Filed on April 19, 2018 | Last updated on April 19, 2018 at 11.14 pm

Most of the young people arriving in Iraq's only coastal oil province hoped to secure high-paying jobs with foreign companies.

From his small home nestled alongside train tracks in the southern Iraqi province of Basra, Sultan Nayef looks out at plumes of smoke billowing across an expanse of oil fields.

Like thousands of others, the unemployed 25-year-old moved to oil-rich Basra in the hope of finding work in the energy industry, Iraq's primary source of wealth.

Instead, he and many others like him live in cramped and chaotic shanty towns in a province already suffering from a lack of infrastructure. Absent of any urban planning or public services, Basra's informal settlements are an anarchic clutter of breeze-block homes and ad-hoc electricity wires.

"All we get from oil is pollution," said Sultan who, along with his four brothers, still relies on his parents for living expenses.

A small stone wall is the only thing keeping cows and sheep grazing in a grassy field behind him from wandering into oil fields where burning gas flares emit thick black smoke.

Most of the young people arriving in Iraq's only coastal oil province hoped to secure high-paying jobs with foreign companies.

"But most companies import their employees from abroad," said Nayef, a resident of the Zoubeir district south of Basra city.

At least 18 per cent of Iraqi youth are unemployed, with rates even higher among college graduates.

According to the UN, Iraq's oil sector accounts for 65 per cent of the country's gross domestic product but only one per cent of its labour force. Even for those who work, buying a home is often only a dream. "My husband is a civil servant, but with his salary we can't even buy a centimetre of land," said Umm Ahmed.

Even though they are against "the idea of squatting", she and her family were forced to build a makeshift home on government land.

The municipality has already destroyed their home once.

"We had to completely rebuild it," the 48-year-old told AFP, her face framed by a long black veil.

Local authorities say the land belongs to the state, denouncing the illegal structures and the theft of water and electricity.

The last study on Basra's informal settlements was completed in 2014, just a few months before the terrorist group daesh swept across Iraq seizing nearly a third of the country.

At the time, there were more than 48,500 informal homes in the province, said Zahra Al Jebari, head of urban planning at Basra's provincial council.

Today "there are many more, but there is no figure," she told AFP.

Many internal refugees displaced by IS fled to Basra, untouched by the jihadist takeover, often finding homes in shanty towns.