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Re-opened Iraqi railway a sign of progress
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sept 10, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The newly revived railway
between Baghdad and Fallujah snakes across the western Iraqi desert, through
a landscape of burned-out tanks, abandoned cars and collapsed buildings.
For the last month, Captain Imed Hassun has taken pride in once again
driving the route between the capital and the former Islamic State group
stronghold.
“I didn’t think that a train would come back here again,” says Hassun, who
has been a driver for 30 years but had until recently been redeployed
elsewhere.
While government forces expelled IS from Fallujah in 2016, the line still
bears the scars of the group’s two-year occupation of the city and its
environs, including mines it planted along the tracks.
Before the jihadists’ rise, Hassun and his co-driver steered the Baghdad-
Fallujah route during some of the most turbulent times in Iraq’s history.
They had even kept trains running during much of the combat between
American forces and Sunni militia in the mid 2000s, and the sectarian clashes
that preceded the rise of IS.
But while happy to be back on this line, Hassun — clad in the marine blue
and white uniform of Iraq’s railways — proceeds with caution.
So far, he has successfully pushed his new Chinese-built diesel train to
100 kilometres (60 miles) per hour.
But he dare not go faster, as the rails have only just been brought back
into basic working service by a team of dedicated employees.
– ‘People laughed’ –
“When we started the work, people mocked us,” says Yussef Thabet, the chief
railroad engineer in Fallujah.
“But as soon as the first convoy entered the station, people were forced to
believe it — and now they demand more trains,” he adds.
There remains much work to do.
MORE/MR/ 1026 hrs
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Fallujah’s old station is still in ruins, replaced for now by a pre-
fabricated structure and plastic chairs. But for passengers, the revitalised
line is a vital link to the capital and the only alternative to polluted and
gridlocked roads.
Road travel is frequently made even less appealing by security personnel
forcing traffic into unexplained detours.
For years, medical student Ali Ahmad took the minibus every week to a
university campus in Baghdad.
Now in his final year, he finds taking the train aids his study.
“I revise in an air-conditioned carriage for an hour and a half, without
being plagued by cigarette smoke,” he says.
In the cafe car, a screen displays the outside temperature at 43 degrees
Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit), and the train’s speed at 91 kilometres per
hour.
On the journey back from Baghdad, 28-year-old Sinan Majid has his hands
full of boxes.
He has bought clothes to stock his shop in Fallujah.
“With the train, we know the time of travel. And there is no delay,” Majid
tells AFP, sitting at a table with friends.
For Lamia Ahmed too, the train is a godsend. The 39-year-old primary school
teacher can rely on it to get her to Baghdad for administrative tasks,
without worrying that offices will close before she arrives.
And above all, enthuses Omar Khalil, a 38-year-old hairdresser who has come
to Baghdad to buy parts for his car, a ticket costs 2,000 dinars (less than
two dollars, or 1.5 euros).
“A minibus ticket costs 3,500 dinars and a (shared) taxi up to 10,000,” he
adds, lounging in one of the train’s red seats.
– ’90 percent damaged’ –
MORE/MR/ 1026 hrs
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The train leaves Fallujah every day at 6:45 am to travel the 65 kilometres to
the capital, before returning at 3:00 pm, a time judged to best suit civil
servants and students.
“An average of 250 travellers make the return journey each day,” says Abdel
Mutalleb Saleh, transport manager for Anbar province.
Iraq has 2,000 kilometres of railways and its network was connected to
Istanbul in 1940.
The country plans a major revival of its network.
For now, the line between Baghdad and Akashat on the Syrian border only
works as far as Fallujah, says Taleb Jawad Kazem, deputy director general of
Iraq’s railways.
But the lines to Basra at the southern tip of the country, and to the
Shiite holy city of Karbala in central Iraq, never stopped operating.
And work is under way to reopen the links to Baiji, Tikrit and Samarra to
the north of Baghdad, adds Kazem.
In 2016, Iraq spent $137 million (118 million euros) on 12 new trains from
China.
But there is a long way to go before the network can host the 72 daily
train journeys that were made in the heyday of Iraq’s railways, before the UN
slapped sanctions on the country in the 1990s.
Enormous work will be required to ensure trains once again reach Syria —
or even Mosul, Iraq’s second city and another former IS stronghold.
“The rails, stations, equipment, bridges and tunnels have sustained damage
of more than 90 percent” in areas where the jihadists operated, Kazem tells
AFP.
And on the rehabilitated routes, another danger lurks — demoralised
children from slums built close to the tracks.
As each train passes, small groups of boys throw stones, chipping the
windows.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1026 hrs