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Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq
jemevans sends us a link to his nonfiction tale of two California cypherpunks who went to Baghdad to seek their fortune and bring the Internet to Iraq. A much abridged version ran in Wired a while back. From the original: "Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company's transactions 'drug deals' — but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old."
But the Internet, as a series of tubes used to sell wood, was designed to withstand a nuclear holocaust, and last time I checked the main problems that Iraq has in terms of the internet is not the actual wiring per se, but a distinct lack of power plants and continual power sources.
... my family does sell wood.
If we had just shipped Aramco-backed (aka Saudis, the people paying for Americans to be shot) solar cells and UPS systems to Iraq, we would have created more Net usage than with this approach.
Sometimes low tech is the way to go.
My dad gets the Net from a house he built in Vermont on his tree farm, using solar power to charge car batteries and run a laptop with. Cheaper than running power lines through his 42 acre tree farm. And I was serious about my brother writing the insurance law - he's an international lawyer based in NYC. I wasn't serious about the tubes or the selling wood part
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This guy did an excellent presentation at Notacon about running a non profit isp in iraq. Available in mp3 or video format.
mp3 aviDavid Coughanour - HajjiNets: Running an ISP in a War Zone
Hacker Media
Certainly, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the facts are wrong. It's definitely written with an eye to entertain and as such plays up the violence, because, well this is America, we like violence - especially violence of the wild west variety, which was a definitely a parallel the author of the article was trying to draw.
... If they'd had electricity working within a month or two of the invasion, there probably wouldn't have been near as much violence." The idea that large US corporations, who made their fortunes working within a more or less reliable national infrastructure, could actually do a decent job building infrastructure where what little that is there already is unreliable - seems to me to be a really bad idea. What's really interesting is the causality implied by Lackey (the author of that quote), i.e. that had the US not tagged massive corporations for outsourcing their rebuilding effort, Iraq would not be in the state that it's in now.
. To sum it up in a sentence: agility and flexibility is the necessary quality in organizations responsible for providing basic services in Iraq, and it's not a quality of *any* big corporation I've ever seen.
To digress from my point (if I really had one) I thought this quote from the article was very interesting: "But the US solution was to give large US companies business here
This seems to be to be very insightful. Given the management structure of these large corporations - rapidly deploying anything as complex as telecommunications infrastructure doesn't seem to me to be something they can actually do. The reality in situations like Iraq is that if you want the citizens to be happy, you must give them the basic necessities: food, water, and shelter (and, since the late 19th century, electricity). Given the instability in Iraq, the way to provide these things is not through the massive beauracracy of American corporations, but rather with small, self-sufficient modules - mobile power stations, mobile communications stations. I kind of envision it as the guerilla warfare method of providing basic services. After all - it's been shown time and time again that the guerillas can give the massive beauracracies a run for their money *cough*vietnam*cough*iraq*cough*afghanistan*cough
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
This is really a rather moving article, in the sense that it makes me wonder what I have doing with my life and the things that I am being complacent about. It also makes me wonder how robust--in the macro-evolutionary sense--that our technological projects and infrastructures really are. The power and communications networks have always struck me very fragile and resistant to both change and attack (you would think that we would have learned from WWII Europe). Communications networks we can probably shore up by moving into stronger forms of wireless communication, although this opens the question of wide-spread jamming. However robust power networks present no obviously good solution until localized power (such as solar and wind) becomes cost competitive with centralized power.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
Of course, you need the skills, and the connections.
You also need balls, since Iraq IS a war-zone you are essentially risking your life every minute you are there.
I know of one contractor who was kidnapped in Iraq and subsequently released once his company payed an undisclosed 'ransom', although that was more than a year ago. Lets just say after than incident they beefed up their security just a tad. Kidnapping is a big money maker in Iraq/Afghanistan. Of course, that entails you surviving an attack long enough to be kidnapped in the first place! Most likely death would be as quick as hitting an IED and its GAME OVER.
Then there are others who are smart. They go over there and stay in their armored compounds (as opposed to foolishy driving around in the open) and are protected by security. They do their assignments, stay for a few months, and make a nice chunk of change at the end.
Truthfully, many contractors are getting rich there but the majority of them are not accomplishing much of substance. All of it is dictated by the whims of the Americans. The Iraqis have little real input. Most of it is completely unsustainable. As the linked article states, even these Internet gurus are under no illusion that what the US is doing is only aggravating the civil war.
