Archives » Friday, December 19, 2008
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Newsweek
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Dec 19, 2008 03:12 PM
By Jessica Ramirez
The news was gruesome, but Sa’aid Gummar Al-Quraishi had come to expect
it. A train from Mosul that was bound for Baghdad would not show up as
scheduled. Debris on the track forced some of the train employees to
get off and clear the path. When they did, they were ambushed. One by
one, the crew was shot. Some were also beheaded. Others had their
stomachs sliced open and filled with rocks. When the gunmen were done,
they set the train on fire. “Nothing like that [had] ever happened in
the history of the railways, says Al-Quraishi, who was working as a
station conductor at the time.
It
has been four years since that incident, and Iraq’s railways, which
came to a halt during the war, have reopened two lines in the last two
months. There is now a Friday train to Samarra and a commuter train,
Baghdad’s first, which makes two round trips a day between the Central
Baghdad Station and the District of Dora. Railway workers consider
these the first signs of progress for an industry trying to recover
from the looting, murders and bombings that ravaged it after the
U.S-led invasion. In a larger sense, they also reflect the long-term
impact of conflict and the struggle to get a country back on track.
Dhafir
Salim Sheet says that for many railway workers the train is in their
blood. Sheet has been a devout employee of the Iraqi Republic Railways
Company, the government-owned railway operator, for nearly 19 years.
“My life is linked to this machine,” he said, patting the dashboard of
his commuter train as it pulled out of the Baghdad Station earlier this
week. This is why several employees kept train lines running in spite
of an imminent war, he says. It is who they are, and for many, how they
died.
Construction on what would become Iraq’s railway
system began in the early 1900s, when the area that is now Iraq was a
part of the Ottoman Empire. It expanded under the control of the
British mandate after World War I. The Iraqi government eventually
bought the system from the British, and by the late 1950s the lines
covered more than 1,200 miles from north to south, and stretched into
neighboring countries like Turkey and Syria. The dome-shaped Central
Baghdad Station, fashioned after the Parliament House in Delhi, served
as the epicenter and offered a bank, a post office and a saloon. When
the Iran-Iraq war began in 1980 Iraqi soldiers would depart the
station, traveling by railway to the front lines. Before leaving,
several dozen inscribed their names on the station benches to remind
others that they had been there.
While the Iran-Iraq war hurt
the railways, the Gulf War and a decade of U.N. economic sanctions that
followed crippled it. All international lines were frozen, the
Basra-Baghdad line was severely damaged during air raids and several
key bridges were destroyed. Saddam Hussein then turned to several of
the remaining trains to transport soldiers and weapons within the
country. By the time the U.S.-led invasion began in 2003, the railways
had lost much of their luster. Train travel was a necessary means of
transport for some people, but not a favored one. Still, little
prepared train employees like Sheet and Al-Quraishi for what was about
to happen.
The looting was extraordinary. Several stations
were practically ripped apart, as were the trains. At the Baghdad
Station, gold-plated toilets, curtains and train parts were taken from
Saddam’s personal train, and the inside of the station was ransacked.
Railroad tracks across the country were bombed or stripped, mostly of
valuable steel and copper. Sheet drove some of the trains that managed
to make it between Baghdad and Basra during the war. He carried mostly
cargo for coalition forces, he says, and his train was bombed at least
17 times. He was one of the lucky ones. Al-Quraishi estimates that from
the start of the U.S.-led invasion through the end of 2007, more than
100 employees were injured, abducted or killed. Many more fled the
country.
U.S. forces began a nationwide renovation project in
2004 that cost more than $200 million. The Baghdad station, for
example, required the removal of four feet of sewage from the basement.
With the help of the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers, a new generator and
backup generator were installed. The station bank, post office and
ticketing office were also renovated. “When we first went there it
wasn’t operable at all,” says Lt. Col. Robert Nash, the U.S. Army
Corps. of Engineers officer who worked with the Iraqis on the project.
The changes were enough to get the station running again, but
many of the workers say they still need spare parts, refurbished cars
and functioning tracks. The obstacles are evident in Sheet’s new route
between the Baghdad Station and the Dora district. The train rarely
hits more than 40 miles per hour. On the first train ride Newsweek
took, the train only made it five of the roughly 15 miles it takes to
get to Dora before the engine began malfunctioning and the train had to
turn back. On the second trip, the train made it 100 feet before Sheet
had to stop it and have an employee manually redirect the track in the
appropriate direction. The areas where rails overlap streets have also
become a source of trouble. “The cars are supposed to be 50 meters from
the railroad. Instead the cars are jumping in front of the train,” says
Al-Quraishi. Children throw rocks at the windows and sheepherders usher
flocks across the tracks, ignoring Sheet’s blaring whistle. There are
also the makeshift houses that line parts of the route. They are so
close in some places that a passenger could easily reach out and touch
them.
Even with all these problems, the biggest issue is
customers. Train fare is 1,000 Iraqi dinars--roughly 80 cents. Yet, few
bother to ride because there are some concerns about safety.
Al-Quraishi says they would not have reinstated a line if they did not
believe the security situation was very good. So far, they have had no
incidents and he is hopeful that better days are ahead. Part of that
hope is based on an announcement made by Iraqi Republic Railways
earlier this year regarding future plans to invest $6 billion in
railway infrastructure. But Hakim Arrab, one of the guards on the
train, is not so confident. He is worried about IEDs and wonders how
the train ever reached this state of disarray “in a country of such
riches.” “For us, our work is comfortable and we love to serve people,”
he says. “But there is no hope in progressing for the railroads or the
country.”
After more than 30 years of near-constant conflict,
it’s hard to imagine Iraq any other way. Arrab is, after all, risking
his life on a train that barely functions and only transports a handful
of people per day. Even so, he admits there is something in the attempt
to rise again. So he shows up to work each day. Just in case a
decades-old dream of renewal for a railway system—and a country—becomes
a reality.
--With additional reporting by Sa’ad Al-Izzi
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