Baghdad — In a gloomy room in his parents' home, heavy with the smell of medicine, Iraqi police officer Jaafar Ali lies motionless, his body paralyzed by a bullet to the head fired by an Al-Qaeda militant.
"We have spent six years now as if we are watching a dead person, one who can only move his hand," said Ali's mother, Shukria Harbi, wiping away tears. "I am an old and tired woman and he has been like this for six years."
Police officers are prime targets of a stubborn insurgency in war-ravaged Iraq: 8813 have been killed and 7570 wounded in the eight years since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, according to the Interior Ministry.
Despite the danger, jobs with the Iraqi police, which pay at least US$500 a month, are coveted in a nation trying to rebuild an economy crushed by years of war and decades of dictatorship.
"If you ask, in any province, for 1000 policemen, the applicants will number 40,000, without exaggerating," Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed al-Khafaji said.
With an official unemployment rate of 15 percent and another 28 percent of the workforce in part-time jobs, Iraq has 7 million people, 23 percent of the population, living below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning.
That US$500 starting wage is attractive, particularly for young men who are disproportionately hurt by high unemployment. Other government jobs, by comparison, start around $200 a month.
Jaafar Ali's 31-year-old brother Haider joined the force in 2007 despite his brother's grievous injuries, driven in part by the cost of Jaafar's condition and also by his failure to find work after graduating from university with a degree in computer science in 2003.
"Expenses became so high, the situation became so bad and no job. Where shall I go? So I joined the police," Haider Ali said.
TARGET ON PATROL
Being a police officer in Iraq means being a target. On patrol, in a traffic jam or at any one of the thousands of security checkpoints across the country, police officers are in danger from Al-Qaeda or other militants still fighting more than eight years after the US invasion.
Militants determined to destabilize Iraq's nascent democracy have even targeted police recruits as they lined up for jobs.
A government fund pays 4 million dinar (US$3400) to the family of a slain policeman, according to Interior Ministry official Fadhil al-Shuwaili, while the wounded receive a salary of not less than US$550 a month while incapacitated.
A new law before parliament seeks to put police salaries on a par with soldiers, about US$680 a month. "We hope the government looks after the Interior Ministry forces," Shuwaili said. "This section has given and sacrificed a lot."
Officials say the ministry is trying to cope with thousands of wounded, and in January and February sent 189 officers for treatment abroad. Each wound, whether a minor injury or a lifelong scar, brings a one-time compensatory payment of around US$300, Shuwaili said.
SHOT BY AL-QAEDA
In March 2005, two months after Jaafar Ali joined the force, he was on a mission in Falluja, a hub of the Sunni insurgency. Two Al-Qaeda militants fired shots at his patrol.
A patrol partner died immediately but Ali survived, paralyzed. He spent nine months in hospital before being taken to the family home, where his mother and brother nurse him.
A broken wheelchair lies at the entrance to the home. In Ali's room, medical apparatus is placed next to his bed and Ali lies unmoving, two tubes in his nose and another in his throat.
He can move his eyes and his left hand but cannot dispatch a fly that lands on his face. He listens but cannot speak.
Jaafar Ali was 22 years old when he joined the police.
"He was a young man who wanted to earn a living and to buy clothes. He was like any other youth. That's why he joined the police. I supported him in joining," said his father, Ali Athab.
His mother looks exhausted after years of taking care of Ali. The family receives his salary of 620,000 dinar (around US$530) a month, not enough to cover his medications.
"Is it our fault for letting him join the police?" she asks.
"I wish that he had not gone to the police but there is no use in regret. I will spend all my life regretting letting him join the police but at the same, I had to tell him to join. What shall I do with him? A person wants to live."
