The Seattle Times
June 21, 2005
By Jonathan Finer and Omar Fekeiki

On the top floor of an otherwise vacant building in a slum where flocks of sheep graze trash-strewn streets, 25 unemployed women wearing head scarves were learning to operate Chinese-made sewing machines.

Down the hall, an instructor was teaching jobless men basic word processing on computers fresh from shrink-wrapped packaging. In another cramped room, teenage and adult students were chatting before their class in basic literacy.

The new job-training center in Baghdad's impoverished borough of Sadr City is on the front lines of efforts by the Iraqi government to address one of the most pressing challenges to the country's stalled economy: unemployment.

Numbering in the millions, Iraq's unemployed have found little refuge in an economy derailed by two years of relentless insurgent attacks. Many have not had steady jobs since the United States dissolved the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion. And U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that every young man without work is a potential recruit for insurgents who pay as little as $50 to people who plant explosives on a highway or shoot a policeman.

"The longer this goes on, we are asking for trouble because we are breeding more and more insurgents," said Muhammed Uthman, an Iraqi businessman and former oil-ministry official who serves on a panel that advises the government on reconstruction. "Unemployment is exactly what the terrorists want."

A report published last month by the government and the United Nations put the unemployment rate at 27 percent. But many experts in the embattled country say the actual number probably is closer to 50 percent or more because the survey was not conducted in some of the least stable parts of the country and because many Iraqis are forced to work in unreliable part-time jobs.

The Labor Ministry has registered 656,437 unemployed people across Iraq's 18 provinces - including more than 110,000 in Baghdad alone - but even ministry officials acknowledge that the actual number probably is several times as large. In an April survey conducted by the International Republican Institute, a U.S.-funded nonprofit, Iraqis ranked unemployment as the rebuilding country's second-most-pressing problem, behind security.

And the situation likely will worsen, the government says. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari recently announced plans to scale back Iraq's bloated public sector, which employs as many as half of Iraq's 6.5 million workers.

In Saddam Hussein's tightly controlled economy, salaries for government workers often were paltry, but the government provided work for almost anyone who needed it. Salaries for many public-sector workers have increased since the invasion, but the new government has said it is no longer practical to employ so many people.

As of June 1, more than 150,000 Iraqis were employed on a permanent or temporary basis on American-funded reconstruction projects, according to figures supplied by the State Department.

"It's things like trash cleanup, surface removal, road rehabilitation - the kinds of jobs that maximize employment," said a U.S. reconstruction official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "If you have a choice between a backhoe and 20 guys with shovels, you use the 20 guys even if it takes longer."

In the past two months, the Iraqi government and the U.S. Agency for International Development have launched new efforts to combat unemployment through a network of training and recruitment centers in such cities as Basra, Mosul and Baghdad.

But everyone involved seems aware that the centers are only one part of fixing a giant problem in a country where many service industries simply do not exist.

In a Labor Ministry recruitment center, dozens of applicants lined up with résumés in hand, awaiting interviews for management jobs. Most graduated from college at least a year ago and have been unemployed since.

Ali Jima Abid, who submitted his application to the center last August, was called for an interview only recently. He had worked in Iraq's Transportation Ministry but lost his job soon after Baghdad fell. To make ends meet, he said, he has been selling snacks and cigarettes from a roadside stand.

"Like everyone, I am feeling desperate and don't think I will ever find a job," said Abid, 30, who was spending his second consecutive day waiting in the ministry's lobby because a blackout had caused the previous day's interviews to be canceled. "At this point, I will accept anything, even if it is not what I am qualified to do."

The manager of the ministry's recruitment center, Riyadh Hassam, said a major part of the problem was the country's inability to attract private investment because of the security situation. With few, if any, international financial institutions operating in the country, the type of financing needed for large development projects that spur growth and provide jobs is lacking, he said.

"Sometimes when I think about the size of the problem, I think it will take five years to fix," he said. "Sometimes I think it will take more. Sometimes I think it will take forever."

Iraq's private sector, unaccustomed to competing for business after years of trade embargoes, is struggling to appeal to consumers who have access to more foreign goods.

"There's a flood of new products coming in that are preferred by people here," the U.S. reconstruction official said. "So Iraqi goods that did just fine before are not able to compete."

Some job seekers say they have given up. Down on his luck and with a family of 12 to support, Ahmed Habib visited to the only people in Baghdad who seemed to be hiring: Iraq's police and army.

But the man who took his application asked for a $200 bribe, Habib said. Unable to afford the payoff, he was turned away and now spends most days waiting alongside a road with other jobless laborers, hoping someone might offer $10 for a morning's work.

"If there is no work, I stay until sunset and go back home," said Habib, 30. "I go back and tell [my family] they should sleep because there is no dinner."

Special correspondent Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

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