The Power of Internet

US funds secret 'internet in a suitcase' for dissidents

Shadow mobile phone system

In February 2009, Richard Holbrooke and Lieutenant General John Allen were taking a helicopter tour over southern Afghanistan and getting a panoramic view of the mobile phone towers dotting the remote countryside, according to two officials on the flight.

By then, millions of Afghans were using mobile phones, compared with a few thousand after the 2001 invasion. Towers built by private companies had sprung up across the country.

The United States had promoted the network as a way to cultivate goodwill and encourage local businesses in a country that in other ways looked as if it had not changed much in centuries.

There was just one problem, Allen told Holbrooke, who only weeks before had been appointed special envoy to the region. With a combination of threats to phone company officials and attacks on the towers, the Taliban was able to shut down the main network in the countryside virtually at will. Local residents report that the networks are often out from 6pm until 6am, presumably to enable the Taliban to carry out operations without being reported to security forces.

The Pentagon and State Department were soon collaborating on the project to build a "shadow" mobile phone system in a country where repressive forces exert control over the official network.

Details of the network, which the military named the Palisades project, are scarce, but current and former military and civilian officials said it relied in part on mobile towers placed on protected US bases. A large tower on the Kandahar air base serves as a base station or data collection point for the network, officials said.

A senior US official said the towers were close to being up and running in the south and described the effort as a kind of 9/11 system that would be available to anyone with a mobile phone.

By shutting down mobile phone service, the Taliban had found a potent strategic tool in its asymmetric battle with US and Afghan security forces.

The United States is widely understood to use mobile phone networks in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries for intelligence gathering. And the ability to silence the network was also a powerful reminder to the local populace that the Taliban retained control over some of the most vital organs of the nation.

When asked about the system, Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for the US-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, would only confirm the existence of a project to create what he called an "expeditionary cellular communication service" in Afghanistan.

He said the project was being carried out in collaboration with the Afghan government in order to "restore 24/7 cellular access."

"As of yet the program is not fully operational, so it would be premature to go into details," Dorrian said.

Dorrian declined to release cost figures. Estimates by US military and civilian officials ranged widely, from $US50 million to $US250 million. A senior official said that Afghan officials, who anticipate taking over US bases when troops pull out, have insisted on an elaborate system.

"The Afghans wanted the Cadillac plan, which is pretty expensive," the official said.

Broad subversive effort

In May 2009, a North Korean defector named Kim met officials at the US Consulate in Shenyang, a Chinese city about 190 kilometres from North Korea, according to a diplomatic cable. Officials wanted to know how Kim, who was active in smuggling others out of the country, communicated across the border.

"Kim would not go into much detail," the cable says, but did mention the burying of Chinese mobile phones "on hillsides for people to dig up at night".

Kim said Dandong, China, and the surrounding Jilin Province "were natural gathering points for cross-border cell phone communication and for meeting sources".

The mobile phones are able to pick up signals from towers in China, said Libby Liu, head of Radio Free Asia, the US-financed broadcaster, who confirmed their existence and said her organisation uses the calls to collect information for broadcasts as well.

The effort, in what is perhaps the world's most closed nation, suggests just how many independent actors are involved in the subversive efforts. From the activist geeks on L Street in Washington to the military engineers in Afghanistan, the global appeal of the technology hints at the craving for open communication.

In a chat with a Times reporter via Facebook, Malik Ibrahim Sahad, the son of Libyan dissidents who largely grew up in suburban Virginia, said he was tapping into the internet using a commercial satellite connection in Benghazi.

"Internet is in dire need here. The people are cut off in that respect," wrote Sahad, who had never been to Libya before the uprising and is now working in support of rebel authorities. Even so, he said, "I don't think this revolution could have taken place without the existence of the World Wide Web."