naeem Saroya has been living in Metro Detroit since the late seventies. He left tremendous impact on the Muslim footprint in Metro Detroit, and national organization Islamic Circle of North America. Those who accomplish fast, depart soon!

Naeem has been backbone in formation and development of ICNA Detroit, CIOM, Masjid Ummar bin Khatab (Browns Town) and Majid e Falah (North Detroit/ Hamtramck). At a time when communities were still smaller or infancy, Naeem helped pull various communities together to achieve higher objectives. His work for MCWS, specially formation of Youth Group (YMFA) and Crescent Academy is remarkable. His work to bring ICNA and MAS closer is also incredible.

Naeem also served as ICNA’s Central Secretary General and has been part and parcel of ICNA’s growing up. He also served as President of Student’s Union at Univ. of Eng. & Tech. (UET, Lahore) and was a Member of Islami Jamiat e Talaba.

Naeem worked as Engineer with DTE and was retired. He was living in Ypsilanti, Mi for many years. Prior to that he was in Browns Town.

He left sister Nargis Saroya and two sons – Ali Abdullah and Ghazi Abdullah (both high school age). May Allah give the family sabr. And protect them.

Namaz e Janaza is expected on 5/23 after Zuhr Prayer in Dix Masjid (American Moslem Society, Dearborn) and burial next to the masjid.

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Demonstrators shout slogans as they hold a placard and posters of former India test bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth during a protest in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad May 16, 2013. Sreesanth and two other players have been arrested by Delhi police on suspicion of spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League, sports officials said on Thursday. REUTERS/Amit Dave

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s Supreme Court dismissed a petition on Tuesday seeking to scrap the remaining matches of the country’s lucrative Twenty20 cricket competition amid growing concerns about corruption in the sport.

Former test bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth and two other players were arrested along with 11 bookmakers on Thursday on suspicion of spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

The case has prompted the Indian government to look at the possibility of introducing a law to combat matchfixing and spot-fixing.

Cricket fan and social activist Sudarsh Awasti lodged the petition demanding the scrapping of the remaining four IPL matches, including Sunday’s final, but the apex court said the competition would go on as scheduled.

The court also asked the Indian cricket board to submit a report within two weeks with details of the players’ involvement in the scandal and what action is being taken against them.

Cricket is a gentlemen’s game and it should remain so, the court observed.

Awasti also wanted a special investigation to get to the bottom of the spot-fixing scandal and for the league to be banned from next year, but the court found no merit in his demands.

India’s film industry was also pulled into the controversy when Mumbai Police arrested a Bollywood actor, Vindu Dara Singh, on Tuesday for alleged links to a bookmaker.

“Mr Vindu Dara Singh has been arrested … He was in contact with some bookie, that’s what I can tell you right now,” a senior police officer, Satyanarayan Chaudhury, told Reuters, refusing to disclose further details.

Legal sports betting in India is confined to horse racing, while illegal betting syndicates thrive in the absence of a law dealing specifically with such corruption in sport.

Media estimates put the amount gambled on India’s top cricket Twenty20 competition at $427 million in 2009.

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By Parvez Fatteh, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com

Germany’s biggest and best football club, Bayern Munich, have made plans to build a masjid for their Muslim players and fans. The plan was triggered by a request from one of its most prominent players, and one of the best Muslim footballers in the world, Franck Ribery. The masjid would be build inside the soccer stadium, Allianz Arena, and would have a full time Imam and an Islamic library. The club will finance 85 percent of the costs of the masjid, leaving 15% to Muslim players and fans who want to participate.

Bayern is not the first European club to build a mosque for its Muslim players after New Castle United specified a prayer room for Muslim players. Other Muslim footballers on the Bayern squad include German-Turkish midfielder Emre Can, and Albanian-Swiss midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri. Bayern is set to take on German Bundesliga rivals Borrusia Dortmund in the finals of the European Champions League on May 25th in Wembley Stadium in London. Bayern lost in the finals last year.

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HPD Honors Siddiqi: Officer of the Year

Hard work pays, not just once but again and again. Officer Muzaffar Siddiqi, one of the most decorate police officers in Texas, has been honored yet again for his services to the community and the Houston Police Department.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker and HPD Chief Charles McClelland presented Officer Siddiqi with “Officer of the Year” award on May 13 at the Hyatt Regency Downtown, 1200 Louisiana, during an awards ceremony organized as part of the Police Week from Friday, May 10, through Friday, May 17.

