MEDIA-IRAQ: A Little Internet At Last

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kim Ghattas

BAGHDAD, Jul 2 2002 (IPS) - Cut off from the rest of the world for more than a decade, Iraqis are returning to the world scene at least virtually, and at least a little.

Iraq is getting its first internet centres. Iraqis are gradually catching up with the world, and also with what goes on in their own country.

“It’s easier now to contact everybody, to read about things, about Iraq,” says Hassan Rubayaa, a businessman delighted that he can make contacts without paying prohibitive phone and fax bills.

“You can even get information about Iraq from outside, from the internet,” he says. “University students use the internet for the latest research. My daughter needed some information on cancer research so we came here and she took it to her university.”

But it comes at a price, and it comes under the watchful eyes of Saddam’s men. Web surfing at Internet centres costs a dollar an hour, but this is out of reach for most Iraqis. An average civil servant’s salary is about six dollars a month, and the Iraqi government is the largest employer.

It costs 12 cents to send a message. Those who can afford it can get an e-mail address from the government e-mail service for 50 dollars a year. But only e-mail is accessible from home. Access to the internet remains heavily censored. Web-based e-mail is forbidden.

Foreign information technology consultants in Baghdad say internet access is not offered from home yet because the government has no censoring software.

Foreigners walking into an internet centre in Baghdad are warned not to use their own e-mail account. Access to websites such as Hotmail is barred and sneaking into a personal e-mail account through a website is a challenge.

All computers face away from the wall, and officials from the government’s internet department pace the room constantly. If you are caught, officials immediately shut down the computer. But for Iraqis, even censored internet is better than nothing.

Crippled by 12 years of sanctions, Iraq has until now seemed stuck in the eighties. Most Iraqi students still use books dating to pre-embargo days. Doctors say their techniques are outdated and beg foreign visitors to bring them medical magazines. Universities that used to order thousands of books a year from Europe and the U.S. now manage no more than a couple of hundred a year, mostly from Arab countries.

But today, computers of the Pentium IV generation are becoming widely available at a relatively cheap price. Internet connection is surprisingly fast, thanks apparently to recently laid fibre optic cables. This despite the fact that neither computers nor cables have been approved for import into Iraq under the sanctions.

Most of these goods are banned by the United Nations sanctions committee 661 as dual use items, meaning they could be used in the military industry. Officials from the internet department at the Ministry of Information say nothing on record about development of the internet – that would make it of ficial that Iraq is importing unapproved goods.

Following a growing number of free trade agreements with its neighbours, Iraq is managing to bypass sanctions more and more effectively. Goods imported through these agreements are not checked at the borders.

There are now 26 internet centres in Iraq. On average 200 people a day visit an internet centre such as the one on Saadoun street in the centre of Baghdad, where Rubayaa sat sending an e-mail message to a recent business contact.

Rana Sabah, 24, works as secretary at a private company and was able to save money to buy a 450 dollar Pentium III computer. “I took a course to learn how to use a computer and I have e-mail access at home,” she says. “It’s important to learn as much as possible before the embargo is lifted and Iraq joins the rest of the world.”