23 October 2013. PenzaNews. The international community continues to discuss the situation around the attempt of 30 Greenpeace activists from the Arctic Sunrise ship, flying the Dutch flag, to board Russia’s Prirazlomnaya oil rig in the Barents Sea, in order to stage a protest against Arctic drilling; as well as the ensuing series of diplomatic spats between the Russian Federation and the Netherlands.

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In light of recent events, news agency PenzaNews publishes an article of well-known Russian researcher of history of the Baltic States, author of numerous scientific publications and several books Dr. Mikhail Krysin entitled “Greenpeace: Knights of the Nature or Gentlemen of Fortune?”

Not long before the deterioration of relations with Russia, the Netherlands and its EU partners accused Russian authorities of the oppression of sexual minorities because of the failure to adopt a law legitimizing same-sex marriages. And a few months earlier, Russia adopted an anti-smoking law; the most ridiculous thing is that in its support Russian Ministry of Health quoted the same law of Holland – the country with a long history of legalized drugs, where homosexuality is the norm, not the crime.

In this regard, it will be interesting to review some dark pages of the history of international environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and its parent organization – a well-known World Wildlife Fund (WWF) with a nice logo, depicting panda.

When in September 1982 the French government was planning to hold the first of six scheduled nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific atoll of Mururoa, environmentalists organized a series of large-scale protests. In particular, Greenpeace activists held a series of protests in the immediate vicinity of the test site. Moreover, some of the activists managed to penetrate even the highly militarized nuclear test zone, although the French guards thought it was quite impossible.

“They are people used to operations which have nothing to do with ecology,” said the French Security Services commander on the scene.

This was not just an attempt to justify their failure. The security chief was an experienced Special Forces operative. However, the two leaders of the Greenpeace crew, as it turned out later, were not amateurs, but highly trained retired officers of British Special Air Service (SAS). Even then, these actions of Greenpeace have been called terrorism.

Greenpeace is a branch of the WWF founded by representatives of a number of influential aristocratic families from Europe and the Middle East. However, few people know that under the guise of nature protection its founders used and continue to use this fund for implementing other goals, which are much less noble. In some well-informed circles, the WWF is known as “the royal family’s most important private intelligence agency.”

The founder and president of the WWF is the Prince Philip Mountbatten who had recently celebrated his 90th birthday (born 1921) and is the husband of the now reigning British Queen Elizabeth II. The WWF co-founders are no less interesting people, they are, for example, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, (1911–2004); Aga Khan IV, the current Imam of the Ismaili sect of Muslims (born 1936); his uncle Sadruddin Aga Khan (1933–2003), closely related to both the British royal family, and the British intelligence services; Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi (1922–1995), founder of the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) famous for its secret machinations and links with drug cartels.

When Prince Philip proposed the idea of the WWF creation in 1961, its co-founders and generous donors have also become Aga Khan IV, imam of the Ismaili sect, associated with the British intelligence services since the 18th century, and his uncle Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. The spiritual patrimony of the Aga Khan IV – the Nizari Imamate in South Asia, which influence extends to the Ismaili community in Punjab, Kashmir, Chinese Xinjiang, Afghanistan and Tajikistan – is all that now remains of the Ismaili sect. However, it still has big financial and material resources, strict organization, well-functioning propaganda apparatus and extensive international connections. Aga Khan IV continues to keep close ties with the British royal family. When he became the Imam of the Ismailis in 1957, Queen Elizabeth II even granted him the title of “His Highness.” Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the uncle of the 49th Ismaili Imam Aga Khan IV, had also for a long time been a key figure in the World Wildlife Fund under the patronage of Prince Philip. Sadruddin once received an excellent education at Harvard University. His career began in 1950 when he became publisher of the Paris Review magazine promoting the idea of the “Children of the Sun” which foreran the youth subculture of 1960–80s under the slogan “Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.” The Chief Editor of the magazine was the future American banker John Train (born 1928), who behind the scenes also continued to take part in various secret operations, including in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Prince Sadruddin made his way as the UN official. In the mid-1950s he became civil servant at the UN, and by 1962, due to his origin, became the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees. In 1967–1977 he held the position of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and in the 1980s, as well as his nephew, at one time was the Coordinator for United Nations Humanitarian and Economic Assistance in Afghanistan.

Headed by Aga Khan IV, the Agha Khan Foundation with the headquarters in London allocates funds for the WWF from the moment of its creation – and not only and not so much for the protection of nature, but for executing covert operations abroad under its shield. However, this activity is usually hidden from the public eye and does not harm Aga Khan’s reputation in international circles. Since the 1980s and up to the present Aga Khan IV has been the coordinator of various UN humanitarian programs.

Due to his work at London Agha Khan Foundation and Geneva Bellerive Foundation affiliated with it, Sadruddin earned a reputation of an environmentalist. He also brought his former classmate John Train there, who became the WWF activist in Africa. John Train’s cousin – Russell Train – became the WWF president in the United States and held this position since the Fund’s creation until his retirement in 1995. However, in British intelligence circles Prince Sadruddin was considered a specialist in conducting covert operations under the guise of humanitarian and nature protection actions.

One of these covert operations, carried out by the British and US intelligence agencies with the assistance of Prince Sadruddin and his companion John Train in the late 1980s – early 1990s, was named Salam. Officially, it was a “humanitarian action” and was aimed at repatriation of Afghan refugees after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. But in reality, many of mujahideen were allowed to scatter all over the world even before the end of fighting. According to some reports, military commando training for these people and supplying them with weapon took part in the immediate vicinity of the Afghan refugee camps on the Afghan-Pakistan border under the guise of the UN humanitarian programs controlled by Prince Sadruddin.

