Kidnapped in Iraq: a survivor's story

As Amir Dawoud Issa, a technician for an Egyptian cellphone firm working in Iraq's war-torn Sunni triangle, delved into the guts of a problem generator, shots rang out in the distance.

At first he didn't think much of it - distant explosions from US air raids and insurgent gun fire were a steady backdrop to his six months working in the Iraqi desert. But then he saw a vision from another age: Bedouin raiders, some on donkeys, brandishing rifles and bearing down on his crew. His pulse racing, he watched as his guards were overwhelmed before they could get to their guns. Then the bandits, wearing the checked head scarves of rural tribes, were upon him.

"They were shouting in the most terrifying, barbaric voices,'' says Mr. Issa, an Egyptian Christian from the poor Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba. "We were all forced face down into the dirt. I thought they would strip us of our valuables and kill us."

Instead, the raid was the beginning of a week in captivity for Issa and nine of his colleagues.

Their time in captivity illustrates the reach of Iraq's multifaceted insurgency and how far from central control much of the countryside remains.

Now back in Cairo, the trim 39-year-old describes an overlapping network of tribal sheikhs, criminal gangs, and Islamists who seem to have deepened their influence and spread from Fallujah to Iraq's vast Anbar province into small towns and villages.

He tells of being kept in the back rooms of homes in villages. At the end of his captivity, he was held at a "mujahideen prison" where he witnessed the interrogation of a terrified Iraqi translator for the US who told his captors which local sheikhs had met with US forces. He witnessed one of his compatriots being tortured.

Issa's experience indicates there is no knockout blow that could be delivered to Sunni insurgents by ongoing US offensives in cities like Fallujah and Ramadi. As an Arabic speaker, Issa got to know some of his captors, and all those he spoke to were Iraqis.

He's a seasoned veteran of work in dangerous places. Issa has installed mobile phone networks during Algeria's civil war and in Yemen's sometimes lawless backwaters. So when his boss approached a group of the company's managers about extending Iraq's mobile phone network along one of two main highways through the chaotic Anbar province, he didn't feel he could say no: "It was up to me."

Evidence of Iraq's chaos was all around his crew as they traveled through the sparsely populated desert between Baghdad and Syria. The sight of three headless bodies along the highway reminded them of the dangers for contractors in Iraq.

Those dangers, and the fact that no one is safe from them any longer, was brought home again Tuesday, when Margaret Hassan, the Iraq director for CARE International and a 30-year resident of Baghdad, was kidnapped after leaving her home.

Yet despite the dangers of traveling in Iraq, Issa felt relatively safe. His company, Egypt's Orascom, had no US ties and was providing a service that most in the region were eager to have.

On the morning of Sept. 22 Issa and his 26-man team - shepherded by a carload of Iraqi guards - set out from Baghdad before dawn on the 200 mile journey to one of their final transmission towers. They arrived at the tower along the main highway in the desert at about 11 a.m. All was calm, and the Iraqi guards left their weapons in their car.

Within half an hour, the kidnappers struck. One of his Iraqi colleagues tried to intervene but was lashed with a rifle butt. Issa caught a glimpse of their on-site guard, laughing with their attackers, and assumes he was set up. After frantic minutes of demanding to know who the Egyptians were, they loaded four Egyptians and five Iraqis into their cars.

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