So essentially it's all blood money. Frankly, if there is a choice between making the 'easy' money or keeping your integrity intact by not 'selling your soul' to the man for a quick buck, I would say it's not worth it in the long run. I mean, you still have to live with yourself years from now. Right?
PS. There are good jobs in Afghanistan and its not nearly as dangerous as Iraq...though that is now changing. A few years ago suicide bombings in Kabul were a rare occurrence, but things seem to be hotting up there more every day - unfortunately.
God bless the American tax payer.
While perhaps their technical expertise is slightly exaggerated...All descriptions of life in general and surroundings are right on. Actually with a fairly light hearted point of view - very healthy. Their synopsis at the end is also right on.
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Just my 2 cents...which is probably worth more than your 2 cents...
I work Communications. Satellite, phone, computer, solaris, microwave, voip, teleconferencing....everything he did. In the same place. Anaconda is ok...if you can ignore the irritating mortars that DO come in every single damn day(usually while you are sleeping or on the can it seemed). Unfortunately, I was military, and my pay was much less than his.
That 703 area code from viginia....yeah, try calling somebody else on base with that damn army phone. If you call from an army phone to an air force phone...it goes thru the satellite hop and fiber to get back to virginia, then runs around the world on the DNS phone network to the air force side. Calling from the army side to the air force side or vise-versa was significantly more laggy than calling back to the states.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
My best friend was a cybercafe manager at LSA Anaconda during his stay. Way I hear it, they could use the pipe. The nickname his associates had for the drop they had to their quarters was "Ghetto Telecom"... the photos of how they got stuff rigged are hilarious from an IT perspective.
Winning hearts and minds of the Iraqi people through the universal medium, Asian porn.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Not even close. According to NBC, he was escorted by "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead." And he still wore body armor.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
One of my questions would be. Who out there is still hiring, what are the wages like, and who here on slashdot would be willing to sign up?
I would. I'm socially liberal, Canadian, a Buddhist, and I try to live as a pacifist... so I might not fit in with the gun-nut rednecks, but despite the danger and the possibility I might have to defend my own life, I'd love to go over and do something constructive, something REAL, not just the 9-5, where's-my-stapler bullshit that we have over here. The money doesn't hurt, but mostly it's the chance to be involved in something that could change millions of peoples lives for the better.
Of course, the high wages help too... it's just a question of finding someone who'll hire our particular skillset.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
A company that shall remain nameless once pinged me about a role providing linux cluster admin and field engineer/developer support for a visualization project designed for military use. I would have been stationed in central Baghdad and paid on the order of two hundred and fifty thousand base pay plus hazard pay, full relocation, etc. etc. etc. amounting to probably on the order of four hundred thousand to half a million a year after all the calculations were done.
I turned them down.
Yes, it sounded like a technically sweet gig. Yes, the pay and benefits were very, very solid. Could I handle a morning and evening commute that includes pitched gun fights and car bombs? Would the security where I sleep be as good as where I would work? Would I adapt well to wearing body armor and carrying at least one if not several weapons to do something as simple as buying toilet paper? Would I want to get beheaded for my troubles? Would I want my next of kin to profit from blood money should I bite it; would I feel comfortable accepting money for supporting something I found morally abhorrent? Would I have gone through those paranoid years of deployment without becoming irrevocably changed in ways that would make it difficult to reintegrate to mainstream society (PTSD is No Fucking Joke)? I asked myself questions like that and got too many negative answers to feel comfortable taking them up on their offer. Maybe other people would have a different situational calculus, I don't look down on them for asking themselves questions and coming up with different answers.
It was a near thing for me. I almost said yes. That money could have put my SO through grad school without loans. It could have bought my ailing mother a house. It could have done a lot of things. I still sometimes wonder if I made the right choice.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
PTSD is the main concern here ( I noticed you put it in parenthesis). Sure, all those things you could have done with the money would have helped you materially, but imagine going through the rest of your life, unable to get a good night's sleep, haunted by nightmares. Or a car back-firing triggering your nervous system to high-alert. Looking at Arab men on the street, wondering if they have an IED under their shirt. Could you get through grad school like that? You might never be able to rebuild your psyche after that. It would probably permanently change the course of your life.