Officer Siddiqi has been honored several times in the past for exceptional services. He is the only Muslim police officer of Pakistani descent to have received so many awards. His dedication to work and high professional standards have distinguished him as one of the best known police officer in the South Asian community.

He has earned plaudits in the community and has made the community proud by taking the initiative to rebuild the bridges in the aftermath of 9/11.

Officer Siddiqi has also received the Top Cop award by International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and Parade Magazine in 2003. The award symbolizes the highest level of achievement among police officers in the country.

His previous honors include Officer of the year Award in 2000 by Houston Police Department, U.S. Congressional Recognition, Texas Law Enforcement Achievement Award by Governor Rick Perry, Four Chief Commendations by Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford, Officer Of the Month Award from American Society of Industrial Security and the Bravo Award by Houston Mayor Lee Brown.
Water needs take center stage in legislative budget battle

Some fearful of consequences if funds not appropriated immediately by legislature

As the state budget drama continues at the Texas State Capitol today, concern is mounting over the fate of billions of dollars in the state’s rainy day fund that may – or may not – be appropriated for the state’s water needs. Lawmakers initially were considering moving $2 billion from that fund to help initiate a fund to assist with much-needed water projects statewide.
But, the legislative session ends in 10 days and a source close to the issue said today that there is now concern that instead of legislators making that appropriation from the rainy day fund, they could instead put the issue before Texas voters to decide.

With Texas enduring almost three years of drought conditions, water issues are front and center in many parts of the state. However, some areas that were suffering from drought conditions are beginning to recover, thanks to cooler temperatures and some heavy rainfall. Those areas could come out of drought conditions and might then see investing $2 billion of taxpayer funds for assistance in other areas of the state as an issue on which they would vote “no.”

Convincing voters in those areas of the state to vote for using rainy day funds will be a hard sell, and negative results could be disastrous.

\“We need to make sure we’re planning appropriately,” said Bryan Shaw, chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in an agency video regarding drought conditions in Texas. “Getting ahead of the drought is critical. It’s kinda’ the same thing (as) with managing our finances. By the time that there’s no money in the bank, it’s a little late then to start thinking about saving money.”

So just how severe is the water problem for communities throughout the state? According to figures from TCEQ, as of this week, eight public water systems are at emergency priority, and could be out of water in 45 days or less. Customers of those systems already are facing restrictions from mild to severe. Another 10 could be out of water in 90 days or less. And a dozen more face the possibility of being out of water within 180 days or less.

If funding is not made available through the rainy day fund, our insider said the state could have to “triage” critical water projects throughout the state, funding projects by priority when funding is available.

Waiting in the wings to help bring the billions of dollars’ worth of much-needed water infrastructure are design firms and capital firms with experience nationwide in dealing with water projects, eager to partner with the government on these projects. If funding is not made available immediately, he said, these potential partners will exit Texas and seek to invest their millions of dollars in capital into water infrastructure projects in other states.

Thus, the critical water needs in Texas are dependent on money being available now.

The state has had a water planning process in place since the late 1990s, but the plan has never been fully implemented, mostly due to lack of funding. Estimates are that if the plan is not funded, by 2060, half of the residents of the state will not have enough water during certain drought conditions. The economic impact on the state could be $116 billion annually to Texas businesses and workers. An estimated 1 million jobs could be lost.

One water organization in the state, H204TEXAS, estimates that the latest plan, Water for Texas 2012, could begin to turn around the state’s water woes at this critical juncture. That organization says that every $1 billion in financial assistance provided for state water plan projects will generate $1.75 billion in sales revenue, create $888.8 million in state gross domestic product, add $43.9 million in state and local tax receipts and create or support more than 13,000 jobs statewide.

Not to be forgotten is that the water issue in Texas is not just a water-from-the-tap problem. Recent drought conditions prompted unprecedented wildfires in many areas of the state, where in 2011 drought conditions, more than 3.9 million acres of land in Texas burned, nearly doubling the previous record. Damage was particularly heavy in the Bastrop area, where two people were killed and more than 1,600 homes burned. The area is in recovery mode, but if the drought persists, there is the constant fear of more fires.

“My fear is, the further we get away from any disaster – even as little as a year – the more we forget about that disaster. We’re still in a drought,” said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management in the TCEQ video.

Add to that the proposed reorganization of the Texas Water Development Board, which our insider says is likely to be “top to bottom,” and the need for the legislature to take control of the appropriation process for water funding is even more urgent.

