Montrealer Ehab Lotayef, just arrived in Cairo from Baghdad, raises questions about why basic telecommunications have not yet been re-established in Iraq and how a giant Egyptian multinational managed to get a contract.

Cairo, January 1, 2004. The fastest growing business in Egypt is - without doubt - mobile (cellular) telecommunications. It seems the case will be the same in the "new" Iraq. Two giant companies share the market in Egypt. Orascom, the holding company of one of the two, with operations in Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, and Tunisia, has won the tender for the first license to provide mobile telephone services in Iraq's Central Region (the Iraqi Telecommunications Minister, Haidar El Ebadi announced in October). While I was in Iraq, shops were selling the mobile lines and the phones. Service is scheduled to start during this January for the public. The test phase had already become functional in Baghdad sometime during December, while I was there.

How could an Egyptian company get a contract in Iraq while Egypt is not a "willing" country (i.e. did not participate in the war as a part of the "coalition of the willing")? In Cairo I managed to find the answer to this, although one that is not fully satisfying. This contract will be paid for by Iraqi money (oil revenues), and not by the rebuilding fund provided by the US. A member of Iraq's Governing Council assured Egyptians (as reported by Reuters) that "the council would not follow the United States in discriminating against companies from countries that opposed the U.S. invasion." Does this mean that this happened in opposition to the American will? A question which I do not have an answer for.

Another question raised by a few Iraqis I talked to, related to this issue, was: Why was the original telecommunications infrastructure damaged during the war not rebuilt as fast as it was after the 1991 war?

Standing in front of the Elweya telephone exchange - which is still in ruins, and in front of which four technicians were manually splicing cables over nine months after the bombing - Ghazwan, an Iraqi friend, told me that it took no more than a three months to repair it in 1991. Do the Americans and the new ruling council have fewer resources than Saddam did?

Why is there a delay in providing people with three basic needs: fuel, electricity and communications? Is it to keep the population tense and increase people's frustration? This state of frustration that may not be easily expressed against the strong occupying force may be expressed in factional violence; something occupiers, in every day and age, want so that it would be easier for them to control the people. Iraq, with its diverse population, is obviously a very fertile ground for implementing this strategy.

Or is there a financial aspect to this delay. Isn't it in the interest of companies providing alternative solutions to delay the repair process? Being Egyptian, many Iraqis accusingly asked me this question. I am not related to Orascom, I usually answered.

(Photo: Ehab Lotayef. Workers splicing cables in Baghdad nine months after the invasion.)

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Ehab Lotayef, a Montreal poet and a computer engineer at McGill University was in Iraq with the Iraq Solidarity Project during the month of December. The Iraq Solidarity Project (ISP) is a Montreal-based grassroots initiative to help provide international monitoring of occupation forces and the corporate reconstruction of Iraq and protective accompaniment to Iraqis under the occupation. To join ISP listserv, send a blank email to psi-...@lists.riseup.net. For more about ISP, p...@riseup.net.