Telephone Repairs Required

Areas of Iraq are without phone lines. Some areas have partially functioning phone lines, other areas have none at all.

There are a few issues involved. First, the loss of infrastructure due to recent damage. Whether the result of coalition or insurgent damage is a mute point, civilian supply is lost due to the action of two warring factions. Second, the previous regimes reward/punishment use of phone lines and other basic infrastructure casts a shadow over current events. Phonelines to areas uncooperative under the former regime were "disconnected" so it is understandable if today's civilians are unconvinced by continuing "punishments" eerily echoing life before liberation.

There are many other services that falter and fail in times of war, but communications are significant in that;

a). Relatives and friends outside Iraq worry about relatives and friends inside Iraq who cannot easily be contacted.
b). Information from inside Iraq is controlled by slow release from sites with better infrastructure. In other words people who can phone out of Iraq have phone services that are at least partially operable, suggesting quality of life for those people is perhaps better and outlook perhaps more optimistic then for people who do not have access to phones. What we cannot hear we do not know.

Information flow is restricted particularly in areas that are experiencing more extreme difficulties, for example large sections of Kufa which have been without phone service since recent fighting destroyed some facilities.

All of this is admittedly beyond obvious and if you are impatiently pounding your head against the monitor saying "for gods sake, say something new" i apologise. Please stop pounding head now, it wouldn't do to accrue more desktop casualties.

Anyway, i started this link section in the sidebar for areas that i hear of without phone lines. The astute will probably see difficulties here relating to point b) above. If you know of any other areas your input is more then welcome. If you would like to copy/paste the link/s (atm there is only one that i've heard of, Kufa) into your own page that is also more then welcome. And if you know of any repairs to these areas, great, please let me know.

This is not a finger pointing exercise, so before you email me a tirade or post thousand word accusatory essays in the comments please understand that i am doing this in the hope that drawing attention to the situation might help speed up repairs, or at least raise awareness. (*Sigh* this weblog is hardly that influential but, dreams at least are free).