OT--What did they do?

For an initial reply I have heard on the BBC that a lot of the native industry was heavily protected under Saddam but that is now not the case so the native Iraqi industries are suffering as US, UK and other industries are from cheaper foreign imports.
lurker wrote:

If you are on the inside so to speak the government finds you work. If you are on the outside you are watched and controlled by the government people. A good example is people who enforce language laws in Quebec Canada. If your English business sign is the same size as the French you are in trouble. Imagine having "language" police. Talk to people who have immigrated from places like Yugoslavia or Romania. Half the population spent their days watching the other half and get paid for it. If you don't screw up you get a job building roads or palaces. Screw up politically and you starve. Randy

30% of the work force was in agriculture- in between the 80% of a third-world country and the 5%-ish of a modern developed country. Average age was quite young, so a lot of people would have been students. They had an operating stock market prior to the war (not operational yet, AFAIK). I imagine a fair number of people did small scale construction, service and repair business, maybe a bit of local manufacturing, there was a good chunk of government and the rest were employed in the petroleum industry. They had the usual schools, universities and a government-run health care system, a fair-sized military in terms of men, and support for that. Most of these countries will never compete in manufacturing, they just don't have the infrastructure. When everything has to be imported and the local market is insigificant, there are usually better places to invest.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Iraq has, by Middle Eastern standards, a very extensive agriculture. They are (or were) a significant exporter of grain and grain products. There is a modest textile industry based on locally produced cotton and wool. Petroleum is, of course, the number one product, and prior to the war with Iran, there was a significant petrochemical industry as well. Iraq is (or used to be) unique among the gulf countries in capturing natural gas associated with the oil, everywhere else, they just burn it off. Oil aside, the country is not well supplied with mineral resources, but does (or did) produce commercially important quantities of sulfur and sufuric acid. I believe they also had a modest glass industry. As to other occupations, rail lines connect the Gulf with Turkey, Syria and thence Europe, as well as Iran, and there's a very important amount of truck traffic east and west through Iraq, with support services to match. Basra is a major port with all the associated industry you would expect. Iraq used to have a significant fishery as well, but I believe the oil industry has pretty well sterilized the Gulf and put an end to that long ago.
Al Moore