Not long before, Prince Sadruddin played an important role in another special operation entitled Iran-Contra, associated with the secret arms sales to Iran (received money, not accountable to the US Congress, was used by the Reagan–Bush administration to support the activities of the Nicaraguan contras and the Afghan mujahideen). As an official of the United Nations, which headquarters are located in New York City, Prince Sadruddin often played tennis with the then US Vice President George Bush. During one of these tennis matches, Bush offered Sadruddin to become an intermediary between the US and the Iranian government in the process of the release of American hostages. Apparently, the same year he was offered to negotiate with Iran on the supply of weapons secretly from the US Congress. Anyway, in the same period some of the arms that the US was transferring to Pakistan for Afghan mujahideen were transferred to Iran as part of Iran-Contra.

During the war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), the WWF headed by Prince Philip with the support of his Arab counterparts – Sadruddin and Aga Khan IV – created a whole infrastructure for drug trafficking in order to finance the mujahideen. Thus, in 1983 the WWF was able to convince the government of Pakistan’s Zia-ul-Haq to create two national parks in the immediate vicinity of the Afghan border, in mountainous principality of Chitral. Experts in nature protection from other countries were genuinely surprised: Chitral was never famous for its fauna or any endangered species of animals and plants, and the stream of eco-tourists there, which was more than modest before the war, completely stopped with its beginning. But only a few knew something else: Chitral was part of the so-called Golden Crescent and was famous for the quality and abundance of the opium poppy planted in its mountainous valleys. At that time, the opium plantations were already under the control of one of the field commanders of Afghan mujahideen. In addition, Chitral was one of the centers of arms smuggling through Pakistan to Afghanistan and Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Already in the mid-1980s, Golden Crescent supplied about half of the heroin consumed in the United States. Western intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Afghan war were not only well aware of this, but helped the Pakistani authorities to develop their business and launder the money. According to a former officer of the British Special Air Service Tom Carew, who participated in covert SAS and CIA operations in Afghanistan, he repeatedly witnessed illegal drug trafficking from Afghanistan, but the West, according to him, preferred to turn a blind eye to it.

From its creation, the World Wildlife Fund has closely worked with the British Special Forces. For example, a joint operation of Anglo-American intelligence Faraday was assigned to the SAS soldiers.

Many retired officers of the Special Air Service subsequently were employed at the WWF. For example, the founder of the SAS, Lieutenant-Colonel David Stirling was the principal military adviser to the WWF until his death in 1990. The official bankers and sponsors of the WWF are still the uncle of Stirling Lord Lovat, and Stirling’s cousin Hongkong banker Henry Keswick, head of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation who then founded its branch in Dubai. By the way, Henry Keswick’s bank for half a century has been associated with the opium trade, and during the war in Afghanistan 1979–1989 has become one of the main “narco-banks” of Asia.

There is another example of SAS and the WWF’s interaction during a covert operation. In 1988, one of the WWF founders Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands proposed the creation of a special strike force to protect elephants and rhinos in South Africa. Officially, the purpose of the operation named Operation Lock was to stop the shooting of elephants and rhinos in the national parks of South Africa. To carry out the operation, the WWF management hired people from the Kilo Alpha Services engaged in private security activities and headed by the former SAS Counter-Terrorism Warfare team leader Lieutenant Colonel Ian Crooke. At the same time, Ian Crooke was the commander of the 23rd Reserve SAS Regiment, a part-time unit composed of reserve officers and soldiers frequently employed in private security firms.

The hidden goal of Operation Lock was to secretly support the Zulu Inkatha organization (Inkata je Nkululeko je sizve – National Liberation Movement, led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi) in its struggle against the African National Congress (ANC), led by Nelson Mandela, for the right to represent the interests of the black population of South Africa. KAS supervised the commando training of Zulu followers of Inkatha, who were employed as game wardens and guards in several South African national parks. It also undertook the training of opposing Xhosa tribal followers of Nelson Mandela’s ANC, in different parks. Beginning in 1989, these commando teams began what has since been referred to as “third force” killings: the slaughter of ANC and the rival Zulu cadre in such a way as to implicate each other. The internecine war was exhausting for the both sides. As a result, in August 1991 Zimbabwean Minister for National Security Sydney Sekerayami openly accused KAS of “being a cover for the destabilization of southern Africa.” In 1993, Zimbabwe’s government published the data that clearly showed the involvement of Ian Crooke’s people in civil war in South Africa. Thus, the investigations determined that the 1992 Boipatong anti-Zulu massacre was carried out by the “Crowbar squad,” a Namibian anti-poaching unit created and trained by KAS and financed by the World Wildlife Fund.

In view of the above said about the foreign environmental funds, their founders, sponsors and “contractors,” it will not be surprising if, after successfully imposed by Europe anti-smoking law, based on the same law in Holland, after attempts to push through a law on same-sex marriages, and recent attempt of Greenpeace activists to attack Russia’s oil rig in the Barents Sea, in the near future Russians will be allowed to smoke only the Afghan hashish instead of tobacco, eat and drink only the products of the Dutch milk powder; representatives of sexual minorities will be granted exclusive rights (which is already occurring in many countries), and “knights of nature” from Greenpeace will receive from the United Nations or the European Union an unrestricted right to the piracy (or, as it was politically correct to say, privateering) in all the seas and oceans of the world.