Dialling home from Kurdistan
Location: An imaginary rogue state in Western Asia, roughly where Kurdistan is now, and similar in general ethnic & geographical character. Present day.
I have a European character (Italian, as it happens) who has been arrested on a charge of spying and is being held in an ad hoc facility in a provincial town. An earthquake caused major structural damage to the lock-up and distracted the guards, thus giving her a chance to escape from there, and she is lurking around the ruins foraging for useful stuff - food, warm clothes, etc - before taking off into the hills. In a wrecked house she comes across a functioning mobile phone. I know nothing at all about using mobiles in that part of the world and what kind of networks they might be connected to. Supposing this were real-life Turkish/Iraqi/Syrian Kurdistan, what are the chances that she could simply flash up this phone and dial home to Italy?
I really can't think of any search strategy for this other than asking somebody who knows! I've tried Googling 'mobile phone Kurdistan' and similar, but got nowhere.