I've spent some time overseas. While that's nowhere near a war experience, but it was intense enough that it made me an outsider amongst my friends. Their world was so small. I had to find a new contingent of friends who had broader backgrounds. Fortunately some of my other friends have since traveled; now we can relate better. There's a reason vets hang out at the VFW. It's to be with the other guys who have lived through that experience. You would become a totally different person and you would have a new community. I'm not saying that's bad; I'm just saying that all the benefits you would imagine having as a result of becoming a contractor might have to be completely re-evaluated in light of your new path. Hopefully with your practice you would be able to find healing and mental health for yourself and other vets if/when you came back.
My grandpa was in the invasion of Normandy. He never talked about it. A decade after his death, I heard this story: He was trapped behind enemy lines. There was a guard that he had to get past to get back to the allied front. For hours, he bid his time. Finally, the guard relaxed, and sat down to read. My grandfather snuck up and strangled him with a piece of barbed wire. He look at what the guard had been reading -- a handwritten letter and a picture of a young woman. He was so distraught by the time he got back to the front, he couldn't speak. The allies were about to kill him on the spot, because they thought he was a German spy, dressed up in an American uniform as a cover.
I don't know to what extent this story is dramatized. The biggest problem is that he never talked to *anyone*, *ever* about the war. I don't know in what circumstances he told this story. My Uncle told my mom after my grandfather had died, years after, but he doesn't remember where or when he heard it. It was sort of common knowledge among the men in my family.
My mom's family would go out to picnics, and my grandfather would sometimes disappear for hours. My male relatives were hunters; even they couldn't find him. When he came back, he would have no recollection of having disappeared. Everything was normal to him, nothing odd had happened. In my dark times, I imagine him trapped behind enemy Axis lines in some Ohio field, hiding, biding his time a few yards away from a ghostly guard.
I don't think you made the wrong decision at all.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Ryan may have been 26, but I did that when I was 24 working as a contractor for CSC. Anyone in the military uses the term drug deals to describe the shake of the hand barter system that gets you going day to day. Back in 2003, I traveled around to military installation setting up VSAT sat dishes to just to provide Internet Cafe's and VOIP access to the troops. Although this wasn't my actual job, I provided my expertise on a "free basis" to aid our troops. General Conway at the time deemed it enough of a priority to at least throw some money at it to get more sites up and running.
In the end, I didn't live in a tent. I was in an actual buidling complete with amenities most would envy in Iraq. Between all of my contacts, I was rocking it with a TV, DVD Player, Sat Cable and Internet, Refrigerator/freezer, microwave, xbox and ps2 at the time, and above all else AC. The hardest part was getting the transformers but much like everyone else the engineers scratched my back as well for what services I rendered in off time.
Traveling between bases, I flew. Forget doing a convoy where it takes you 14 hours to drive 30 miles. Helo rides were what it was all about, and I spent many nights either sweating my @$$ off or freezing to death just waiting for them to touch down to grab me.
Again, like others had said it's sensational journalism. What he did isn't all that impressive and some of the security procedures handled by SSI are negligent at best. I also have a problem trumping up his bad@$$ card for being logistically irresponsible.
Gen. Petraeus was just about to take over as we were leaving.
To be very honest I haven't been keeping up with what's been going on in Iraq that much. Mostly because I really wanted to get away from it for a while. I wish I could tell you what I really think of his handling, but I don't think I am in any position to say. The situation has been getting steadily worse since February of last year. That was about 3 months after we got there, and that was also when the Shia mosque was bombed. That was also when the "sectarian violence" or "civil war" (depending on whom you ask) started. As a Soldier, all I can say really is that we do the best we can, with what we have. As soon as we got there, all we tried to do was our job. Everything else was irrelevant. So I can tell you that Gen. Petraeus is probably trying to do the best he can. Sometimes it's easy for people to criticize (and I don't mean you personally, I just mean the "experts" on TV) from a distance without any idea of what's going on there.
What's happening now is a direct consequence of certain decisions made by Rumsfeld. Gen. Eric Shinseki requested at least 350,000 troops. Rumsfeld said he would provide only 150,000.
Thank you for your support. It means a lot to us.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Sadly, the positive stories never make it to the news.
I served in Iraq for a year. I just got back last November.
