frequent SAS visitor to Basra during the early months. ‘The Brits were looking over their shoulder and asking “when can we pack up and go home?”’ Another SAS man comments in a similar but more caustic vein, ‘They were just doing what we’d done in Kosovo, which was to fuck about and count the days until they went home.’
Given the generally quiet nature of the British patch in southern Iraq at this early stage, officers at MND South East HQ were not too keen on the special forces stirring things up. In any case, the challenge for the SAS squadron and its growing contingent of ‘enablers’ was how they could make an impact on an increasingly violent situation in the capital. They would struggle throughout 2004 to answer that question. The new British mission and deployment was codenamed Operation CRICHTON, a title that remained in use until 2009 when their stay in Iraq ended. Not long after CRICHTON was agreed in Whitehall, a new codename was agreed for the SF squadron and its supporting team in Baghdad: Task Force Black.
4
BUILDING NETWORKS
During the early weeks of 2004 a band of construction workers plied their trade across central Iraq. They ran big risks, not least because they were installing generators at each of the sites they completed, and generators were extremely valuable in that power-starved country. The work they were doing involved hundreds of sites in Baghdad and would eventually extend to 1300 across the country. In some places they made use of existing structures – such as masts or tall buildings – in others the bright red and white painted towers that they needed were brought in through Kuwait. The workers in question were putting up a mobile phone network.
Several months after the invasion of Iraq, bids had been invited for those who wanted to install the new communications system. At the time of the invasion, the fixed phone system provided around 800,000 lines to the country’s 26 million people. Naturally the prevalence of telephones was higher among government officials and their cronies, and naturally also the main government phone nodes had been targeted during the invasion. Mobile phone operators therefore saw a huge opportunity – an open market. Three contractors were eventually chosen, operating in the south, centre and north of the country. In the centre, which included Baghdad, the mobile phone company calling itself Iraqna was ready to begin operations in February 2004.
During the early years of the network it would grow nationally at a rate of more than 100,000 new subscribers per month. The birth of mobile telephony might therefore have been seen as one of the rare success stories of the Coalition Provisional Authority phase of government. Inevitably, though, there were some who saw ways in which mobile phones might be deployed to kill people. Their use as triggering devices for roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) soon became a standard tactic. The phenomenal growth of Iraqna would, in time, provide opportunities for the Coalition to turn the tables on the insurgency, but early in 2004 few had the vision to see this.
For one young American, the new mobile network was to exert a lethal attraction. Nick Berg came to Iraq hoping to make big money erecting phone masts. He was a lone figure in the tide of corporate gold-diggers flooding the country in pursuit of fat construction or security contracts. Moving between cheap Iraqi hotels at a time when executives from the big firms were already shielded by convoys of armed security guards, Berg stood out as a naïve, even suicidal, figure. Both American soldiers and ordinary Iraqis warned him of the dangers. Having left the country in February, he returned in March and was arrested in Mosul by the Iraqi police. He was sprung by American officials in April and told to leave. But Berg did not get out, returning instead to a Baghdad hotel, and soon became the victim of one of the kidnap gangs that flourished
Given the generally quiet nature of the British patch in southern Iraq at this early stage, officers at MND South East HQ were not too keen on the special forces stirring things up. In any case, the challenge for the SAS squadron and its growing contingent of ‘enablers’ was how they could make an impact on an increasingly violent situation in the capital. They would struggle throughout 2004 to answer that question. The new British mission and deployment was codenamed Operation CRICHTON, a title that remained in use until 2009 when their stay in Iraq ended. Not long after CRICHTON was agreed in Whitehall, a new codename was agreed for the SF squadron and its supporting team in Baghdad: Task Force Black.
4
BUILDING NETWORKS
During the early weeks of 2004 a band of construction workers plied their trade across central Iraq. They ran big risks, not least because they were installing generators at each of the sites they completed, and generators were extremely valuable in that power-starved country. The work they were doing involved hundreds of sites in Baghdad and would eventually extend to 1300 across the country. In some places they made use of existing structures – such as masts or tall buildings – in others the bright red and white painted towers that they needed were brought in through Kuwait. The workers in question were putting up a mobile phone network.
Several months after the invasion of Iraq, bids had been invited for those who wanted to install the new communications system. At the time of the invasion, the fixed phone system provided around 800,000 lines to the country’s 26 million people. Naturally the prevalence of telephones was higher among government officials and their cronies, and naturally also the main government phone nodes had been targeted during the invasion. Mobile phone operators therefore saw a huge opportunity – an open market. Three contractors were eventually chosen, operating in the south, centre and north of the country. In the centre, which included Baghdad, the mobile phone company calling itself Iraqna was ready to begin operations in February 2004.
During the early years of the network it would grow nationally at a rate of more than 100,000 new subscribers per month. The birth of mobile telephony might therefore have been seen as one of the rare success stories of the Coalition Provisional Authority phase of government. Inevitably, though, there were some who saw ways in which mobile phones might be deployed to kill people. Their use as triggering devices for roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) soon became a standard tactic. The phenomenal growth of Iraqna would, in time, provide opportunities for the Coalition to turn the tables on the insurgency, but early in 2004 few had the vision to see this.
For one young American, the new mobile network was to exert a lethal attraction. Nick Berg came to Iraq hoping to make big money erecting phone masts. He was a lone figure in the tide of corporate gold-diggers flooding the country in pursuit of fat construction or security contracts. Moving between cheap Iraqi hotels at a time when executives from the big firms were already shielded by convoys of armed security guards, Berg stood out as a naïve, even suicidal, figure. Both American soldiers and ordinary Iraqis warned him of the dangers. Having left the country in February, he returned in March and was arrested in Mosul by the Iraqi police. He was sprung by American officials in April and told to leave. But Berg did not get out, returning instead to a Baghdad hotel, and soon became the victim of one of the kidnap gangs that flourished
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