04-29-2008, 09:25 PM
|
#1
|
|
----> Iron Mod <----
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 31,494
|
Iraqis Need Their Cell Phones - It's a No Duh!
Check this out ... it's a no duh moment ... best solutions being the logical ones.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/...he_secdef.html
Quote:
|
On May 13 about 70 percent of Iraq's mobile telephone network will cease to operate. This will be a serious blow to the Iraqi economy. Moreover, a shutdown of Iraq's mobile phone network - upon which our own people in Baghdad rely to communicate, by the way -- will greatly diminish our intelligence gathering on al Qaeda in Iraq, thus de-railing our counter-insurgency strategy of relying on tips telephoned to us by Iraqis. And that will cost American lives.
|
Quote:
The primary mobile phone network in Iraq is operated by a Kuwaiti company called Zain Group. Zain also operates cell phone networks in other Mideast countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Sudan and Lebanon.
It takes about 1,300 cell towers to provide service in Iraq, and to protect these towers from being blown up by terrorists, or cannibalized by Iraqis working the black market, Zain signed a contract with an Iraqi-owned company called Babylon Eagles Security Company (BESC).
As the cell phone network in Iraq has grown during the past four years, BESC itself has grown to more than 7,000 heavily-armed and well-trained Iraqi security employees. The company has developed its own intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities, and maintains a complex set of working relationships with all the various tribes, militias, political parties and religious sects that live within its area of coverage. For instance, BESC has been providing 4,200 food boxes per month to villagers where cell phone towers are located. And recently BESC personnel worked with US and Iraqi military forces to pinpoint insurgent strongholds in Dyala province. (So far about 150 BESC security guards have been killed protecting the cell towers, and the company has a good record for taking financial care of the families of its dead guards.)
|
Quote:
|
However, according to BESC, Zain hasn't paid BESC since December --- about $12 million that's owed -- and since then all BESC employees have been receiving their salaries from BESC's fast-dwindling cash reserves. That money runs out on May 13, and even now notice is being prepared for all BESC employees telling them that on that date they're out of work. Those 1,300 cell phone towers won't survive a week. Either the terrorists will blow them up, or Iraqis will plunder them for the metal and equipment they contain. (For example, each site includes two generators that could bring about $50,000 each on the black market.)Our objective ought to be keeping those cell towers safe and operating.
|
|
|
|
Linear Mode
