] The union has made about 3,000 masks, and an unknown
] number of people have taken up the call and made their
] own, Ismael said.
]
] The scientists came up with the concept by taking apart
] Iraqi army gas masks imported from the former Yugoslavia.
] The tight-fitting rubber masks, with glass eyepieces,
] have activated charcoal filters in metal canisters that
] hang from the front.

My quest for the origin of the Iraqi gas masks continues . . .

In this article, it's not clear whether they're talking about new or old gas masks, but the statement that Yugoslavia was exporting gas masks to Iraq is intriguing, especially because of other reports that certain chemical protection equipment was marked in Russian... It makes me wonder whether the observers may have seen Cyrillic lettering and assumed that it was Russian, when it was actually some other language such as Serbian (The Croatians use the western alphabet that we do, but the Serbians use the Russian "Cyrillic" alphabet).

It may sound "conspiracy theory-ish", but would it really surprise anyone if it was discovered that there was a link between the Iraqi government and the Serbian mafia?