For engineers, as the railways go, so goes Iraq

Those trains that do operate, do so infrequently. A ticket costs just 750 Iraqi dinars (50 cents), making it the cheapest form of transport, but few are willing to brave the journey. Just three largely empty passenger trains a week make the round trip from Baghdad to the northern city of Mosul. There's an additional passenger train that makes erratic trips between the province of Babel, just south of Baghdad, and Basra. Freight trains, the backbone of the railways, are even scarcer.

The tracks are in such poor condition that the trains travel at half speed, just 40 km/h. What should be a six-hour trip to Mosul, instead takes 10.

"The railroads are a real microcosm for the whole reconstruction issue over there," says Rick Degman, a former railway reconstruction adviser to the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority. "They've been stymied by the same things as everything else in the country."

The inability of the Iraqi government to provide a promised $3 million in funds has left a nearly rebuilt stretch of rail (with $25 million in US funds) sitting idle in southern Iraq.

In western Iraq the rails are idle as well. The US Marines did an estimated $3 million worth of damage to the tracks there during the siege of Fallujah in 2004. Farther west they have turned a crucial rail station into a US military base.

The vetting process for contractors has at times been haphazard. The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) hired an ex-felon to provide spare parts for locomotives with predictable results.

"Any due diligence would have told you not to give a contract to this guy, but they did and he's delivered nothing on his contract," says Gordon Mott, the chief railway adviser to the CPA through 2004.

But like so much of the reconstruction effort here, the primary obstacle has simply been lack of security. The rails have become a favorite target for the insurgency. Three senior managers, five middle managers, and more than 20 railway employees have been killed by insurgents.

An ambitious project to renovate train stations throughout the country faltered when, rather than expose themselves to insurgent attacks, the US Army Corps of Engineers farmed out oversight to local contractors.

"It certainly appears that a lot of our well-intended money went down the drain on these station renovations because there was no one willing or able to actually provide meaningful supervision," says Mr. Mott.

But despite all of the setbacks and attacks, Iraqi and US officials involved with the railways are optimistic about the future of Iraq. Indeed, railway workers here share an outlook with their peers the world over. They are a unique breed with an almost fanatical commitment to making trains run.

"Many of our employees have died, but we will not stop," says Mr. Rubai, the Iraqi railways spokesman. "We insist on keeping the trains running."

While one doesn't have to look too hard to find a deep cynicism among many Iraqis, here on the rails, pessimists are surprisingly hard to come by.

"We could be the trading capital that connects Asia, the Middle East and Europe," says Rubai. "Can you imagine?"

Page: 1 | 2