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By Noor Salem, TMO

The night of Friday May 17th was tranquil and wonderful when over 11 masajid in Michigan joined into praying for the oppressed people of Syria. Every masjid had a unique program for three hours, 9pm until 12 am. Particularly at the Islamic Center of Detroit over 300 people joined to be a part of such an experience. The halls were filled, hearts were touched, and eyes drew tears. After prayer there was a short movie from Syria, short yet wonderful lectures, and qiyam prayer. It’s hard to feel with people who are losing family members, homes, and friends every single day. We simply stand and pray for them, since it’s the best we can do. The Global Qiyam was obviously “global” and thousands stood up in worship to pray for those they can’t personally help. It was a wonderful experience for all those who attended, and heart touching to see the vast empathy of the ummah.

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By Noor Hani Salem, TMO

Over 1,000 people sat in the Presidential Ballroom at the Henry Hotel of Dearborn, MI Thursday night for the 25th Lebanese American Heritage Club Gala. On stage sat 55 high school, undergraduate, and graduate students facing their audience, who also happen to be the very people who sponsored them.  Among the guests sat CEO of Wal-Mart, representatives from the CIA, Ford Motor Company, and DTE.

The past 11 years the LAHC held their annual Gala at the Hyatt regency of Dearborn. However last November the Hyatt was purchased by a new owner and this year marked a venue change for LAHC.
The past several years LAHC gave up over a million dollars in scholarships to students of the Arab American decent. They also give out two community awards and this year it was honored to Ford Motor Company and Rabih Dow.

The three hour long event included a choir, the awarding of the scholarships, and a dinner by Chef Habib Bazzi. It was yet another successful event for LAHC.
For more information about LAHC visit their website at http://lahc.org/

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By Frank Holmes

A strong stomach and a tremendous amount of patience are required for gold stock investors these days, as miners have been exhibiting their typical volatility pattern.

That’s why I often say to anticipate before you participate, because gold stocks are historically twice as volatile as U.S. stocks. As of March 31, 2013, using 10-year data, the NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index (HUI) had a rolling one-year standard deviation of nearly 35 percent. The S&P 500’s was just under 15 percent.

I believe the drivers for the yellow metal remain intact, so for investors who can tolerate the ups and downs, gold stocks are a compelling buy. Here are three reasons:

1. Gold Companies are Cheap.

According to research from RBC Capital Markets, Tier I and Tier II producers are inexpensive on historical measures. Based on a price-to-earnings basis, RBC finds that “shares are currently trading not far from the recent trough valuations observed during the 2008 global financial crisis.”

And on a price-to-cash-flow basis, gold stocks are trading at bargain basement prices. The chart below shows that average annual cash flow multiples for North American Tier I gold companies have fallen to lows we haven’t seen in years. Since January 2000, forward price-to-cash-flow multiples have climbed as high as 26 times. This year, we see multiples at the high end that are less than half of that.

On the low end, today’s price-to-cash-flow of 6.5 times hasn’t been seen since 2001.

Tier I and Tier II companies “offer investors an attractive entry point from an absolute valuation perspective with respect to the broader market,” says RBC.

2.Gold companies are increasing their dividends.

With the Federal Reserve suppressing interest rates, investors have had to adapt and reallocate investments to generate more income.

That’s where gold companies come in. I have discussed how miners have become much more sensitive toward the needs of their investors as they compete directly with bullion-backed ETFs and bar and coin buying programs.

In response to shareholders’ desire to get paid while they wait for capital appreciation, gold companies have rolled out dividend programs and increased payouts. “The growth in dividend payout has been spectacular when looking at the industry as a whole,” says my friend Barry Cooper from CIBC World Markets.

His data shows that over the past 15 years, the world’s top 20 gold companies have increased their dividends at a compound annual growth rate of 16 percent. By comparison, gold only rose 12 percent annually.

Not only are gold companies increasing their payouts, the yields offer a tremendous income value to investors compared to government bonds today. Whereas investors receive a 1.5 percent yield on a 10-year Treasury, the stocks in the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Gold and Silver Index (XAU) are paying a full percentage point more!

This is a significant change from the past: In April 2008, the Treasury yield was nearly 3 percent more than the dividend yield of the XAU.

In addition, the yields of gold stocks have been climbing over the past year while the 10-year Treasury remains low.

3. Enhanced returns in a diversified portfolio.

We have long advocated a conservative weighting of 5 to 10 percent in gold and gold stocks because of the inherent volatility you are seeing today. But despite the extreme moves, there’s a way to use gold stocks to enhance your portfolio’s returns without adding risk.

