Talafar youths haunted by joblessness, security

NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: Young people of Talafar district are stuck between a rock and a hard place as they are facing crushing unemployment and lack of security amidst feeble interest expressed by the state regarding the problems they are suffering. “We need the support of the Sports & Youths Ministry and its institutions concerned in the province of Ninewa in order to launch projects serving Talafar’s young people,” Hussein Mohammed Ali al-Akrish, the Talafar local council chief, told IraqiNews.com news agency. Hatem Abdulkareem Soliman, the council’s sports & youths committee chairman, said the town is falling short of playgrounds and the proper financial allocations. One of the obstacles facing young people is the problem of unemployment, which is linked in one way or another to the security conditions in Talafar, 60 km west of the city of Mosul. Sherif Qassem Soliman a professor of history at al-Fajr al-Arabi high school, told IraqiNews.com the people are hoping the Iraqi government will express interest in this important category of the Iraqi society. “The young men were forced to enter wars and were lost inside labyrinths that rendered them losing all hope of a decent life. With the end of dictatorship in Iraq in 2003, the young people’s hopes were reawakened, but unfortunately what has been achieved never met their expectations,” Soliman said. Nour Fadel, the al-Iraqiya satellite channel’s correspondent in Talafar, said most of the youths are idle most of the time. “Many of them spend their time on hours’ long phone calls and hanging around the streets, markets, restaurants and parks because they have nothing else to do,” Fadel said. AmR (S)/SR 3