February 19, 2008 / by emptywheel

 

Or Maybe Those Cables WERE Cut

Remember those four five six who knows how many telecom cables to the Middle East and South Asia that were cut? Ryan Singel finds a UN official suggesting at least four of them may well have been cut intentionally.

The five underseas cables that were cut or went out of service in the Middle East in recent weeks might have been sabotaged, an officer at the International Telecommunication Union told the Agence France-Presse.

"We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago," the UN agency’s head of development, Sami al-Murshed, told AFP.[…]

Some experts doubt the prevailing view that the cables were cut by accident, especially as the cables lie at great depths under the sea and are not passed over by ships," Murshed said on the sidelines of a conference on cyber-crime held in Gulf state of Qatar.

(I don’t know if this is his source, but it’ll suffice for a link.)

Let’s see. Since the cables were cut, Hamas agreed to close up its borders with Egypt, Pakistan’s rigged election wasn’t rigged enough to save Musharraf, and the Saudi Foreign Minister has been on a "for your ears only" tour around the world. Any of those look like probable explanations?

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2008/02/19/or-maybe-those-cables-were-cut/