Sysadmins Restore Iraqi ISP

Hen3ry writes "Brian McWilliams of Wired News reports on the dedicated staff of Iraq's State Company for Internet Services, or SCIS, and how they built, maintained, and rebuilt Internet access before, during, and after the war. Ba'ath Party loyalists still run SCIS but their dedicated employees continue to press on. Fascinating stuff about how one sysadmin managed to keep the country online up until a US missle struck the roof of the Ministry of Information building."

Comments

Re:Why'd they do that?

[Whyrph]

Why'd they do that? Saddam will only wind up beheading the sysadmins who did it when he gets back from Wal-Mart, picking up this week's armament.

But Saddam's in Montreal, remember? Drinking martini's and laughing his arse off. Not in Good Old God Forsaken Family Values Walmart Censored America.

How did they get the gear?

[Wyatt Earp]

I read the article and it said they did go around the UN embargo to get the equipment, but my question is who sold them the gear?

I'm not trying to troll or anything, I'm really interested in this paradox.

There were embargos put on Iraq following the war from the UN.

Everyone violates the embargos.

US goes around the UN.

Everyone bitches about the US.

No one bitches about the people who broke the UN embargo and thumbed thier noses at International Law.

Re:How did they get the gear?

[zakezuke]

.... my question is who sold them the gear?

I'm not trying to troll or anything, I'm really interested in this paradox

While many nations did partisipate in a trade embargo, some nations did not.

While I know jack squat about computer gear... there was alot of flack flying around about american ciggerettes making into iraq hands.

[http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid =4 708]
U.S. can't knowingly sell them in the Iraqi market -- either directly or through intermediaries -- unless they obtain a license from the U.S. government.

It's no paradox at all. Assuming the goods were made in America they either had a license to sell to iraq, which is easy enough to believe. Alternativly good could be purchaced by nations neighboring and on good terms with iraq and taking into iraq borders.

While computers are something listed as being a dual use item, as in could possibly be used as making weapons, the embargo in theory restricted their access. But it's not like Iraq didn't have free trade agreements with it's neighbors to import them. According to this bbc artical anyway... [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1959 481.stm]

Re:How did they get the gear?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It isn't too hard to do. In overly simplistic terms -- Sadam sends his nephew's wife's cousin to drive over to Saudi or Syria or Turkey or wherever is convienent enough, he goes down to the local CompuUAE and picks up equipment just like any other local buyer, puts it in the back of his truck and drives back to Iraq. Maybe be bribes the outgoing border guards, maybe he just takes a route that is unguarded. Now the equipment has been officially smuggled into Iraq and is available for resale with an extreme mark-up, much of which goes to Sadam's coffers or the equipment goes straight into Sadam's own facility.

That scenario holds true for pretty much any physical good and it happened all the time, helping to pay for all of those new-money gaudy palaces of Sadam's. Now, the data-lines? I dunno, was data even embargoed? I bet not, I bet the framers of the embargo didn't even know what data was, much less how to ban it.

Not to treat the story seriously, or anything...

[geekwench]

It would appear that the sysadmins literally poured blood, sweat, and tears into keeping the ISP up and running under Hussein. Not to mention going way above the "call of duty" to make certain that something of the equipment survived missle attacks, fires, and looting.
The real point here is that contact with the outside world is an extremely valuable commodity to these people, and something that we in the Western nations take horribly for granted. Think of Iraqi expatriates in other parts of the globe who don't know if relatives are alive or dead. Or, in the interest of balancing out FoxNews' reporting, a hypothetical Iraqi blogger can now give the outside world a better picture of what's going on in the country. I think that this is a positive step towards rebuilding. Yes, it's an odd, sideways step, given the other needs. But when you consider just how much emotional investment the sysadmins had in this project, their priorities are entirely understandable.

Re:iq

[dissy]

Unfortunatly since america controls the roots, .iq will not be added back globally untill we are on better terms than currently.
Granted they can set it up and run their top level, but every ISP that runs their own name servers would need to add the cctld to their root hints to see it :/

But, it looks like after checking, .iq is added back to the roots and pointing somewhere.

% dig @a.root-servers.net. iq.

iq. 2D IN NS NS2.MYNET.NET.
iq. 2D IN NS NS1.MYNET.NET.

FAITH.MYNET.NET 208.21.175.13
JAGUAR.MYNET.NET 208.21.175.12

As to what they may be serving, nic.iq (an RFC defined standard) doesnt work, so I dunno what to think...

Geek kinship

[bigwang]

"Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all actors the world over are simila, in Paris, Prague or the back of beyond." -- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I love these kinds of stories. The connection between us geeks is remarkable. And I speak of real geeks, not mercenaries or perpetrators.

Looting.

[twitter]

They salvaged servers and other computer hardware and moved it into the protection of their homes.

Their foresight may have saved Iraq's only ISP. After Baghdad fell to coalition troops on April 9, the Information Ministry was vandalized and set ablaze. Internet cafes were ransacked. Looters ransacked warehouses containing millions of dollars of SCIS computer gear, according to Harif.

Hmmm, one guy takes gear to their house and it's "foresight" while others doing the same are called looters. I suppose it helps that Harif brought enough of it back for things to work. I imagine much of the stolen warehoused computers will be working too now. All around a good deal. People making use of equipment that would have sat in a warehouse forever should not be looked at in the same light as people breaking into hospitals and stealing airconditioning equipment. The fall of a totalitarian government is not easy.