So the Stars and Stripes that we got there did tell us about explosions and deaths going on outside. We also got CNN at the chow hall and from that we heard about what's going on outside too.
But let me tell you what people back home never hear of.
The mobile hospitals that the military takes around Iraq, curing Iraqi children and adult Iraqis of diseases. The media probably never showed the stories of the mobile eye-hospital that went around Iraq curing children with eye-ailments that would have made them blind unless they got proper medical attention. I bet the media hasn't even told you guys about the schools, hospitals, and bridges that the military builds.
Nope. You will never hear about these, because "150 Iraqis die in a car-bomb blast" is more sensational than "15 Iraqi children have their sight restored due to help from US military doctors".
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
You didn't hear about us because Ryan was banned from Liberty by base command for some infraction - I still haven't heard the story - and because SSI couldn't penetrate the market without hiring lots of westerners to stay on base. There are ways to get Iraqis on base, but it basically amounts to risking their lives daily, and while we took some risks in my time there, it wasn't worth that one.
That's funny; 2:30 AM is the normal time for a car crash of a "visiting" Saudi in Manama, Bahrain. Fortunately, this is only once a week. On a side note, I swear that BF2 uses a sound clip of the call to prayer by the muzzien of the Al Fateh mosque in Juffair, Manama.
Enjoy Dubai; it's the Arab Disneyland. I'd like to work there.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Does anyone else think it's funny that the British Royal Family expect to lay their lives on the line if the country calls for it, but none of our leaders do?
I seem to remember that Prince Andrew fought in the Falklands War as well? Is there a rule in Britain that the Royals have to fight in every war? If so, it sounds like a good rule to apply to other countries as well.
I think it will trickle sooner than you think. Developing countries and developing markets are targets for (and need) infrastructure that competes. Wireless carriers are going to need to be rebuilt, internet, cable, voip, phone, everything. This is a pie with a few million slices the westerners can carve up any way they wish, but the Iraquis need to hurry up and eat it. I think you'll see modern accessible infrastructure of all kinds sooner than you think.
Now, I should add, everything I just said depends on the country stabilizing. Nobody is sure when or if that will ever happen.
I'm not knocking you or anything, but how is a car bomb not very much more important? I mean, that sounds like having a story about firemen rescuing a cat from a tree in the middle of a war. I'm just saying that we could be saving children's eyesight without guns. All the nonsense about the media not reporting the "good news" is absolute horseshit. If anything they don't report enough about the real war taking place.
Signed, bitter Iraq combat veteran
One of my questions would be. Who out there is still hiring, what are the wages like, and who here on slashdot would be willing to sign up?
I am already out here in Iraq. There are many companies out here looking for skilled professionals who can get and maintain a security clearance. Raytheon, ITT, and General Dynamics are some of the bigger ones although there are numerous other companies, Anteon, INX, etc still hiring. Gone are the days of $300k+ year contracts, but pay is still significantly higher than in the States for similar work. Be prepared for spartan living environments and the occasional mortar/rocket attack. The food is reasonable, even slightly better than the average restaraunt back in the States.
Do not work for Halliburton/KBR. They have better living conditions but the pay is significantly lower.
I am leaving in a month (2+ years already). I work at Camp Victory in Baghdad. If you have any more questions, post them below. If you are an expert with networks, I can get you hired on for better than average pay.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Large corporations alone are not a problem; it's the way they are doing business that is. Most American companies hired Americans to come work, even manual jobs like driving trucks. The simplest rule of managing insurgency is this: a man that holds a shovel cannot hold a rifle. They are spending far more money now on defense than they would have spent hiring men to dig ditches and other men to fill the same ditches in.
Had that kind of mentality set in at the start - encourage local businesses, keep people busy working (even if on unimportant work), work with locals - the current situation would never have happened. However, it's too late to adopt such a stance and be able to fix the situation. So I can't really advocate that now.
Win? I don't see any definition of "win" that we can achieve. The Iraqi people weren't ready for democracy after 30 years of Ba'ath control, and they certainly aren't now that all the intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other skilled professionals have fled. My greatest hope now is that a powerful dictator will take control, kill half a million people by violently suppressing all dissent, and restore order. If America doesn't have the stomach for that kind of violence, they can't win. Pulling out won't help, but they can't win by staying in with the forces they have.