The state of Iraq’s transport sector

Harry Barnes MP and Gary Kent for LFIQ met Ghasib Hassan, an Executive
Committee member of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, and former
President of the Railway and Aviation Union last week to be briefed on his union's activities.

Ghasib began by saying that they had been banned by Saddam in 1987 and
had begun organising after his fall but there was initial hostility from the US authorities. He recalled how one US officer had pulled a gun on another union leader. But eventually the unions established their right to organise an formed workers' committees for train drivers and organised open conferences but still faced problems from managers loyal to the old Ba'athist order.

He said that the railways were in a very poor state due to the 2003 war and the subsequent social disorder as expensive spare parts were stolen from unguarded depots. Railworkers went on strike in January in protest at the terrorist murders of railway workers and have now ended their strike and are being paid even though they cannot leave the depots because the state cannot guarantee their safety.

He told us that the insurgents had murdered one worker, beheaded him, placed his head in his stomach and displayed it where everyone could see it as an example for others.

Harry Barnes spoke of his experiences with the British-Irish Peace Train movement which mobilised popular support against the IRA, which attacked the Belfast-Dublin rail line to try to shift freight to the roads where drivers could be extorted for protection money.

The railway network, which extends only from Basra to Baghdad and Mosul, is suffering huge problems of under-investment with backward trains, stations, carriages and everything and requires new technology but he does not feel that privatisation should be supported in key services such as rail, water and electricity.

The situation in the Iraqi aviation sector was equally dire. It effectively ceased to operate at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991 when Saddam moved the Iraqi national fleet to other countries or ordered that jets stayed where there were marooned. The fleet had now rusted away to nothing.

He looked forward to the day when all Iraqi airports could be placed under civilian control and spoke of a massive project by the Transport Ministry to develop rail and aviation networks for the transport of goods and people in addition to the relatively well-developed road network but that this was held up by the terrorist problem.