Take a look at the efficient frontier chart below, which creates an optimal portfolio allocation between gold stocks and the S&P 500, ranging from a 100 percent allocation to U.S. stocks and no allocation to gold stocks, and gradually increasing the share of gold stocks while decreasing the allocation to U.S. equities.

The blue dot shows that from September 1971 through March 2013, the S&P 500 averaged a decent annual return of 10.34 percent.

What happens when you add in gold stocks? Assuming an investor rebalanced annually, our research found that a portfolio holding an 85 percent of the S&P 500 and 15 percent in gold stocks increased the return with no additional risk. This portfolio averaged 10.96 percent over that same period, or an additional 0.62 percent per year, over holding the S&P 500 alone. Yet the average annual volatility was the same.

Although 0.62 percent doesn’t seem like much, it adds up over time. Assuming the same average annual returns since 1971 and annual rebalancing every year, a hypothetical $100 investment in an S&P 500 portfolio with a 15 percent allocation in gold stocks would be worth about $7,899. This is greater than the $6,246 for the portfolio solely invested in the S&P 500 while adding virtually zero risk.

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FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds was described as “the most gagged person in the history of the United States” by the American Civil Liberties Union. Was the Sunday Times pressured to drop its investigation into her revelations?

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

In a recent  book Classified Woman, Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI, describes how the Pentagon, CIA and State Department maintained intimate ties to al-Qaeda militants as late as 2001.

A whistleblower has revealed extraordinary information on the U.S. government’s support for international terrorist networks and organised crime. The government has denied the allegations yet gone to extraordinary lengths to silence her. Her critics have derided her as a fabulist and fabricator. But now comes word that some of her most serious allegations were confirmed by a major European newspaper only to be squashed at the request of the U.S. government.

In a recent  book Classified Woman, Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI, describes how the Pentagon, CIA and State Department maintained intimate ties to al-Qaeda militants as late as 2001. Her memoir, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story, published last year, charged senior government officials with negligence, corruption and collaboration with al Qaeda in illegal arms smuggling and drugs trafficking in Central Asia.

In interviews with this author in early March, Edmonds claimed that Ayman al-Zawahiri, current head of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s deputy at the time, had innumerable, regular meetings at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, with U.S. military and intelligence officials between 1997 and 2001, as part of an operation known as ‘Gladio B’. Al-Zawahiri, she charged, as well as various members of the bin Laden family and other mujahideen, were transported on NATO planes to various parts of Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations.

According to two Sunday Times journalists speaking on condition of anonymity, this and related revelations had been confirmed by senior Pentagon and MI6 officials as part of a four-part investigative series that were supposed to run in 2008. The Sunday Times journalists described how the story was inexplicably dropped under the pressure of undisclosed “interest groups”, which, they suggest, were associated with the U.S. State Department.

Described by the American Civil Liberties Union as the “most gagged person in the history of the United States of America,” Edmonds studied criminal justice, psychology and public policy at  George Washington and George Mason universities. Two weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, her fluency in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani earned her an FBI contract at the Washington DC field office. She was tasked with translating highly classified intelligence from operations against terrorism suspects in and outside the U.S.

In the course of her work, Edmonds became privy to evidence that U.S. military and intelligence agencies were collaborating with Islamist militants affiliated with al-Qaeda, the very forces blamed for the 9/11 attacks – and that officials in the FBI were covering up the evidence. When Edmonds complained to her superiors, her family was threatened by one of the subjects of her complaint, and she was fired. Her accusations of espionage against her FBI colleagues were eventually investigated by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, which did not give details about the allegations as they remained classified.

Although no final conclusions about the espionage allegations were reached, the Justice Department concluded that many of Edmonds’ accusations “were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services.”

When she attempted to go public with her story in 2002, and again in 2004, the U.S. government silenced Edmonds by invoking a legal precedent known as “state secrets privilege” – a near limitless power to quash a lawsuit based solely on the government’s claim that evidence or testimony could divulge information that might undermine “national security.” Under this doctrine, the government sought to retroactively classify basic information concerning Edmonds’s case already in the public record, including, according to the New York Times, “what languages Ms. Edmonds translated, what types of cases she handled, and what employees she worked with, officials said. Even routine and widely disseminated information — like where she worked — is now classified.”

Although certainly not the first invocation of “state secrets privilege”, since the Edmonds case the precedent has been used repeatedly in the post-9/11 era under both the Bush and Obama administrations to shield the U.S. government from court scrutiny of rendition, torture, warrantless wiretapping, as well as the President’s claimed war powers.

