A Railway's Painful Rebirth

Checkpoint Baghdad

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Babak Dehghanpisheh

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Newsweek

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