Doing brisk business in Baghdad

Standing beside his brown Range Rover in central Baghdad, Abdul Mounaim is doing a roaring trade. He owns a Thuraya, a pocket-sized satellit...

Standing beside his brown Range Rover in central Baghdad, Abdul Mounaim is doing a roaring trade. He owns a Thuraya, a pocket-sized satellite telephone, and currently, one of the most precious possessions in the Iraqi capital.

The city’s telephone exchanges were destroyed during U.S. bombing raids aimed at thwarting communication between officials of Saddam Hussein’s administration. Landlines across the country are down, and Iraqis are paying through the nose to stay in touch with relatives abroad.

Pleading to make a call

CLUTCHING scraps of paper with the numbers of brothers, cousins and nephews abroad, Baghdadis besiege the Palestine Hotel each day, hoping for the benevolence of a passing journalist with a satellite phone. At the Baghdad headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross it is a similar scene. People return day after day, undeterred by a sign on the gate telling them the phone is out of order. ‘‘Put yourself in the place of these people,’’ said Yasim Abas Jabir, a 57-year old physiotherapist. ‘‘Everywhere people are missing people. Five families out of 10 have relatives abroad. It’s a disaster.’’ Inside the Red Cross building, spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin said he thought it would be months before telephone lines were functioning again. ‘‘It’s awful for people not to have any contact with relatives. If they pay they can make calls abroad, but there is no way of calling people inside Iraq. People are wondering if their loved ones are dead or alive,’’ he said. ‘‘You have to ask if it was really necessary to bomb the exchanges.’’

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‘‘I called my brother in Sweden,’’ said Saad Abdulwahad, after handing over $20 for a two-minute call. ‘‘I told him we were all safe after the bombing but the situation is very bad here.’’

A cigarette in a plastic holder hanging from his mouth, Mounaim grabs the phone and dials the number for his next customer, who wants to contact a relative in the United Arab Emirates. Mounaim, who acquired his phone from a cousin living in Dubai, is raking in moolah in US dollars and Iraqi dinars from up to 100 customers a day.

‘‘People are calling all the Arab countries, as well as America, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Germany,’’ he said. ‘‘They just want to tell them they didn’t get hurt in the war.’’

In Saddam’s police state communication was far from easy. Satellite phones for personal use were banned and possession of a Thuraya was punishable by death.

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Iraqis had to seek permission to make an international call from their homes and, aside from the Kurdish-controlled area of the North, the country was one of the few places in the world without a mobile phone network.

Now, Iraqis say, the situation is much worse. For most, the $10 per minute charge for a Thuraya call is way beyond their means.

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