Other intelligence experts agree that Edmonds had stumbled upon a criminal conspiracy at the heart of the American judicial system. In her memoirs, she recounts that FBI Special Agent Gilbert Graham, who also worked in the Washington field office on counter-intelligence operations, told her over a coffee how he “ran background checks on federal judges” in the “early nineties for the bureau… If we came up with shit – skeletons in their closets – the Justice Department kept it in their pantry to be used against them in the future or to get them to do what they want in certain cases – cases like yours.” A redacted version of Graham’s classified protected disclosure to the Justice Department regarding these allegations, released in 2007, refers to the FBI’s “abuse of authority” by conducting illegal wiretapping to obtain information on U.S. public officials.

Incubating Terror

Five years ago, Edmonds revealed to the Sunday Times that an unidentified senior U.S. State Department official was on the payroll of Turkish agents in Washington, passing on nuclear and military secrets. “He was aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives”, Edmonds told the paper. She reported coming across this information when listening to suppressed phone calls recorded by FBI surveillance, marked by her colleague Melek Can Dickerson as “not pertinent”.

In the Sunday Times exposé, Edmonds described a parallel organisation in Israel cooperating with the Turks on illegal weapons sales and technology transfers. Between them, Israel and Turkey operated a range of front companies incorporated in the U.S. with active “moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions”, supported by U.S. officials, in order to sell secrets to the highest bidder. One of the  buyers was Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) – which often used its Turkish allies, according to the Times, “as a conduit… because they were less likely to attract suspicion.”
The Pakistani operation was, the paper reported,  “led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief” from 1999 to 2001, when the agency helped train, supply and coordinate the Afghan Taliban and gave sanctuary to their Arab allies brought together in the coalition named al-Qaeda. Ahmad, as the Times noted, “was accused [by the FBI] of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.”

According to Indian intelligence officials, they had assisted the FBI in “tracing and establishing” the financial trail between the General and the chief hijacker. The discovery was, they allege, the real reason behind the General’s sudden retirement in October 2001. The Pakistani daily, The News, reported on 10th September 2001 that the ISI chief held several “mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council” that week, including with CIA director George Tenet.

In an interview with this author in March, Edmonds raised the question of whether U.S. officials’ liaisons with an espionage network overseen by Ahmad, and the FBI’s suppression of related intelligence, played a role in facilitating the attacks.

“Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks”, reported the Sunday Times. The paper related that according to Edmonds, the senior State Department official received a call from a foreign agent under FBI surveillance asking for help to “get them out of the U.S. because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans.” The official promised “he would ‘take care of it’.”

Edmonds told this author that high-level corruption compromised the ability of the U.S. intelligence community to pursue ongoing investigations of those planning the 9/11 attacks. “It was precisely those militants that were incubated by some of America’s key allies”, she said. Corruption helped  guarantee Congressional silence when that incubation strategy backfired in the form of 9/11. “Both Republican and Democratic representatives in the House and Senate came up in FBI counterintelligence investigations for taking bribes from foreign agents”, she said.

Al-Qaeda: Enemy or Asset?

In her interview, Edmonds  insisted that after its initial exposé, the Times‘ investigation had gone beyond such previous revelations, and was preparing to disclose her most startling accusations. Among these, Edmonds described how the CIA and the Pentagon had been running a series of covert operations supporting Islamist militant networks linked to Osama bin Laden right up to 9/11, in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus.

While it is widely recognised that the CIA sponsored bin Laden’s networks in Afghanistan during the Cold War, U.S. government officials deny any such ties existed. Others claim these ties were real, but were severed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989.

But according to Edmonds, this narrative is false. “Not just bin Laden, but several senior ‘bin Ladens’ were transported by U.S. intelligence back and forth to the region in the late 1990s through to 2001″, she told this author, “including Ayman al-Zawahiri” – Osama bin Laden’s right-hand-man who has taken over as al-Qaeda’s top leader.

“In the late 1990s, all the way up to 9/11, al-Zawahiri and other mujahideen operatives were meeting regularly with senior U.S. officials in the U.S. embassy in Baku to plan the Pentagon’s Balkan operations with the mujahideen,” said Edmonds. “We had support for these operations from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but the U.S. oversaw and directed them. They were being run from a secret section of the Pentagon with its own office”.

Edmonds clarified, “the FBI counterintelligence investigation which was tracking these targets, along with their links to U.S. officials, was known as ‘Gladio B’, and was kickstarted in 1997. It so happens that Major Douglas Dickerson” – the husband of her FBI co-worker Melek whom she accused of espionage – “specifically directed the Pentagon’s ‘Gladio’ operations in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan at this time.”

