Baghdad, Iraq – First, gunmen burst into Riyadh Tamimi’s home, beat his guard, terrified his wife and three daughters and stole appliances. Later, kidnappers held his brother until the family paid $20,000. When gunfire blew out Tamimi’s windows, that was the last straw.
The 40-year-old businessman packed up his family and fled the southern city of Basra to the United Arab Emirates, joining an exodus of educated and affluent Iraqis driven out by instability and violence at a time when their rebuilding homeland desperately needs their skills.
“There are almost no more qualified people in Basra,” said Tamimi, who returned to Iraq’s second-biggest city recently without his family for a short business trip. “Any successful engineer, doctor or businessman is now abroad. All this will have a negative impact on Iraq.”
Successful Iraqis want to invest their money “where there is peace and stability,” he said.
Government officials say they have no figures on the number of Iraqis who have fled since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But the former minister of migration, Pascale Warda, said she hears of people leaving almost daily.
Up to 800,000 Iraqis are believed to be living in Jordan – many of them since the conflict began. Thousands more have moved to Syria, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries. For the super-rich, London and the U.S. are options.
“This just destroys the country. It has a very negative effect on the situation in Iraq and on the country’s ability to improve,” said Warda, who served in the interim government of Ayad Allawi, which left office in late April.
Salah Ahmed Hamoudi, a businessman who moved to Syria with his family three months ago, said patriotic Iraqis would prefer to stay home.
“Even if Syria is heaven on earth, I still love my country,” he said by phone during a business trip to Mosul in northern Iraq. “But what are we supposed to do if there is no strong government? How can I come back and work if no one is capable of defending me?”
Many Iraqi scientists and university professors who stay have become targets, either because they belonged to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party – once essential for career advancement – or as part of a campaign by the predominantly Sunni Arab insurgency to weaken Iraq’s intellectual power.
A Sunni Arab engineer, who insisted on not being quoted by name for security reasons, said he sent his wife and children abroad after insurgents threatened him because he works for a foreign company.
He quoted from a letter that the militants left for him with his son: “The only good thing about you is that you’re a Sunni. If you weren’t, we would have chopped your head off without even a warning.”
The engineer locked up his Baghdad home and spread word that he and his family had left for Amman, Jordan. He sent them out of the country, but he stayed behind in a safer area.
He now visits his family every month and maintains a low profile when in Baghdad.
“It’s just sad to have to live in disguise in my own country,” he said.
Apart from security problems, Warda said Iraq is unable to provide talented, well-educated people with the logistical, financial and technological support needed to perform their jobs. Faced with shortages of money, books, computers, equipment and other supplies, they leave. But she said many would come home if security improved.
