Once rare, cellphones now wildly popular in capital
By Zaid Sabah and Jim Michaels, USA TODAY

BAGHDAD — The cellphone craze that overtook Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein continues.
Mostly banned under Saddam, cellphones are everywhere now in Baghdad. Nationwide, there are 7.1 million cellphone users, according to the U.S. State Department. People here rely on phones to text-message traffic reports to friends or keep track of family members navigating dangerous streets.

Iraq has struggled to rebuild its land line system. In a country of 26 million, only about 1 million residences have land line phones, according to the State Department.

Iraqis have become so attached to their phones the models are known here by nicknames. The Nokia 6610 ($150) is the "bear" because of its shape; the Nokia 6680 ($270) is called the "sniper" because the camera lens reminds people of a rifle scope.

Some people, especially the young, use their phones to store music. Ahmad Basim, a 16-year-old high school student, has pop star George Michael and rapper 50 Cent, along with an extensive collection of Arabic artists, on his phone.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Iraq | Baghdad | Saddam Hussein | State Department | Muqtada al-Sadr | Fallujah | Arabic | Samarra | Cent | Nokia | Baathist | George Michael | Sunni Kurd
"When I sit with my friends, we listen to these songs to spend a good time far away from the mayhem of our country," he says.

Iraqi politicians typically download the national anthem —Mawtini, or "My Homeland" — as their ring tones.

Others Iraqis have used their telephones to express their religious or ethnic identities — and that can be dangerous in Iraq.

"Last year in our final exams in college, the phone of a female student rang with a Shiite religious song during the exam," recalls Ayman Ali, 23, a cigarette company employee. "The professor was a Sunni Kurd and a former Baathist, and he became very angry and started shouting at the girl, telling her what a bad song this is."

There are graver dangers presented by ring tones. Ali says police or militia fighters at checkpoints sometimes demand to hear the ring tones of motorists and passengers to determine their sympathies. A song praising the Sunni insurgency, for example, could raise the suspicions of police from the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry.

Othman al-Kubaisi, 23, a food market owner, says he has replaced his religious songs with a normal ring sound because of the danger at checkpoints.

The bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra in February touched off waves of religious violence and has put much of Baghdad, which has a mixed population, on edge.

Waleed Tariq, 36, who works for a transportation company, said he used to carry an ecumenical mix of songs on his cellphone. Some songs praised radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; others honored the Sunni and foreign insurgents who took over Fallujah in 2004. "I deleted them after the Samarra bombing," Tariq says.