In testimony under oath, Edmonds has previously confirmed that Major Doug Dickerson worked for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the weapons procurement logistics division on Turkey and Central Asia, and with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) overseeing policy in Central Asia.

Gladio B

Edmonds said that the Pentagon operations with Islamists were an “extension” of an original ‘Gladio’ programme uncovered in the 1970s in Italy, part of an EU-wide NATO covert operation that began as early as the 1940s. As Swiss historian Dr. Daniele Ganser records in his seminal book, NATO’s Secret Armies, an official Italian parliamentary inquiry confirmed that British MI6 and the CIA had established a network of secret “stay-behind” paramilitary armies, staffed by fascist and Nazi collaborators. The covert armies carried out terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, officially blamed on Communists in what Italian military intelligence called the ‘strategy of tension’.

“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game” explained Gladio operative Vincenzo Vinciguerra during his  trial in 1984. “The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people… to turn to the State to ask for greater security.”

While the reality of Gladio’s existence in Europe is a matter of historical record, Edmonds contended the same strategy was adopted by the Pentagon in the 1990s in a new theatre of operations, namely, Asia. “Instead of using neo-Nazis, they used mujahideen working under various bin Ladens, as well as al-Zawahiri”, she said.

The last publicly known Gladio meeting occurred in NATO’s Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in 1990. While Italy was a focal point for the older European operations, Edmonds said that Turkey and Azerbaijan served as the main conduits for a completely new, different set of operations in Asia using veterans of the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, the so-called “Afghan Arabs” that had been trained by al-Qaeda.

These new Pentagon-led operations were codenamed ‘Gladio B’ by FBI counterintelligence: “In 1997, NATO asked [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak to release from prison Islamist militants affiliated to Ayman al-Zawahiri [whose role in the assassination of Anwar Sadat led to Mubarak’s ascension]. They were flown under U.S. orders to Turkey for [training and use in] operations by the Pentagon”, she said.

Edmonds’ allegations find some independent corroboration in the public record. The Wall Street Journal refers to a nebulous agreement between Mubarak and “the operational wing of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was then headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri…  Many of that group’s fighters embraced a cease-fire with the government of former President Hosni Mubarak in 1997.”

Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, cited U.S. intelligence sources in an article for Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, confirming “discussions between the Egyptian terrorist leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and an Arab-American known to have been both an emissary of the CIA and the U.S. Government.” He referred to an “offer” made to al-Zawahiri in November 1997 on behalf of U.S. intelligence, granting his Islamists a free hand in Egypt as long as they lent support to U.S. forces in the Balkans. In 1998, Al Zawahiri’s brother, Muhammed, led an elite unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs during the Kosovo conflict – he reportedly had direct contact with NATO leadership.

“This is why”, Edmonds continued in her interview, “even though the FBI routinely monitored the communications of the diplomatic arms of all countries, only four countries were exempt from this protocol – the UK, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Belgium – the seat of NATO. No other country – not even allies like Israel or Saudi Arabia, were exempt. This is because these four countries were integral to the Pentagon’s so-called Gladio B operations.”

