By Samir Haddad & Mazen Ghazi, IOL Correspondents
BAGHDAD, July 20, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – A cellular phone's main job is to connect people for various reasons. But in occupied Iraq, where everything is out of context, mobiles are certainly no exception.
Iraqi resistance groups use mobiles in innovative ways that started to cause real concerns for US forces, so much that the hi-tech device is now topping the agenda of items to be confiscated during search operations.
Iraqi armed groups fighting foreign troops use the device to compile information on US military targets and "collaborators" with the occupation forces, making the tiny device a "source of horror" for the occupation forces.
An Iraqi businessman has revealed to IslamOnline.net how a short message on his mobile forced him to give up cooperation with the US occupation forces.
"I received a message of death threat from an armed group through my cellular phone to halt cooperation with the occupation forces," he told IOL, on condition of anonymity.
"The message carried a photograph taken for me while entering the fortified Green Zone through an entrance called the "the dangling bridge."
The Iraqi businessman had won a tender to supply air-conditioners to hospitals within Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the US forces command and the Iraqi government.
"As soon as I got the message, I decided to give up the tender to save my life, despite the financial losses I suffered," he said.
Attacking Forces
Mobiles are also used by resistance groups to trap US occupation forces.
As a case in point, an unidentified person contacted the Iraqi interior ministry to report the presence of a group of armed men in a building in eastern Baghdad, according to witnesses of the incident that happened two months ago.
The caller also claimed that the armed group was holding hostages in the reported building.
In response, a joint contingent of US-Iraqi forces rushed to the reported scene, but as they were approaching the site, they were targeted by a roadside bomb, leaving scores of the US and Iraqi forces killed and injured.
Since then, mobiles have become a "source of horror" for the occupation forces, which search for the tiny devices everywhere during their massive crackdown operations in the country, according to sources close to the Iraqi resistance.
Four Iraqis were arrested by US forces last week while using mobiles – equipped with cameras -- to photograph passers-by near a US military site in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood in western Baghdad.
Security Measures
To avoid such phone-orchestrated resistance attacks, US forces now disconnect phone communications during their patrols in the Iraqi capital as a security measure.
Such a repeated disconnection of communications has motivated many Iraqi subscribers to raise complaints with the Orascom Telecom Iraq Corporation (IRAQNA), the provider of the mobile communication service in the Iraqi capital.
But the Corporation said the service disconnection was out of its control, declining to give further information.
An official at the Corporation told IOL, however, that the disconnection of the communications service was mainly attributed to the security measures taken by foreign forces to protect themselves against attacks by Iraqi resistance groups.
In a further measure to shield themselves against resistance attacks, US forces also force IRAQNA to demand new subscribers to provide all necessary data to the firm before buying a mobile line.
The company also demand subscribers to sign a note confirming the devices will not be used in "illegal activities".
However, all these measures are too insignificant to prevent Iraqi resistance groups from carrying out attacks to force the US occupation forces out of Iraq, due to the cheap price of lines that makes it easy to replace.