Pandemic pushes some Iraqis, broken by conflict, into poverty

When shops and homes shutter at curfew, some Iraqis in this Baghdad district say it reminds them of past traumas that destroyed lives and livelihoods: sectarian death squads, foreign invasion, and the ruin wrought by international sanctions.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the source of their current suffering. In interviews with Reuters, half a dozen people in the Adhamiya neighbourhood said it has driven their families into the worst poverty they can remember.

“For two years I squatted at a friend’s to save rent and sent all my earnings - maybe $350 a month - to my sick wife and children in Turkey,” said Abdul Wahhab Qassim, a 46-year-old day labourer. “Since the coronavirus lockdown there’s no work. I can offer my family nothing.”

Qassim says he and a growing number of neighbours who do casual labour or run small stores have watched their modest incomes evaporate. They collect evening meals donated by a family at the local mosque during the holy month of Ramadan, often accepting this charity for the first time.

“It took less than two months of curfew for many to lose work,” Qassim said.

Iraq has so far avoided a catastrophic spread of the new coronavirus, recording some 2,200 cases and less than 100 deaths, according to the health ministry.

But as in many countries, the measures required, including a nationwide curfew in place since March, have put stores out of business and left breadwinners idling at home, hitting vulnerable sections of the population hard.

A spokesman for Iraq’s planning ministry, Abdul Zahra al-Hindawi, said 20 percent of the population currently lives in poverty and that is expected to rise to nearly 30 percent this year because of people put out of work by the crisis.

The government last month announced a $25 monthly stipend for households struggling for income without state wages. Hindawi said 13 million people, almost a third of Iraqis, applied for the aid.

Plummeting prices for oil, which accounts for almost all Iraq’s revenue, are already squeezing the economy, forcing the government to mull cuts to its vast public sector payroll. The price of oil has fallen more than 55% since the year began.