Edmonds did not speculate on the objectives of the Pentagon’s ‘Gladio B’ operations, but highlighted the following possibilities: projecting U.S. power in the former Soviet sphere of influence to access previously untapped strategic energy and mineral reserves for U.S. and European companies; pushing back Russian and Chinese power; and expanding the scope of lucrative criminal activities, particularly illegal arms and drugs trafficking.
Terrorism finance expert Loretta Napoleoni estimates the total value of this criminal economy to be about $1.5 trillion annually, the bulk of which “flows into Western economies, where it gets recycled in the U.S. and in Europe” as a “vital element of the cash flow of these economies.”
It is no coincidence then that the opium trade, Edmonds told this author, has grown rapidly under the tutelage of NATO in Afghanistan: “I know for a fact that NATO planes routinely shipped heroin to Belgium, where they then made their way into Europe and to the UK. They also shipped heroin to distribution centres in Chicago and New Jersey. FBI counterintelligence and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) operations had acquired evidence of this drug trafficking in its surveillance of a wide range of targets, including senior officials in the Pentagon, CIA and State Department. As part of this surveillance, the role of the Dickersons – with the support of these senior U.S. officials – in facilitating drug-trafficking, came up. It was clear from this evidence that the whole funnel of drugs, money and terror in Central Asia was directed by these officials.”
The evidence for this funnel, according to Edmonds, remains classified in the form of FBI counterintelligence surveillance records she was asked to translate. Although this alleged evidence has never made it to court due to the U.S. government’s exertion of ‘state secret privilege’, she was able to testify in detail concerning her allegations, including naming names, in 2009.
Censorship
In recent interviews, two Sunday Times journalists confirmed to this author that the newspaper’s investigation based on Sibel Edmonds’ revelations was to break much of the details into the open.
“We’d spoken to several current and active Pentagon officials confirming the existence of U.S. operations sponsoring mujahideen networks in Central Asia from the 1990s to 2001,” said oneSunday Times source. “Those mujahideen networks were intertwined with a whole range of criminal enterprises, including drugs and guns. The Pentagon officials corroborated Edmonds’ allegations against specific U.S. officials, and I’d also interviewed an MI6 officer who confirmed that the U.S. was running these operations sponsoring mujahideen in that period.”
But according to Edmonds, citing the investigative team at the paper, the last two articles in the series were spiked under U.S. State Department pressure. She recalled being told at the time by journalists leading the Sunday Times investigation that the newspaper’s editor had decided to squash the story after receiving calls from officials at the U.S. embassy in London.
A journalist with the Sunday Times‘ investigative unit told this author he had interviewed former Special Agent in Charge, Dennis Saccher, who had moved to the FBI’s Colorado office. Saccher reportedly confirmed the veracity of Edmonds’ allegations of espionage, telling him that Edmonds’ story “should have been front page news” because it was “a scandal bigger than Watergate.” The same journalist confirmed that after interviewing Saccher at his home, the newspaper was contacted by the U.S. State Department. “The U.S. embassy in London called the editor and tried to ward him off.”

“We were told that we weren’t permitted to approach Saccher or any other active FBI agents directly, but could only go through the FBI’s press office – that if we tried to speak to Saccher or anyone else employed by the FBI directly, that would be illegal. Of course, it isn’t, but that’s what we were told. I think this was a veiled threat.”

Saccher’s comments to the journalist never made it to press.

A lead reporter on the series at the Sunday Times told this author that the investigation based on Edmonds’ information was supposed to have four parts, but was inexplicably dropped. “The story was pulled half-way, suddenly, without any warning”, the journalist said. “I wasn’t party to the editorial decision to drop the story, but there was a belief in the office amongst several journalists who were part of the Insight investigative unit that the decision was made under pressure from the U.S. State Department, because the story might cause a diplomatic incident.”

Although the journalist was unaware of where this belief came from – and was not informed of the U.S. embassy’s contact with the paper’s editor which the other journalist was privy to – he acknowledged that self-censorship influenced by unspecified “interest groups” was a possible explanation. “The way the story was dropped was unusual, but the belief amongst my colleagues this happened under political pressure is plausible.” He cryptically described an “editorial mechanism, linked to the paper but not formally part of it, which could however exert control on stories when necessary, linked to certain interests.” When asked which interests, the journalist said, “I can’t say. I can’t talk about that.”

Edmonds described how, due to the U.S. government’s efforts to silence her, she had no option left except to write her story down. The resultant book, Classified Woman, had to be submitted to an FBI panel for review. By law, the bureau was required to make a decision on what could be disclosed  or redacted within 30 days.

Instead, about a year later, Edmonds’ lawyer received a letter from the FBI informing them that the agency was still reviewing the book, and prohibiting her from publishing it: “The matters Ms. Edmonds writes about involve many equities, some of which may implicate information that is classified… Approval of the manuscripts by the FBI will include incorporation of all changes required by the FBI. Until then, Ms. Edmonds does not have approval to publish her manuscripts which includes showing them to editors, literary agents, publishers, reviewers, or anyone else. At this point, Ms. Edmonds remains obligated not to disclose or publish the manuscript in any manner.”

The block was another example, Edmonds said, “of the abuse of ‘national security’ to conceal evidence of criminality.” She said that this forced her to release the book herself in March 2012, as no publisher would risk taking it on.

Sibel Edmonds memoirs, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story, is available from all good online booksellers.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed writes for The Guardian on the geopolitics of environmental, energy and economic crises at his Earth Insight blog. His personal website is www.nafeezahmed.com.

By Geoffrey Cook, TMO

Geoffrey Cook

Healdsburg (Calif.)–May 15, 2013–Your author finds himself in the California’s north, and I am one of the few in my State who simply does not like wine; therefore, this would make it easier to accept the Islamic injunction on this.

