Iraq's Only Known Billionaire Brought in Wireless, Hires Women

Faruk Mustafa Rasool first saw a mobile phone in 1998 while he was lying in a London hospital bed recovering from quadruple heart bypass surgery. Ignoring his doctors’ advice to rest, he started figuring out how to bring the device to his native Iraq.

Faruk was soon smuggling phones and transmitters over the Turkish border into his hometown of Sulaymaniyah, in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, according to his friend Shwan Taha. He built one of the country’s first wireless networks, something that once could have gotten him thrown in prisonSaddam Hussein banned mobile phones to isolate and better control the citizens of his totalitarian state. Read more...