The war against Iraq may be drawing to a close but the war over its Internet future is just beginning

As with the overthrow of the Afghanistan regime by US forces, it is widely thought that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power will see the Middle Eastern country catch up with the rest of the world in terms of Internet infrastructure and use. Currently, there is limited, expensive and state-controlled Internet use in Iraq, beamed via satellite since sanctions on the country have made it unable to install pipes and networks. In the north of the country, the Kurds have set up their own system free from Baghdad control by riding on the back of satellite feeds for Turkey. It too, however, remains very costly. But any Internet construction in Iraq will inevitably take place through its assigned country-code top-level domain - .iq. The .iq domain is currently run an individual - a man called Saud Alani who gives a Baghdad telephone number yet is based in George Bush's home state of Texas. His company "the Alani corporation" is part of a group of companies all run from the same address in Richardson, Texas, including InfoCom and Valnet. All of these companies - and the .iq domain - have as their technical contact and/or owner one Bayan Elashi. Unfortunately, Mr Elashi is in federal custory in Seagoville jail, Texas, awaiting trial for allegedly funding anti-Israeli group Hamas. If found guilty he faces a crippling fine and most of the rest of his life in jail. Mr Elashi is an interesting character. A Palestinian, he moved to the US in 1977 where he took a masters degree in Computer Science at Purdue University, Indiana. He then became president and CTO of a Californian IT research company and introduced the world's first Arabic personal computer, Alraed. He is 48, married, with 5 children aged between 4 and 17.