This essay derives from a comment I made in response to a posting of Engineering Professor Martin Hellman of Stanford University in Palo Alto’s extremely important blog, Diffusing the Nuclear Threat (http:// nuclearrisk.org/).  (Although a scientist who “knows his stuff,” I find his writing on very technical subjects to be most accessible).  My thesis here comes from my comment to Professor Hellman’s entry on the danger of NATO’s intervention in Afghanistan which he believes has the potential of unfolding into a nuclear confrontation.  He discusses this in his May 9th, 2013 blog (http://nuclearrisk. wordpress.com/2013/05/09/avoiding-needless-wars-part-7-afghanistan/) which submission is one of a series of contemplations, the seventh installment of his “Avoiding Needless Wars.”

I have written quite a bit on Afghanistan as my regular readers are aware here on these “pages,” and I am preparing an (academic) paper for publication on a parallel subject as discussed on the above web page, and I hope I can follow through on perceptions that Dr. Hellman has given me through his blog in my upcoming more formal paper.  Dr. Hellman is not concerned about the Islamic world per se, but more on the subject of “Armageddon” in general.  Here he is considering a conflict set in a Muslim land, though, and places it into a unique larger geopolitical context.
At the time (1979), I supported Jimmy Carter’s assistance to the Afghani people when the Soviet Army initially invaded Afghanistan to buttress the faltering Communist government there, but, when the Reagan Administration imported Arab fighters, the resistance changed from an indigenous struggle for liberation to a mercenary one with larger geographical and ideological issues.  Those foreign fighters held values quite different from the Islam of the Hindu Kush and incidentally, also, the Vale – which was more Sufic.

I have written more than once that the current G.W.O.T. (the Global War on Terrorism’s) roots lie within the Reagan Administration’s post-1989 failure to institute a Marshal-like Plan for the Mountains and Pakistan.  The withdrawal of the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) led to a five-prong civil war in the Hindu Kush between the various warlords.  A group of Madrassa students (i.e., the Taliban) arose as a rag-tag militia with the support of Afghanistan’s citizenry since their preliminary goal was to achieve a relative peace and security by pushing the contending clan-bands into the Northwest corner of Afghanistan, and; thus, the triumphant rule of the “Students” from Kabul was initially popular.  Unfortunately, though, many of the Arab mercenaries, who remained after the Russian War, were protected under the tribal laws of hospitality there.

When the non-national al-Qaida declared War on the United States, the Taliban head of State, Mullah Umar, was furious because he knew his regime was doomed.
Back to the nuclear aspects of the situation,  after the victory of the mercenaries, they, then were looking for further battles against the “infidels.”  They found it first in Kashmir’s struggle for self-agency against India.

I have written on the Kargil dispute (May-July, 1999)previously early in my tenure on this paper, and my” take” on it is different than most historians, and a bit revisionary, but I believe the historical sources bear me out.  My research shows that it was probably a group of Arab irregulars who took the Kargil heights overlooking the Vale during the winter.  The Pakistanis only became involved defensively in reaction to the mercenaries from Afghanistan which event, undeniably, also, became a seemingly a fortuitous advantageous to the Pakistanis. 

A potential nuclear confrontation was brewing, and Pakistan, a state where the military with the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) dominate the political discourse, the Prime Minister (PM), Nawaz Sharif, who a fortnight ago was elected once again to the office of Prime Minister after a long political come back, did not perceive the danger of nuclear war since his COAS (Commander of the Armed Forces) kept him in the dark to the exact seriousness of the encounter; so, Bill Clinton dragged the PM into Washington on the fourth of July of that year.  Under the .guidance of the U.S. President with the Prime Minister of Pakistan, a South Asian inferno was avoided at that time.

Shortly after, on December 13th, 2001, a group of sub-nationals attacked the Indian Parliament in support of Kashmiri separatists.  In the Indo-Pakistani theater each side almost immediately accuses the other of any political violence within borders of the victimized.  The Indian BJP, the political wing of the RSS — who gave us the assassination of Gandhi, accused Pakistan of the act against New Delhi’s legislature when it seems that it was an independent organization seeking independence for Kashmir — although rogue elements of the ISI might have been aware and encouraged it.

Anyway, this led to the 2001-2002 Indo-Pakistani nuclear crises, which if all weaponry were successfully deployed might have led to a nuclear winter in the Northern Hemisphere.  During this period, sub-national and non-State actors were encouraging the State actors to use their atomic capabilities to accomplish an Armageddon-like goal of the Islamic far religious right.

The real hero, in my opinion, in diffusing this situation was Pervez Musharraf, the then President of Pakistan.

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