The Hijaz Train Station

*Click here for a larger picture*

Ever since I was in Syria in September I have had a small wish to see the Hijaz railway station. I have read a lot about the railway and wanted to see its train station in Damascus even though I had been told it was not much to see. I got my chance when I went to Damascus a second time in late November.

The station lies in the end of al-Nasr Street, a straight walk from the entrance of the famous Souq al-Hamidiyya by the Citadel. After quick walk I came to the only building that could be the train station. The building looked older than the surrounding buildings and a big train was parked outside. It was not the most impressive building in the world, but interesting enough. The inside however offered a small disappointment. The building had been turned into, or contained, a small and not very impressive book shop. The book shop only offered titles in Arabic and did not have the biggest selection of books. A book cover picturing the head of George W. Bush as the dot in a question mark offered however a minor amusement. The windows of the building saved some of the the impression. They were made up of glass in many colours and gave the inside of the building a very colourful atmosphere.

I was also allowed to see the back of the station where I had a tiny hope of seeing some railroad tracks. In stead I gazed upon a huge hole, garbage and a small unimpressive bridge in the horizon. I did not ask anybody, but I guessed there were plans to add another section to the building, apparently not a very small one either if I should believe the displayed model. According to my slighty outdated Lonely Planet guide book for the Middle East will this new terminal be the terminus of a new Damascus-Beirut railway line.- The current old station is the small building in the front.- In the back of the station where the new terminal will be built.

If you want to learn more about the railway see this website.

No End in Sight

No End in Sight is an award-winning American documentary from 2007 on the current war in Iraq. It provides a chilling portrayal of the Iraqi war and the incompetence and ignorance of inner circle of the Bush administration. The main focus of the film is the two months before the invasion in March 2003, and the two-three months after. It views this period as the most critical with the looting of Baghdad, the insufficient number of American soldiers, the lack of planning the war itself and the decisions that would create the insurgency. It tells the story of a leadership bent on a quick fantasy war with virtually no real plans for the aftermath.

During World War II the United States started planning the occupation of Germany two years in advance, but the Bush administration didn’t create the organisation that would manage the occupation of Iraq until 60 days before the invasion.

It shows a leadership who did not listen to and ignored its own wide range of military and political experts and appointed people with no knowledge of Iraq or the region, who did not speak any Arabic and who had almost no contact with neither Iraq nor the Iraqis themselves. Some barely visited Iraq.

In addition to the many mistakes it points out, the documentary literally highlights three “faithful policy decision” as very grave and important. All of them made by L. Paul Bremer, the “czar of Iraq”, during his ten first days in work when still in Washington D.C.:

1. Stopping the formation of an interim Iraqi government
2. De-Ba’athification
3. Disbanding the Iraqi Military

The documentary labels the last as the most severe:

Overnight Bremer rendered unemployed, and thereby infuriated, half a million armed men. Equivalent to firing over five million people in the United States. And so these men rather than helping to prevent an insurgency, in stead created one.

The documentary basically sums up of all the main controversies and criticism around the war. In that regard is does not really offer anything very new and if you have followed the war you have probably heard most of it before. The interesting thing, however, is who you hear it from and how it connects the dots. The people interviewed is a number of high-ranking officials, diplomats, experts, former soldiers and journalists; many who were deeply involved in planning of the war and the occupation itself. What the film’s trailer calls “the ultimate insiders”.

The director of the film is Charles H. Ferguson, an originally supporter of the war with a Ph.D. in political science from MIT. It is his first film.

The documentary has recieved very good reviews since its release in January 2007. Time Magazine called it “without question” the most important film you could see in 2007. A very recent review in the Norwegian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique describes it as one of those documentaries that might really influence public opinion (in the US) or even change history.

This is no Michael Moore documentary. This is a real documentary, and it is good, well-made and highly recommendable. To end with a quote from Roger Ebert’s review:

No, I am distinctly not comparing anyone to Hitler, but I cannot help being reminded of the stories of him in his Berlin bunker, moving nonexistent troops on a map, and issuing orders to dead generals.

What happened if you unsuccessfully tried to run away from slavery

In Michael B. Oren’s newest book, Power, Faith and Fantasy – America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, he quotes what Thomas Nicholson witnessed after he and 14 other American seamen had been enslaved by corsairs in the Mediterranean in February 1809. The corsairs had taken them back to Algiers where they had mistreated them badly and paraded them down the street and sold them as slaves at auction. Oren quotes Nicholsen’s description of what happened if anyone tried to escape:

After they had stripped the sufferer naked, they inserted the iron pointed stake into the lower termination of the vertebrae, and thence forced it up near his back bone, until it appeared between the shoulders, avoiding the vital parts. The stake was then raised in the air and the poor sufferer exposed to the view of other slaves, writhing in … insupportable agony.