Snip from an article by Carey Voss in Localist:
Since the military provides just 6 to 12 computers for every 1,000 or so troops, time limits of 10 to 15 minutes per day are often enforced at Morale Welfare Recreation Cafés (the complicated name for military internet cafés). Anyone who sorts through spam, reads forwarded articles and jokes, then tries to respond to “real” email knows 15 minutes isn’t enough. Josh Hines, a soldier from Conway who recently returned from Iraq , confirmed that the Army lacks internet services and lamented the scarcity of entertainment options. It should come as no surprise, then, that some enterprising military personnel have engineered an alternative. Hajjinets, the common term for troop-owned ISPs, have sprung to life on almost every base around Iraq. A typical Hajjinet is built and maintained by one or two soldiers and can provide nearly 24-hour internet access (until the region is stabilized and electrical lines can be installed, generators must occasionally be powered down for maintenance). Most Hajjinets are small, serving between 20 and 30 troops, but ISPs serving as many as 300 are known to exist. In a country wracked by war, where even the capital city receives only intermittent electricity, where people’s lives are in constant peril, and where even basic necessities are scarce, this is no small victory.
A Hajjinet’s key elements are satellite service from an international provider, a satellite dish to send and receive data, and a central location inside a base where network hardware is safe from attack. Like an internet-age Frankenstein, a Hajjinet’s hardware must be purchased from an international source, shipped in, then cobbled together by military personnel, many of whom have little previous experience running a network.
Link to article. No credit given for image, courtesy Localistmagazine.com. A linguistic aside: Here’s more on the etymology behind the word “hajji.” Some consider its use by western military personnel to be an ethnic slur.
Hey, look, there’s a hajjinet.com with info on some troop-built ISPs in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Update: Ah, the photo above shows up here on hajjinet.com, too. It’s captioned as “The PantherNET NOC” in Camp Habbaniyah, Iraq, and “believe it or not, it works.” The photo appears to have been shot by Dave Coughanour, the soldier and “hajjinet sysadmin” who runs hajjinet.com.
Reader comment: Shahid Ahmad wrote in to express concern over use of the term “hajji”:
Muslims (I hate to use the apologist prefix “moderate”) are
understandably sensitive nowadays, with a lot of language now assuming
unwelcome Orwellian shades.Any “nickname” for a group of people demeans and limits that group. In
the post 9/11 world, the term “hajji”, which to Muslims means a person
who has undertaken one of the pillars of Islam, a pilgrimage to Mecca
at the appointed time, has been appropriated by the US military. It is
used to indicate any Muslim, in particular, Arabs (referred to as
towel-heads in Gulf War 1), but now extended to include all Muslims,
whether or not they have undertaken the hajj.Obviously, if the US military had used the term “Iraqinet”, that would
have been totally acceptable. If they had used the term “Saddamnet”,
that would have been humorous, and largely inoffensive too. The term
“Hajjinet” is ironic for sure, but deeply prejudiced and serves only
to deepen the gulf between the West and the Muslim world.In the eyes of Muslims – and many Europeans and indeed, some
Americans, the US military has lost a lot of its lustre since World
War 2, but especially since 9/11.The use and abuse of language plays a large role in the shaping of
opinion. We all need to be very careful what we allow to creep into
our conversations and discourse at a time when what is needed most is
understanding, respect and dialogue. The construct “Hajjinet” is most
unhelpful.It’s much easier to kill a child (let’s not mention the ethnicity or
religion, a child is a child is a child) when they can be labelled
“hajji” and not “human”. The first step in making the destruction of a
life easier is to dehumanise and depersonalise that person.p.s. I used the term “towel-head” – the more common, but no less
offensive term also used was “rag-head”.On many online discussions, Muslims are nowadays disparagingly
referred to as “hajjis” more frequently by Americans and “jihadis” by
the British. It’s not hugely different to the disparaging term
“Crusader” when used in reference to Western troops in Muslim lands.And I dug this out from the FAQ page
on hajjinet.com:“I am sure this one is going to offend some people, but it shouldn’t.
Its not meant to be a racial slur and I have yet to meet a local that
takes it as such.”That’s besides the point. It has become a slur through derogatory
usage. Why not use a better term?