From Herbert Meyer at American Thinker:

On May 13 about 70 percent of Iraq’s mobile telephone network will cease to operate. This will be a serious blow to the Iraqi economy. Moreover, a shutdown of Iraq’s mobile phone network - upon which our own people in Baghdad rely to communicate, by the way — will greatly diminish our intelligence gathering on al Qaeda in Iraq, thus de-railing our counter-insurgency strategy of relying on tips telephoned to us by Iraqis. And that will cost American lives.

Here’s what’s happening:

The primary mobile phone network in Iraq is operated by a Kuwaiti company called Zain Group. Zain also operates cell phone networks in other Mideast countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Sudan and Lebanon.

It takes about 1,300 cell towers to provide service in Iraq, and to protect these towers from being blown up by terrorists, or cannibalized by Iraqis working the black market, Zain signed a contract with an Iraqi-owned company called Babylon Eagles Security Company (BESC).

As the cell phone network in Iraq has grown during the past four years, BESC itself has grown to more than 7,000 heavily-armed and well-trained Iraqi security employees. The company has developed its own intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities, and maintains a complex set of working relationships with all the various tribes, militias, political parties and religious sects that live within its area of coverage.

snip….Zain and BESC are in the midst of a commercial dispute that’s heading for arbitration in London. This, by itself, is of no interest to the US.

However, according to BESC, Zain hasn’t paid BESC since December — about $12 million that’s owed — and since then all BESC employees have been receiving their salaries from BESC’s fast-dwindling cash reserves. That money runs out on May 13, and even now notice is being prepared for all BESC employees telling them that on that date they’re out of work.

Those 1,300 cell phone towers won’t survive a week.

I hope this disaster is averted since this could cost American Soldier casualties and injuries.

Read the rest….

Technorati Tags: Iraq, cell phone network, BESC, Zain, Def Sec Gates