HAMYYA (Iraq): Tawfiq Jamil hasn’t worked since Saddam Hussein’s government fell more than two years ago. A former taxi driver, the 28-year-old was forced to sell his car after the war to try to provide for his wife and seven children, and hasn’t been able to find a new job since.

Over the months, his daily routine has become depressingly familiar — he leaves home each morning to walk to a nearby coffee shop where he sits and thinks about his future while playing cards with other young men in the same predicament.

Then recently, Jamil and some of the others came to the same conclusion — things were so desperate they decided it was time to apply for probably the most dangerous job in the world.

It was time to join the Iraqi police force.

“I have submitted an application to be recruited into the police, it’s the only job I can get,” Jamil said as he puffed hard on another cigarette.

Along the main street in Hamyya, a small town 60 km south of Baghdad, dozens of young men sit sipping Turkish coffee or sugary tea with the same thoughts on their minds.

A recent survey by Iraq’s Planning Ministry found that more than 50 per cent of Iraqis were unemployed, most of them young men frustrated at the lack of post-war progress and desperate for anything that will provide an income.

With their chance of getting factory work or a similar job next to zero given the state of Iraq’s economy, security is about the only industry where there’s a demand for labour.

“I had to sell my car after the war because we had no cash, and now we’ve run out of all the money and there isn’t an income, how can I feed my children?” Jamil said angrily as he explained his decision to apply for the force.

It wasn’t a simple one to make — over the past two years, well over 1,000 Iraqi police officers have been killed in drive-by shootings, car bombs and other insurgent attacks.

There is no precise count, but figures compiled by icasualties.org, a website that tracks deaths, show that more than 600 police and soldiers have died in the past three months alone.—Reuters