Focus on 'brain drain' due to insecurity and freedom

Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, is facing a 'brain drain' as doctors, judges, professors and businessmen look for better paid jobs and safety in neighbouring countries. Many doctors have fled, with or without their families, after getting kidnapped or threatened in recent months, according to people working in the health sector. The country's Minister for Health, Ala’adin Alwan, acknowledged the problem in a recent interview with IRIN but said not enough people had left to make a difference to how the country’s health care system worked. But now, professors and engineers, businessmen and judges want to get new passports to leave as soon as possible, Major Ayad Abdul Hussein, police manager of the Karkh passport office in central Baghdad, told IRIN. Bombings and seemingly random attacks on government officials, offices and police have scared everyone, Hussein said. Wednesday saw the biggest bombing exactly one month on since the handover of power on 28 June, in which more than 100 people were killed, according to international media reports. But another reason why most professionals want to leave is to find better job prospects, he said. “Many professionals come here every day looking to get a passport.” Hussein said qualified Iraqis were keen to increase their income in other countries like the United Arab Emirates [UAE] or Syria, which are also deemed much safer by them. About 15 percent of the average 300 passports being issued per day around Baghdad go to professionals, according to the Iraqi official. But the number may be much higher, since more people want to go to look for work, but don’t want to tell passport officials, he said. “In the past [during Saddam Hussein's rule], doctors and instructors could never leave unless they brought a letter from the office where they worked explaining why it was necessary for them to leave,” Hussein said. “Now, someone might tell me he’s a merchant, when he really is an engineer who wants to work in Dubai [UAE].” If all educated people try and leave, it will be harder for Iraq to get back on its feet, Saad Khacher Abdul Abbas, a judge in the central Salahadin governorate, told IRIN. “Those who want to travel are the best we have right now to do the jobs,” Abbas stressed, adding himself in the same category. “But the country needs their experience. If a great number leave, it’s not good.” A few traders who were formerly in the military are not worried about not being able to help rebuild the country if they leave. They just want to take advantage of the money-making opportunities in neighbouring countries, Haidar Abdullah, 36, told IRIN. Abdullah plans to buy cars in Syria and export them to Iraq. Under the former Saddam Hussein regime, only a handful of elite residents could travel outside of the country, he pointed out. “Now the chance involved with doing business in Iraq is bad,” Abdullah said. “But it’s a prosperous market for imports.” Poor job prospects in Iraq for former Baath party members, those who were favoured under the former Saddam Hussein regime, also have them looking elsewhere, Abdullah’s colleague Saleh Mehdi, 41, said. Mehdi was also in the Iraqi military before the US-led invasion last March. Meanwhile, for some educated people, however, travel means catching up with modern ways in other Middle Eastern countries, Nidham Hamoudi al-Taie, 52, another judge, told IRIN. There’s a pent-up demand for knowledge, since people educated in Iraq feel like they have been falling behind for the last 10 years and more under sanctions imposed by the international community, al-Taie noted. “I want to visit Syria and Jordan to see how commercial law and private law are practiced there,” al-Taie said. “I want to see the difference in programmes, but I want to return back to Iraq to help my country.” Many just want to see what it is like to travel, either for tourism or for business. For example, Halid Mahmoud, 42, said he never had a passport until he went to the Karkh office this week to apply. Mahmoud will help chaperone children to Egypt next week as part of a Ministry of Education children’s camp project. "We were deprived from seeing any other country all of the years Saddam Hussein was in power, so this is the first time for me," Mahmoud said. "Yes, it’s business, but it’s also a chance to travel," he added.