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Profile: Internet Arrives In Iraq And Is All The Rage For Young People And Researchers
All Things Considered: October 28, 2002
 Iraq Internet
JACKI LYDEN, host:
Inside Iraq, there are no cell phones, no instant messaging and definitely no private Hotmail accounts. But the Internet has finally arrived. After long resisting, Saddam Hussein's regime has now cautiously embraced the Internet, and as NPR's Anne Garrels reports from Baghdad, for Iraqi young people, it's the new rage.
ANNE GARRELS reporting:
Most in Iraq still get their information the old-fashioned way. In the absence of foreign newspapers and magazines, they search for uncensored news on scratchy broadcasts from the BBC, Radio Monte Carlo or the Voice of America.
SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SAWA
GARRELS: This is Radio Sawa, a new Arabic service of the US government. The Iraqi government regularly jams it, forcing the broadcasters to constantly jump frequencies and Iraqis to scan the AM dial for the latest position. Yet there's now a whole new source of information available to Iraqis--the Internet.
A small, quiet room belonging to the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation and Communications passes for an Internet cafe. There are 19 such places now in Baghdad. This mundane, unremarkable scene is a quiet revolution. Portraits of President Saddam Hussein act as screen savers, but with the click of a button he disappears and 23-year-old Obaid(ph) enters another world.
OBAID: I mean, I can get any news. I mean, I can get cnn.com, everything.
GARRELS: The regime first permitted Internet access for government ministries a few years ago, but back then, even high-ranking officials weren't allowed to send e-mails from their desks. They had to take them to a central clearing office. The first e-mail centers for the public opened in early 2000. This year, somewhat amazingly, they added Internet service, and now Iraqi universities are beginning to hook up. Access is so popular, students are restricted to two hours a week. Recently the government took another major step, permitting some citizens to have Internet connections at home. At a little over $30 a month, this is much too costly for most, but where there are Internet cafes, Iraqis can send e-mails and surf the subversive Web for just 50 cents a hour, a fee most seem happy to pay.
Now there are some limits. The connections are slow because of poor phone lines, and when Iraqis try to access private e-mail boxes such as Yahoo! or Hotmail, they're greeted with a blunt message: access denied. Everything has to go through uruklink.net, the government-controlled service provider monitored by Saddam's agents. Sometimes it takes quite awhile for e-mails to come through, reinforcing suspicions the government's reading the messages first. Iraqis are cautious what they say in their messages, developing elaborate codes. But some have found ways to circumvent the government's restrictions by sending e-mails through other sites.
MOHAMMAD: (Foreign language spoken)
GARRELS: Mohammad, a university student, can get to just about any news site on this particular night. But if there's aggressive news about Iraq, he says you might find some of the sites suddenly blocked. And porn sites are always inaccessible. Despite those limits, the debut of the Internet is a major breakthrough for Iraqi students, researchers and others. It's helping to erode the isolation from the outside world they've felt since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the imposition of UN sanctions--now 12 years old--and the censorship of the government.
Two students from Saddam University are looking for information on lasers. The importation of lasers is banned under UN sanctions because they have military applications. A lot of information is available for free on the Net, but often you have to pay to get an entire article. Twenty-one-year-old Said(ph) is frustrated. Because of the sanctions, he doesn't have a credit card.
SAID: Money is the problem.
GARRELS: Online shopping is impossible, but Hassan is using the Internet for the first time to find out information about Mercedes trailers. He owns a transportation company which is clearly doing well enough for him to buy a truck in Jordan. Twenty-year-old Taher(ph) writes his brother who lives abroad.
TAHER: (Through Translator) I think that the Internet is a very good way of communication. So, therefore, I prefer the Internet than the telephone.
GARRELS: There's also a thriving black market in pirated software, and the Iraqi hacker community, while far behind its Western counterparts, is quickly catching up. Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
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