Cybermania Takes Iran by Surprise

By Molly Moore Washington Post Foreign Service

Wednesday, July 4, 2001;

TEHRAN -- Arash Fahimi is a teenager in a nation that frowns on dating, outlaws rock music and offers a 17-year-old almost no chance for travel beyond its borders. But Fahimi, like hundreds of thousands of young Iranians, has discovered an escape from his cultural cocoon. Sitting at a computer terminal in an Internet cafe, he downloads the latest Western pop music hits and chats daily with cyber-acquaintances around the globe. He even found a girlfriend on the Internet. "I want to have a better idea of what the world is like," said Fahimi, earphones clamped under a Nike baseball cap and fingers tapping out a chat room response on his screen. "If I can't make a trip abroad, the Internet is the best way." In the Islamic Republic of Iran, where public behavior is stringently regulated and citizens fear arrest for speaking their minds, the Internet is transforming personal lifestyles and liberating public expression at a pace that a technologically handicapped bureaucracy has been unable to control. Iran lags behind much of the world in Internet use -- service became widely available only about 18 months ago. But it is now escalating so rapidly that the government has been caught off guard. Officials are drafting rules and preparing software and equipment for controlling Internet access and service, but authorities say it is unclear whether restrictions will be implemented, and if they are, how effective they would be. For now, chat rooms have become the new, uncensored recreation centers for young people with few places to socialize or express political views. Web sites offer a link for gay men and lesbians to meet in a culture where homosexuality remains taboo. They provide a forum for dissenting opinions in a country where the conservative-controlled judiciary has shut down nearly 40 reformist newspapers and magazines in the past year. They can be a conduit for sending flowers to mom or making software-related U.S. business deals despite U.S. sanctions. Internet cafes, or "coffeenets" in Iranian parlance, are opening in Tehran at the rate of about one a day, with an estimated 450 now operating, according to government and business estimates. Some private Internet service providers say the number of new subscribers each month is more than triple the number of just over a year ago. "One and one-half years ago there were two Internet cafes in Tehran," said Madjid Emami, 30, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley who returned to his homeland seven years ago and recently started Pars Online, a private Internet service provider, with a group of friends. "Now there's an Internet cafe on every corner. Even tea shops are putting computers in." Government and private service providers estimate that 350,000 to 1 million Iranians use the Internet -- mostly through universities, government agencies and Internet cafes -- up from 2,000 users five years ago. The cafes charge about $2 for an hour online. Rather than lash out at the potential evils of the Internet, many of the country's highest-ranking clerics have created their own Web sites -- as the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said -- to "answer religious questions, to introduce the jurisprudential decrees of Imam Khomeini (may Allah's blessings be upon him)" and to offer their own interpretation of Islam. But government authorities are raising concerns over the uses of the Internet and debating what to do about them. "The state is concerned with the security problems the Internet might bring. Anyone can put what they want on a site without being tracked," said Shahram Sharif, 29, a reporter who covers computer issues for the daily newspaper Hambastegi. "One day the Internet will conflict with the interests of the state. They are going to have to decide whether it will be filtered or whether they'll leave it free. Now, it's all open to question." Several weeks ago, police shut down nearly all Internet cafes in Tehran, saying they lacked operating licenses. Owners discovered the government had placed a notice in a little-read newspaper several months earlier warning them to obtain permits. All but a handful of the cafes have since been licensed and reopened, officials said. "It's the negative points of the Internet we have to fight, not the Internet itself," said Ahmad Motamedi, who heads the Ministry of Post, Telegraph and Telephone, which has the most potential authority over computer access and control. Motamedi, who said he hopes to update his agency's name -- perhaps to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology -- conceded that the government bureaucracy has not only left the Internet unregulated but has allowed private service providers to jump ahead of the government on the business front. "When I arrived last year, there had been an investment of $100 million in equipment and technology purchases," he said. "Because of the terrible bureaucracy, it was just left sitting there." As a result, private Internet providers are using the state telephone monopoly's antiquated and overloaded lines and switching stations to serve increasingly frustrated clients, many of whom say they subscribe to several providers to ensure reliable connections. Private service providers compete with government agencies, including the Defense Ministry's computer branch, to sell packages to Internet users, and vie for clients by taking out flashy display advertisements in daily newspapers. Motamedi said he sent proposed Internet regulations and guidelines to President Mohammad Khatami. Among the issues up for consideration: "We certainly have to do something regarding obscenities," and, "We shouldn't allow too much extremism." Motamedi said the government is preparing to install software filters to try to impede access to sites it deems inappropriate, but he added that even the most sophisticated programs will not create impenetrable barriers. Iranian officials say it is unclear what model of prohibitions they might adopt. Saudi Arabia, for instance, bars access to sites that contain pornography, information considered critical of Islam or the royal family, Internet telephone services and Yahoo chat rooms. China blocks sites focusing on human rights, Western publications and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. However, technology is permitting Internet users to bypass many of the restrictions. Some Iranian service providers, fearful of government crackdowns, have installed their own filters to prevent access to pornographic sites or those with religious or political sensitivities, while others have not. "We're not in the censorship business, that's [the government's] business," said Abdollah Fateh, managing director of Pars Online. "In the beginning, people worried that the government would check e-mails. But the volume of traffic is so high, that's not possible." Meanwhile, a generation of Iranian youth raised in the isolation of the post-Islamic revolution are reveling in the freedom that computers give them. Although social restrictions have eased slightly in recent years, young men and women are frequently harassed by morals police when they gather in parks or on sidewalks, conservative families confine girls' social activities to home and school, and travel outside Iran is largely limited to elites. Many users said they frequent international news Web sites to obtain an unfiltered view of their own country and use the anonymity of cyberspace to express ideas that could cause trouble with authorities in Iran. "Young people see the Internet as a gateway to the outside," said 30-year-old Ali, who works in his family's construction business by day and spends several hours a night online. "You can take a tour of the White House. You can write to Britney Spears. You can see what you're held back from seeing here. You don't feel so isolated. It's like you've given them the world." Ali met his fiancee, 23-year-old Sarah, in a chat room two years ago. Both had found dating difficult in Iran's limited social settings of coffee bars, pizza parlors and public parks. "In public, it's hard," Sarah said. "Police might say, 'Why are you talking? Why are you dressed that way?' In your home on the computer, it's comfortable and no one bothers you." © 2001 The Washington Post Company