KARBALA: Rami, a Syrian worker in Iraq, spends his 16-hour shifts at a restaurant fearing arrest as authorities crack down on undocumented migrants in the country better known for its own exodus.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of foreigners working without permits in Iraq, which after emerging from decades of conflict has become an unexpected destination for many seeking opportunities.
“I’ve been able to avoid the security forces and checkpoints,” said the 27-year-old, who has lived in Iraq for seven years and asked that AFP use a pseudonym to protect his identity.
Between 10 in the morning and 2:00 am the next day, he toils at a shawarma shop in the holy city of Karbala, where millions of Shiite pilgrims congregate every year.
“My greatest fear is to be expelled back to Syria where I’d have to do military service,” he said.
The labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers.
Now the authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers, as the country seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector.
Many like Rami work in the service industry in Iraq.
One Baghdad restaurant owner admitted to AFP that he has to play cat and mouse with the authorities during inspections, asking some employees to make themselves scarce.
Not all those who work for him are registered, he said, because of the costly fees involved.
Some of the undocumented workers in Iraq first came as pilgrims. In July, Labour Minister Ahmed Assadi said his services were investigating information that “50,000 Pakistani visitors” stayed on “to work illegally.”
Despite threats of expulsion because of the scale of issue, the authorities at the end of November launched a scheme for “Syrian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers” to regularise their employment by applying online before December 25.
The ministry says it will take legal action against anyone who brings in or employs undocumented foreign workers.
Rami has decided to play safe, even though “I really want” to acquire legal employment status.
“But I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m waiting to see what my friends do, and then I’ll do the same.”
Current Iraqi law caps the number of foreign workers a company can employ at 50 percent, but the authorities now want to lower this to 30 percent.
“Today we allow in only qualified workers for jobs requiring skills” that are not currently available, labor ministry spokesman Nijm Al-Aqabi told AFP.
It’s a sensitive issue — for the past two decades, even the powerful oil sector has been dominated by a foreign workforce. But now the authorities are seeking to favor Iraqis.
“There are large companies contracted to the government” which have been asked to limit “foreign worker numbers to 30 percent,” said Aqabi.
“This is in the interests of the domestic labor market,” he said, as 1.6 million Iraqis are unemployed.
He recognized that each household has the right to employ a foreign domestic worker, claiming this was work Iraqis did not want to do.
One agency launched in 2021 that brings in domestic workers from Niger, Ghana and Ethiopia confirms the high demand.
“Before we used to bring in 40 women, but now it’s around 100” a year, said an employee at the agency, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
It was a trend picked up from rich countries in the Gulf, the employee said.
“The situation in Iraq is getting better, and with salaries now higher, Iraqi home owners are looking for comfort.”
A domestic worker earns about $230 a month, but the authorities have quintupled the registration fee, with a work permit now costing more than $800.
In the summer, Human Rights Watch denounced what it called a campaign of arbitrary arrests and expulsions targeting Syrians, even those with the necessary paperwork.
HRW said that both homes and work places had been targeted by raids.
Ahmed — another pseudonym — is a 31-year-old Syrian who has been undocumented in Iraq for the past year and a half.
He began as a cook in Baghdad and later moved to Karbala.
“Life is hard here — we don’t have any rights,” he told AFP. “We come in illegally, and the security forces are after us.”
His wife did not accompany him. She stayed in Syria.
“I’d go back if I could,” said Ahmed. “But life there is very difficult. There’s no work.”
Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers from Pakistan, other nations
https://arab.news/rrmpk
Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers from Pakistan, other nations
- The Iraqi labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers
- Authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers as Iraq seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector
Sudan ‘lost all sources of revenue’ in the war: finance minister to AFP
- Ibrahim said the government is eyeing deals for Red Sea ports and private investment
- Gold production is rising year-on-year, but “unfortunately, much of it has been smuggled... across borders”
PORT SUDAN: Widespread destruction, massive military spending and plummeting oil and gold revenues have left Sudan’s economy in “very difficult times,” army-aligned finance minister Gibril Ibrahim said, nearly three years into the army’s war with rival paramilitary forces.
In an interview with AFP from his office in Port Sudan, Ibrahim said the government is eyeing deals for Red Sea ports and private investment to help rebuild infrastructure.
This week, Sudan’s prime minister announced the government’s official return to Khartoum, recaptured last year, but Ibrahim’s ministry is among those yet to fully return.
Dressed in combat uniform, the former rebel leader said Sudan, already one of the world’s poorest countries before the war, “lost all sources of state revenue in the beginning of the war,” when the Rapid Support Forces overtook the capital Khartoum and its surroundings.
“Most of the industry, most of the big companies and all of the economic activity was concentrated in the center,” he said, saying the heartland had accounted for some 80 percent of state revenue.
Ibrahim’s ex-rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement once battled Khartoum’s government but it has fought on the army’s side as part of the Joint Forces coalition of armed groups.
- Smuggling -
Sudan, rich in oil, gold deposits and arable land, is currently suffering the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with over half of its population in need of aid to survive.
Gold production is rising year-on-year, but “unfortunately, much of it has been smuggled... across borders,” he said.
Of the 70 tons produced in 2025, only “20 tons have been exported through official channels.”
In 2024, Sudan produced 64 tons of gold, bringing in only $1.57 billion to the state’s depleted coffers, with much of the revenue spilling out via smuggling networks.
Agricultural exports have fallen 43 percent, with much of the country’s productive gum Arabic, sesame and peanut-growing regions in paramilitary hands, in the western Darfur and southern Kordofan regions.
Sudan’s livestock industry, also based predominantly in Darfur, has lost 55 percent of its exports, he said.
Since the RSF captured the army’s last holdout position in Darfur in October, the war’s worst fighting has shifted east to the oil-rich Kordofan region.
While both sides scramble for control of the territory, the country’s oil revenues have dropped by more than 50 percent — its most productive refinery, Al-Jaili near Khartoum, severely damaged.
- ‘Reconstruction’ -
Determined to defeat the RSF, authorities allocated 40 percent of last year’s budget to the war effort, up from 36 percent in 2024, according to Ibrahim, who did not specify amounts.
Yet the cost of reconstruction in areas regained by the army is immense: in December 2024, the government estimated it would need $200 billion to rebuild.
Authorities are currently eyeing public-private partnership, with firms that “are ready to spend money” including on infrastructure, Ibrahim said.
Sudan’s long Red Sea coast has over the years drawn the interest of foreign actors eager for a base on the vital waterway, through which around 12 percent of global trade passes.
“We will see which partner is the best to build a port,” the minister said, listing both Saudi Arabia and Qatar as “the main applicants.”
The Russians, for their part, had also wanted “a small port where they can have supplies,” he said, adding that “they didn’t go ahead with that yet.”
As the war rages on, Sudan shoulders a massive public debt bill, which in 2023 reached 253 percent of GDP, before falling slightly to 221 percent in 2025, according to figures reported by the International Monetary Fund.
Sudan has known only triple-digit annual inflation for years. Figures for 2025 stood at 151 percent — down from a 2021 peak of 358.
The currency has also collapsed, going from trading before the war at 570 Sudanese pounds against the dollar, to 3500 in 2026, according to the black-market rate.
Ibrahim, 71, first joined the government in 2021 as part of a short-lived transitional administration. He retained his position through a military coup later that year.
He is among several Sudanese officials sanctioned by Washington in its attempt to “limit Islamist influence within Sudan and curtail Iran’s regional activities.”
