Finding work is a tough job in Iraq

Baghdad: Night after night, hour after hour, Hussain Ali Mohammad sits alone inside the medical clinic that employs him as a guard.

It is not the job the 26-year-old envisioned when he earned his teaching degree, but it's the best he can do in a country teeming with educated, ambitious people and sorely lacking in jobs that pay living wages.

Years of political turmoil, US-imposed sanctions and war have devastated Iraq's workforce. Hundreds of thousands of skilled professionals have left the country. Businesses have closed. Insurgents and thugs have targeted professors, doctors and businesspeople, killing them, abducting them or driving them out of their jobs and out of Iraq.

Even as sectarian violence subsides, the options are limited for those who remain.

Dignity

Shiite Muslims, who say they were held back from good jobs under Saddam Hussain's Sunni-led regime, complain that corruption and violence now limit their opportunities. Sunni Arabs say they are discriminated against as payback for Saddam's past mistreatment of Shiites, who now dominate the government.

"I feel this job doesn't suit my dignity or personality, being a guard in a clinic, passing the night between four walls talking to nobody," said Mohammad. "I think it is difficult to find the job I would like in Iraq. I wish I could leave Iraq, but it is not that easy."

Iraq's government estimates unemployment at 17.6 per cent and underemployment at 38 per cent, but those are considered conservative figures. The problem is seen as one of the major threats to the country's long-term recovery. To make matters more precarious, about 60 per cent of the population is under 30 years of age - and many young people are ripe for recruitment into criminal life if the money is right.

Stagnation

"A lot of these people are pretty much stagnant with low-income wages," said Col. Gabe Lifschitz of the US military's Gulf Region Division, composed of military and civilian personnel working on reconstruction projects in Iraq.

Without middle-class people creating opportunities for low-wage earners to move up the economic ladder, Lifschitz said, Iraq's economy would flat-line, breeding anger and discontent.

"The way to go in and turn that around is, you want to have somebody who is employed. That person who is employed will have less likelihood of becoming an insurgent."

But middle-class educated Iraqis such as Mohammad say their job-seeking skills are stymied by political nepotism and corruption in the institutions that might hire them.

Akeel Mohsin Sharif, 29, graduated from Baghdad University four years ago with a degree in computer sciences. Recently, he said, a medical college invited him to apply for a job as a teacher's assistant.

"After three months of pushing and pulling and doing interviews for the job, they kept coming up with excuses for not hiring me," Sharif said. "At the end, they asked me for $400 (Dh1,500) in exchange for the job."

Sharif refused. "Why should I pay them? Our lives have become all bribes. Everyone has to bribe someone to get anything done," said Sharif, whose previous job overseeing computer maintenance ended when the business closed because of security concerns.

Now he installs computers for small businesses on an on-call basis, earning $200 to $300 (Dh700-Dh1,100) a month, not nearly enough to consider marrying, having children and buying a home.

Several other young men said they had put off marriage and family because of their dim job prospects, a sign of the shredding of the social fabric in a country where men and women were expected to marry young and produce children.

Some leave Iraq in hopes of finding lucrative employment elsewhere, only to return with their morale further diminished.

Sa'ad Naeem, 29, went to Lebanon hoping to obtain a master's degree after graduating in 2005 from Baghdad University's college of sciences, but it was too expensive there. Now, he drives a taxi in Najaf.

Broken dreams

"I am shocked by the reality, but I feel I have to get used to this job as a fait accompli," said Naeem, who won't consider marriage until he finds a better job.

"Almost all Iraqis feel that their country is not yet able to offer the jobs they want," he said. "We were dreaming when we were students, but the reality is something else."

Broken dreams are everywhere, and it is not only the young who are finding it difficult. Older workers also are struggling. Many said they were shut out of good jobs under Hussain because they refused to join the Baath Party. Now they say their ages work against them.

Ahmad Mehdi, 45, has a degree in finance, but his refusal to be a Baathist held him back. Now he works in an electronics shop. At first, he said, he was embarrassed.

"But then I began noticing that others with degrees were doing the same thing," Mehdi said.