Iraq still perilous for professionals

More than 7,000 physicians have left Iraq in the past five years.

Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD — Naqi Shakir sits on a sagging mattress pushed against a wall. His wife and two daughters perch on tattered sofas and chairs crowded into the one room of the house with signs of family life: personal photographs tacked to the wall, a TV, books and knickknacks on dusty shelves.

Except for a folding table and chairs in the kitchen, nearly everything has been sold so the family can bolt as soon as someone rents the two-story home in a relatively safe Baghdad neighborhood.

At a time when the Iraqi government is encouraging its citizens to return and the U.S. military is highlighting security gains across Iraq, the Shakirs nevertheless want out. They see no future here for Iraqis such as themselves: well educated, affluent, secular or non-Muslim.

Their imminent departure is a major concern facing Iraq, which has suffered a traumatic brain drain in the past five years and is struggling to lure back or hang on to educated professionals.

In June, the government raised civil servant salaries 50 percent to 75 percent to bring back state employees such as teachers and doctors, many of whom were fired after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration says tens of thousands of people have returned to Iraq since last fall.

But with more than 2.5 million Iraqis having fled the country, political and business leaders believe it will be many years before the loss of professionals can be reversed.

Many people continue to leave. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it monitored numbers at the main border crossing linking Iraq to Syria from January to July 2008 and found that 7,200 more Iraqis left than entered. And some say a new U.S. policy opening the door to more Iraqi refugees each year is exacerbating the situation.

“It’s counterproductive,” said Raad Ommar, president of the Iraqi American Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Baghdad. “They’re trying to achieve their goal on one hand of taking Iraqis to the United States, and on the other hand they’re trying to get Iraq stabilized and improve the economy and everything else. The flight of qualified Iraqis is not going to help that.”

In the years since the fall of Saddam, the chamber would receive 200 to 300 applications when it placed a newspaper ad seeking a staff attorney, public relations executive, engineer or administrative worker. Now, Ommar is lucky to attract 20, usually from people sorely lacking in experience and with checkered r sum s resulting from wartime upheavals. Ommar used to say it would take Iraq a couple of years to recover economically.

“Now, if I say five years, I’m not confident,” he said. “I think, in general, people don’t really have much confidence in the future.”

More than 7,000 physicians have left Iraq since 2003, including virtually all who had 20 years’ or more experience, said Mustafa Hiti, a member of parliament who sits on its health committee. About 600 have returned, he said, but none are top-flight specialists.

Most specialists were Sunni Arabs who, to achieve their professional status, were members of Saddam’s Baath Party. Even if they did not adhere to its ideology, they were ostracized and forced from their jobs after Saddam was ousted. Now, they do not feel comfortable in a country run by Shiite Muslims, said Hiti.

At the Ministry of Higher Education, spokeswoman Siham Shujairi said 6,700 professors have left Iraq since 2003 and only about 150 have returned. About 300 have been killed.

Shakir, 65, used to make good money as a customs clearing agent, but he closed shop after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion because of security worries. The family smuggled his son out of the country in 2005 after two failed kidnapping attempts. The Shakirs’ car has been riddled with bullets in a random shooting on a Baghdad street, and a car bomb in the neighborhood damaged their home.

“There is nobody upholding justice here,” Shakir said as a soap opera flickered on the TV and the family’s dog ran excited circles across the floor. “You live your life according to chance. Anyone can do anything.”

His daughters, Rafah and Raghad, both in their 30s, feel pressure to wear veils outside even though the family is Christian. Rafah Shakir tucks her small cross pendant into her shirt when she goes out.

“I used to have an import-export business. I used to be able to go to my office and work on my own,” said Rafah, who is studying to be a human-rights lawyer. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t even wear short sleeves anymore.”

Though security has improved, professionals continue to be targets of assassinations by extremists who see them as being pro-Western or religious infidels.