Crooked certificates used to get government jobs or promotion have been causing an outcry in Iraq, writes Salah Nasrawi The security forces are useless, the bureaucracy is corrupt, and the leadership is incompetent and negligent: such is the price that the Iraqi people are paying for the new Iraq the United States will be leaving behind when its eight years of occupation of the country come to an end later this year. While it can be hard to grasp the sheer extent of Iraq's dysfunctional political system, new allegations of widespread educational fraud in the embattled government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki have thrown additional light on how the post-US invasion Iraqi state has been failing its own people. Lawmakers and members of an investigatory panel say that those with fake credentials occupying senior positions may include ministers, deputy ministers and other top lawmakers. Iraqi media outlets have suggested that as many as 50,000 Iraqis have apparently used forged qualifications in order to get jobs in the government, the army and the security forces after the 2003 US-led invasion. Given the succession of controversies surrounding the decline in public standards in the country, the new disclosures could further anger many Iraqis, with frustration worsening as a result of a lack of security and government services, together with woeful corruption and high unemployment, prompting dozens of protests across the country in recent months. Iraqi commentators have voiced their shock at the news that many people accused of forging education credentials in the latest scandal to hit the country are working either in Al-Maliki's own office or are members of his Daawa Party parliamentary bloc. These are some of the same officials who are in charge of policy- making, drawing up strategy, and running the day-to-day affairs of the state, as well as security. Iraq's Integrity Commission, an independent panel set up to investigate allegations of corruption in public life, has so far failed to prosecute officials suspected of using fake qualifications to obtain government jobs or to gain promotion. Head of the Commission Rahim Al-Ugaeily was forced from office and replaced by one of Al-Maliki's supporters last month after exhausting efforts to combat corruption, including an investigation into allegations of faked credentials. The Commission has said that it believes that some 20,000 people currently employed by the state got their jobs using forged educational qualifications, while the Iraqi Ministry of Justice had said that it has some 50,000 fake certificates on file, including those of 4,000 of its own workers. In March, the Iraqi parliament announced that it was investigating thousands of government employees who appeared to have used fake diplomas and other forged educational certificates to get government jobs. A draft bill suggested that offenders would not be required to return salaries earned under false pretences, if they acknowledged that they had used fake credentials. However, the bill drew up penalties of up to 12 years for people convicting of forging educational documents and lying about their education. The legislation was not introduced for debate, and lawmakers have complained that the Commission has failed to investigate the problem properly, notably after the government said that officials accused of using faked certificates for employment purposes would be exempt from prosecution. Al-Maliki is suspected of hampering the anti-corruption agency's work, with lawmakers and officials from the Integrity Commission claiming that some 37 officials in the prime minister's office alone are thought to have used fake diplomas to gain their positions. Last week, the Iraqi media reported that Al-Maliki had ordered the Iraqi ministry of higher education to register two members of his bloc for postgraduate studies even though they had failed admission tests. The use of fake diplomas became widespread in Iraq following the US-led invasion that toppled the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, offenders sometimes being given the death penalty for such offences under the Saddam regime. Since 2003, the practice of using forged educational certificates has created a thriving black market, in which forgers can be protected by the police, local militias, and even government officials. Sometimes forged certificates are extracted through intimidation and threats, while in others faked diplomas are obtained abroad as foreign documents are harder to verify. In some cases, forgers have operated in networks with education officials in order to obtain old certificates and put new names on them, harming the original holders of the qualifications. In other cases, arson has been used to destroy records, making it impossible to verify certificates. Educational fraud has been having a devastating effect on the Iraqi state, because it has meant that the latter is now being run by inefficient officials and people who lack even basic education. Talk abounds in the Iraqi capital Baghdad of illiterate soldiers running checkpoints who are unable to read identity cards or car registration numbers. Senior officials know that there are employees in the government ministries who have used forged diplomas and other fake documents to get their jobs, but they cannot fire them for fear of retaliation. The impact of such forgery has also threatened the position of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who seek jobs in foreign countries. In May, the British media unveiled the case of an Iraqi dentist who had faked his qualifications in order to claim asylum in Britain, entering the country under a false name and claiming a fake degree so he could get permission to stay. British police who raided a clinic in the Welsh city of Cardiff discovered stacks of documents in various names, including documents bearing UK home office stamps and blank birth certificates. While some attribute the surge in forgeries in Iraq to the lack of law-enforcement that followed the US-led invasion, others believe it is part of a new phenomenon in post-US invasion Iraq, where falsified documents and forgeries of all kinds thrive. The practice could also be driven by economic and political factors. Many of the appointments made over the last eight years have been made on a sectarian or ideological basis rather than on the basis of qualifications. Since the Iraqi government itself is now formed according to a quota system, each group in Iraq tries to reward its members with employment at the government ministries or offices it is allotted. In the absence of transparency, appointments in the civil service are based on patronage and nepotism. Like many other oil-rich countries in the Middle East, Iraq also uses its oil revenues to boost employment, often employing surplus workers in government jobs that are little more than sinecures. Iraq's new rulers have maintained the legacy of the socialist economy created under Saddam, which made the government the largest employer in the country. Reports suggest that there are approximately four million government workers in Iraq today, more than double the number under Saddam's regime. This means that the Iraqi government employs around 12 per cent of the population, giving the country the highest number of public employees in proportion to its population for any other country its size. In the autonomous Kurdish region in the north of the country the numbers are even higher, with government jobs providing 60 per cent of all full-time work. According to some estimates, of the around 4.5 million Kurds, one million work for the government, or are on its payroll. Such bloating of the public sector and use of forged educational certificates to gain government jobs are examples of how some Iraqis look to the state as a convenient cash cow, with the use of faked credentials being another sign of the rampant corruption that plagues Iraq and confirming the pessimistic assessments of international and local anti-corruption groups. By Bassel Oudat
