The brain drain continues to cast a heavy shadow on the future of Iraq

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[size=52]The brain drain continues to cast a heavy shadow on the future of Iraq[/size]

[size=45]Translation / Hamed Ahmed[/size]
[size=45]Iraq as a rich country is supposed to attract the best minds and talents, but instead, thousands of talented people decided to pack their bags to leave, exacerbating a long-standing problem that has paralyzed the country for decades.[/size]
[size=45]Hussein Al-Shammari, 25, a lawyer, decided that he had no future in his country after failing to get a decent job, a country with an annual budget of $103 billion, yet it could not provide jobs and job opportunities for its children, not even a continuous electricity service for its citizens. Al-Shammari's story reflects the situation of millions of other Iraqis in their twenties who were born either after the fall of the previous regime in 2003 or during the last years of its rule.[/size]
[size=45]And a report published on the American website, Inside Arabia, stated that nearly ten years have passed since the International Organization for Migration (IOM) conducted a study in cooperation with the British Foreign Office in which it concluded that 99% of young people in Iraq have a desire to leave the country. That same year, the Iraqi doctor, Nabil Al-Khalisi, published an academic treatise on the brain drain in Iraq, in which he conducted a survey of 1,395 doctors, of whom 1,193 have left the country and 202 are still living in Iraq. The letter revealed that 60% of those who left said that security concerns were behind their emigration, while among 50% of those who are still in Iraq they are struggling to leave.[/size]
[size=45]This was shortly before ISIS invaded the country in mid-2014, and less than a decade after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which caused the destruction of the country, the downfall of the regime, the dissolution of the army and security institutions, and the fall of millions into poverty. Thousands of Iraqis left the country between 2003 and 2006 to escape sectarian threats at the hands of armed groups.[/size]
[size=45]Many of them left because of the lack of jobs, job opportunities and low education, in addition to the collapse and absence of a list of basic services, foremost of which is electricity, in a country considered an oil-producing country. According to the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper, 72,000 doctors have left the country since April 2003. While the Iraqi Ministry of Health revealed a much smaller number, not exceeding 9,000 doctors have left the country, although the official number of Iraqi doctors, as reported by the country’s Central Statistics Office, stands at 34,453 thousand doctors.[/size]
[size=45]In 2021, the Iraqi researcher, Thamer Naim Jassim, published an academic thesis on the medical knowledge of Iraqi doctors, seeking the opinions of doctors and specialists at the Al-Kindi Medical College in Baghdad. The respondents expressed their complaints about the poor management in the various branches of the health sector, the lack of research funding by the Ministry of Higher Education, poor quality laboratories, and miserable internet services. They indicated that all these factors created a chronic shortage of professional doctors and instead produced a generation of doctors who feel that they will not get a worthy job in Iraq.[/size]
[size=45]According to UNICEF, 3.2 million school-age children are out of school. Most students leave schools in order to work to provide additional income for their poor families. Another section of the students left their schools because it was destroyed during the war.[/size]
[size=45]The organization also points out that one out of every two schools in Iraq is destroyed or damaged and needs rehabilitation and restoration. Many schools are now open three times (shifts) in order to accommodate large numbers of students, as they are pushed into the school's classrooms and they are crowded in a cold, dark and poorly ventilated atmosphere.[/size]
[size=45]Although government expenditures on defense and security matters are still high, given the threat of ISIS, only 6% of this year's budget is allocated to education. ISIS has turned many schools into military bases and detention centers, while more than 350 schools have been damaged between 2014 and 2018.[/size]
[size=45]In 2018, a report by the Atlantic Council, the Atlantic Council, stated that only 20% of Iraqi students were able to continue studying online at home during the ban period of the Corona pandemic and school closures.[/size]
[size=45]As direct consequences of cases of mass emigration of competencies and minds, and the lack of safe schools, this contributed to the increase in illiteracy rates in the country. According to an official spokesman from the Ministry of Education, the illiteracy rate in Iraq currently stands at 13%, although the real percentage may be much higher. This means that there are approximately 3.7 million adults (age 15 and over) illiterate out of Iraq's total population of 40 million.[/size]
[size=45]According to a research conducted by UNICEF in 2020, the percentage of females who have completed secondary school in Iraq does not exceed 43%. To make matters worse, 24 percent of Iraqi women are illiterate, according to the World Bank's report issued in September 2020.[/size]
[size=45]The phenomenon of brain drain in Iraq is a chronic phenomenon and it is not new. It began during the period of the military coup against the royal family in Iraq, where thousands of doctors and engineers who hold degrees from European and American universities emigrated. Then came the era of the former regime, which was characterized by a lot of wars and battles, starting with the first Gulf War with Iran, followed by the war of invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the period of economic sanctions on Iraq that weakened the country, ending with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, whose devastating effects on the country are still present.[/size]
[size=45]The main destinations for medical immigrants in Iraq are often Europe and Western countries. Over the past ten years, many talented people left for Britain, Sweden and Germany, where they were their preferred destinations.[/size]
[size=45]The researcher and economic expert, Salam Sumaisem, recalls that the biggest victim of this mass brain drain is the health and education sector.[/size]
[size=45]"Most of the migrants work in the fields of health, education and culture, which explains the decline in these sectors now in the country, in addition to the low productivity of these sectors," she said in an interview with the Inside Arabia news site.[/size]
[size=45]Sumaisem added, "The state of ignorance reinforces the dominance of the bad over the good, and the removal of talented and qualified people from people at a time when ignorance and corruption are the masters of the matter."[/size]
[size=45]About the American site Inside Arabia[/size]
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