Iraqi ban on Kurdistan landline calls puts lives at risk: officials
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A decision by the Iraqi authorities to force cell phone companies to cut calls to Kurdistan-based landlines puts citizens’ lives and security at risk, Kurdish officials have warned.
Police, security forces, and other emergency first responders use landlines to receive calls about accidents, security threats and crime.
The call center for Erbil Police Force usually receives up to 5,000 calls per day on its five hotlines, but when a Rudaw team visited the center on Friday, silence prevailed.
“Since these lines have been disconnected, we have faced problems, but it is the people who face even more problems,” Hogir Aziz, spokesperson for Erbil police, told Rudaw.
“People are the number one victim [for this service shutdown], because we cannot receive their calls as we should. The new situation means that we learn of accidents with a delay,” the officer said, adding that citizens used to be first to flag accidents.
Police say they may issue new phone numbers to sidestep the Iraqi-imposed ban.
The ban virtually cuts all communications between Iraq’s three mobile phone providers and Kurdistan-based landline providers.
Kurdish-based Asiacell and Korek Telecom, two cell phone providers that obtained their licenses from Iraqi communication authorities, plus Zain Telecom, have applied the measure.
Hundreds of subscribers to landline provider Newroz Telecom in Erbil and Duhok, and KurdTel users in Sulaimani, have had their calls to cell phones cut. The ban was introduced on the basis that these companies do not have the correct license from Iraqi authorities. Both companies are registered with Kurdistan’s transport and communication ministry.
Fatih Ismail Ahmad, a spokesperson for Newroz Telecom, said the ban has had a “great impact” on the firm’s services.
The Iraqi government has introduced a number of measures against the Kurdistan Region including an ongoing ban on international flights to and from its airports, imposed just days after the Kurdish vote on independence on September 25. It also placed sanctions on Kurdistan-based banks.
The Kurdistan Region has called on Baghdad to lift the bans, calling them a “collective punishment.”
Erbil and Baghdad have held talks about repealing the measures, the most recent of which took place on January 20 when KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani visits his Iraqi counterpart Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad. The two sides are yet to reach an agreement.