SHANTY TOWNS SPROUT UP AROUND IRAQ’S OIL-RICH BASRA
Thousands came south to find their fortune, but the reality is different
Sultan Nayef looks out from his small home nestled alongside train tracks, at plumes of smoke billowing across oilfields in the southern Iraqi province of Basra.
Like thousands of others, unemployed Mr Nayef, 25, moved to oil-rich Basra in the hope of finding work in the energy industry, Iraq’s primary source of wealth.
Instead, he and many others like him live in cramped and chaotic shanty towns in a province already suffering from a lack of infrastructure.
These settlements are an anarchic clutter of breeze-block homes and ad hoc electricity wires, without any urban planning or public services.
“All we get from oil is pollution,” says Mr Nayef, who, along with his four brothers, still relies on his parents for living expenses.
A small stone wall is the only thing keeping cows and sheep in a grassy field from wandering into oilfields where burning gas flares emit thick black smoke.
Most young people arriving in Iraq’s only coastal oil province hoped to secure high-paying jobs with foreign companies.
“But most companies import their employees from abroad,” says Mr Nayef, a resident of the Zoubeir district south of Basra.
At least 18 per cent of young Iraqis are unemployed, with rates even higher among college graduates.
The UN says Iraq’s oil sector accounts for 65 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, but only 1 per cent of its labour force. Even for those who work, buying a home is often only a dream.
“My husband is a civil servant, but with his salary, we can’t even buy a centimetre of land,” says Umm Ahmed, 48.
They are against “the idea of squatting”, but she and her family were forced to build a makeshift home on government land. The municipality has already destroyed their home once.
“We had to completely rebuild it,” Umm Ahmed says.
Local authorities say the land belongs to the state and are highly critical of the illegal buildings and theft of water and electricity.
The last study on Basra’s informal settlements was in 2014, a few months before ISIS swept across Iraq, seizing nearly a third of the country.
At the time, there were more than 48,500 informal homes in the province, says Zahra Al Jebari, head of urban planning at Basra’s provincial council.
Today, “there are many more, but there is no figure”, Ms Al Jebari says.
Many internal refugees displaced by ISIS fled to Basra, which was untouched by the extremists, often finding homes in shanty towns.
Nearly 10 per cent of Iraqis live in informal settlements, one fifth of them in Basra, the Ministry of Planning says.
The only other province hit harder by illegal construction is Baghdad.
Basra authorities say they lose money every time a home is built illegally, because Baghdad bases provincial budgets on the number of officially registered residents.
Taxes in informal settlements are also left unpaid, says Ms Al Jebari, adding that the budget deficit is acutely felt in “allocations to education, health and other services”.
Wissam Maher feels that authorities are “only interested in destroying our homes”.
“We live under power lines without any services,” says the metal worker, 32. “This area is huge and it doesn’t belong to anyone.”