This honestly was my FIRST reaction when I heard about the 1st cable cut... I was like... why does this sound like the US wants to snoop on ALL comms into and out of the middle east... so snap it, splice it, redirect a mirror of the data to their data mines and then let it continue as if nothing happened.. now FOUR MORE CUT? I smell a rat... either way:
Sea cable snappage was sabotage
Middle eastern cables destroyed deliberately
By Nick Farrell: Tuesday, 19 February 2008, 7:46 AM
THE International Telecommunication Union has claimed that a spate of telecommunication outages to the Middle East were the result of sabotage.
Five undersea cables were damaged causing huge disruption to Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and south Asia.
Union spokesman Sami al-Murshed, told AFP said that while there was still an ongoing investigation into the incidents it would seem that there was a deliberate act of sabotage.
While it was possible that one cable could have been damaged by a ship's anchor the others were too deep. Besides the chances of five cables being cut within a two week period was unlikely.
Murshed said on the sidelines of a conference on cyber-crime held in Gulf state of Qatar that the cables lie at great depths under the sea and are not passed over by ships