Jobless Iraqis protest their deplorable conditions caused by the U.S. occupation

BAGHDAD , June 11 (IslamOnline.net & Al-Quds Press) – The U.S. occupation of Iraq has left Iraq 's workforce, some 10 million Iraqis in both the private and public sectors jobless, economic experts told the London-based Al-Quds Press news agency.

They charged the U.S.-led occupation authority of according the envisaged oil exports revenues to U.S. companies to carry out "bogus" reconstruction projects.

The laying-off of the Iraqi army, the dissolution of the defense, interior and information ministries left up to five million Iraqis unemployed.

More than 5,000 Iraqi army officers and personnel staged a demonstration Monday, May 26, protesting the decision by U.S. civil administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer to dissolve the Iraqi army and all affiliated bodies.

As commercial, industrial and agricultural activities were brought to a halt by the occupation, another five million joined the unemployment line, the experts told the London-based news agency.

Day in and day out, droves of jobless Iraqis take to the streets of Baghdad, calling for the restoration of order and stability in the war-scarred country and other basic services such as electricity, transport and water.

At the time the U.S. administration in Iraq promised to compensate the unemployed, it paid a handful of Iraqi employees with different ministries a meager $50 each.

The experts, who requested anonymity, said the unemployed towering rates have everything to do with the lawless country as persisting looting and anarchy brought the country's private sector to a standstill.

Unemployment, they added, might have forced the jobless to resort to looting and robbery.

"We have a two-sided equation that cannot be resolved unless you deal with the two sides," the experts said.

They charged that the U.S. troops in Iraq, after securing a U.N. Security Council "mandate" which placed Iraq's oil wealth under their control, are set to shroud the oil revenues in secrecy to ensure that Iraqis would not ask for their shares.

According the London-based news agency, the U.S. administration started rewarding some U.S. companies with "bogus" re-building contracts in Iraq .

It asserted that hundreds of millions of dollars had been funneled into the hands of such companies.

On Monday, June 9, the Democratic Workers Union in Basra slammed the employment of Asian workers by the U.S. companies operating in Iraq -- Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) -- at a time that unemployment was showing its ugly face.

"No to foreign workers at the expense of our workers," one banner outside the headquarters of British forces in the city said.

"It's our country and it's up to us to rebuild it," chanted the protestors, as the first Asian workers, particularly Indian, have been spotted, employed by Kuwait 's Al-Khorafi company which has been sub-contracted by KBR to renovate a pipeline.

The U.S. army gave KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co, an oil firm headed by Vice President Dick Cheney until 2000 - the main contract to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq .