In the ancient world, owning a white elephant made a King look good. In truth, the white elephant was a major liability for the palace. The food and upkeep for the white elephant vastly outweighed its usefulness to the King, so really it was a liability. But the King was stuck; he'd already sold the value of the beast to the masses. 

The "accidental" cable cut sham being fed to the mainstream by many Middle Eastern emirs, and being swallowed whole by the masses, is a modern day example of the problem with white elephants. In the past week, there have been four, "inexplicable" cable cuts — so now we have a herd.

Of course there is a real explanation as to why large swaths of the Middle East, North Africa and India have suffered a massive telecommunications infrastructure collapse — but the emirs must keep any sign of weakness at bay. From Mathaba.net:

Much of the Middle East and West Asia, including the Gulf Arab region, Egypt, Sri Lanka and West India were plunged into a virtual internet blackout since Wednesday when two undersea cables were cut near Alexandria, on Egypt’s north coast, supplying communications to Europe and North America. 

Repeat: this is the 4th undersea telecommunications cable to be cut in less than a week.

Qatar Telecom (Qtel) said on Sunday the cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) island of Das on Friday.

The cause of damage is not yet clear, but ArabianBusiness.com has been told unofficially the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship’s anchor cutting the cable, the implausible theory touted by European and American media networks.

Not something you can send a repairman out to fix:

Physical breaks to undersea communications cables take at the very least several days and on occasion weeks to repair, due to the technical difficulties involved and requirement of specialized cable ships to reach the scene. Weather, logistics and locations affect the time required to effect a repair. 

I am hearing a host of intriguing theories from various federal sources as to who is responsible. One of the more practical realities comes from a soldier in Iraq. 

"That Internet cable that was severed in the Mediterrain Sea (sp?) really has caused havoc for email for the troops here."

This despite the fact that some media reports say U.S. occupied Iraq was not affected. 

ABC approaches the crisis from a technological perspective: Analyzing the Internet Collapse.

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare–indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.

This kind of damage is rarely such a deep concern in the United States and Europe. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are crisscrossed so completely with fast fiber networks that a break in one area typically has no significant effect. Net traffic simply uses one of many possible alternate destinations to reach its goal.

Not so with the route connecting Europe to Egypt, and from there to the Middle East. Today, just three major data cables stretch from Italy to Egypt and run down the Suez Canal, and from there to much of the Middle East. (A separate line connects Italy with Israel.) A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling. 

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