* Teachers say difficult for students to find jobs
* Unemployment one of Iraq's biggest problems
By Serena Chaudhry
RAMADI, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Roula Abdullah braved checkpoints, often run by death squads or al Qaeda, and fierce fighting in Iraq's restive western town of Ramadi to teach her students English for 7-1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.
These days her biggest worry is how many of her students -- all of them women -- will get jobs when they graduate.
"When the student graduates as a teacher, she stays at home because there is no job for her," Abdullah, who has been teaching English for more than 30 years in Ramadi, said. "There is no government, so how can a student get a job?"
Since a March 7 poll, incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been locked in a battle with former premier Iyad Allawi to see who can form a coalition government.
Maliki is getting closer to securing the support he needs, but the long vacuum in leadership has slowed down crucial economic development projects and diverted attention away from providing Iraqis with key essential services.
Unemployment is officially at 15 percent in the nation of 30 million, but the real rate is believed to be 30 percent. The ranks of people with no way of making a decent living threatens political stability and may also provide a ready stream of angry young men to feed militias and insurgent groups.
Iraqi security officials say insurgent groups like al Qaeda are having trouble finding recruits ideologically driven to join their ranks. Instead, they have been offering money. If the continuing violence is any indicator, those moves are effective.
Noor al-Bayyati, a recent information technology graduate from a Baghdad University, said young people were desperate.
"Young people like me, when they are in need of money to look after their families and to be able to live ... may drift into militant activities if the money is right," said the 23-year-old, who works as a taxi driver because he has been unable to find a job in his chosen field.
"If the government invests in infrastructure projects and brings life back to many factories, jobless people will have a chance to work."
INVESTMENT NEEDED
Badly bruised by decades of war and isolation, Iraq has been slow to get back on its feet as the sectarian war unleashed by the invasion begins to fade. The country needs massive investment in every sector.
Its power stations are decrepit and provide just a few hours of electricity a day, broken railway lines and rusty locomotives dot the desert, and it needs 1 million new homes for its people.
Foreign investment has started to flow into Iraq's oil sector, but development elsewhere has been slow.
Iraq, which depends on oil exports for 95 percent of government revenues, has a five-year economic development plan in which it aims to create 3 to 4 million new jobs by 2014. The plan aims to diversify the economy through public-private partnerships and foreign investment.
"The five-year plan, from 2010-2014, is focused on the unemployment issue," Mehdi al-Alak, a deputy planning minister and head of the statistics office, said.
"If the plan is executed in a proficient way, it will help employ 3 million people and will end unemployment."
Alak said at least 25 percent of Iraqis between the ages of 16 and 29 were unemployed.
While foreign investors have shown growing interest in Iraq, the lack of progress in the political arena and continuing insecurity has made them pause on the sidelines. The state remains the biggest employer.
At Ramadi's Institute for Preparatory School Teachers in Iraq's Sunni heartland of Anbar, where Abdullah works, 120 students graduated last year. Few have been able to find jobs, their teachers say.
"Five years (worth of) students have graduated from this institute, and they graduated as English teachers but until now they haven't been able to get jobs to be English teachers in primary schools," Abdullah said. (Additional reporting by Khalid al-Ansary; Editing by Michael Christie and Lin Noueihed)