Militants' control diminishes as secular social life returns
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
The Independent
Alcohol
is openly for sale once more in Baghdad. All over the Iraqi capital, liquor stores, which closed their doors in early 2006 when sectarian
strife was raging, have slowly begun to reopen. Two years ago,
al-Qa'ida militants were burning down liquor stores and shooting their
owners. Now around Saadoun Street, in the centre of the city, at least
50 stores are advertising that they have alcohol for sale.
The
fear of being seen drinking in public is also subsiding. Young men
openly drink beer in some, if not all, streets. A favourite spot where
drinkers traditionally gathered is al-Jadriya bridge, which has fine
views up and down the Tigris river. Two years ago even serious drunks
decided that boozing on the bridge was too dangerous. But in the past
three months they have returned, a sign that militant gunmen no longer
decide what people in Baghdad do at night. "I drink seven or eight cans
of beer a day and a bottle of whiskey on Thursday evenings," said Abu
Ahmed, a former military intelligence officer who now makes a living
driving a taxi.
The reopening of the liquor stores is a sign of
a slow if limited return of normal social life for Baghdad's embattled
residents. Shops are beginning to stay open later, particularly in
mostly Shia east Baghdad. Other social freedoms have also expanded in
the past three or four months. Strict Islamic dress for women is no
longer quite so common.
This return to normality can be
exaggerated. The much-talked-of improvement in security, evident since
the second half of 2007, is largely in contrast to the bloodbath of
2006 when up to 3,000 civilians were being killed every month. But it
is true that explosions no longer reverberate daily across the city,
allowing a semblance of the old secular atmosphere to resurface.
Iraq
was one of the most secular of Arab countries until the early 1990s.
Restaurants all served alcohol and there was a plentiful supply of
nightclubs. None of the prohibition on alcohol seen in Saudi Arabia or
Kuwait held sway. In Basra, in the late 1970s, the main local complaint
was that Kuwaitis were pouring across the border and drinking the city
dry. In Baghdad it was possible to sit in one of the restaurants off
Abu Nawas Street on the bank of the Tigris River eating fish grilled
over an open fire and drinking beer and arak (a spirit made from dates
and flavoured with aniseed).
These were the last days when
social life in Baghdad was free and easy. Following his disastrous
defeat in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein, seeking to shore up his support, gave
his regime a more Islamic complexion. The Abu Nawas restaurants went
dry. Police patrolled the public parks in search of illicit drinkers.
An Iraqi who drank had to do so at home and Muslims were banned from
selling alcohol, leaving the trade to Christians.
When Saddam's
regime fell in 2003, whisky, beer and wine reappeared in restaurants
and bars, but it didn't last. At the height of the Sunni insurgency,
al-Qa'ida in Iraq was notorious for its savage punishments of those
offending Islamic social mores. Smokers had the two fingers with which
they held a cigarette chopped off as a warning. Dozens of hairdressers
accused of giving unIslamic haircuts were shot dead. In Shia
working-class areas such as Sadr City, controlled by the Mehdi Army,
militia Islamic dress became obligatory. There are still risks. Two
months ago a store owner, Abu Rami, opened up selling drink among other
things in the Mansur district of west Baghdad. Several weeks later
gunmen, who locals believe came from al-Qa'ida in Iraq, shot him dead
with his son and set his shop ablaze.
But few of the other
reopened shops have been harassed or attacked. Most are near army or
police checkpoints which the stores pay off in beer or cash to secure
protection. Rami Aboud, who works with his uncle running a drink shop
at the Jordan interchange in the Yarmouk district in west Baghdad, says
he gives the police and soldiers 15 cans of beer a night or the
equivalent in cash.
His uncle, like almost all drink store
owners in Baghdad, is a Christian. "At that time," says Rami Aboud,
recalling the business in the early 1990s, "we were selling Iraqi beer
– Farida or Sheherezade – and Grant's whisky. But after the fall of
Saddam Hussein in 2003 we sold every other kind of drink. The Iraqi
breweries never reopened and Iraqis now consume imported beers such as
Efes or Bavaria for a dollar a can or Heineken for about $1.70." Mr
Aboud's uncle opened a second store in nearby al-Kindi Street, but
sectarianism and Islamic militancy put him out of business in 2005. "I
was in our older store when gunmen in two cars opened fire on us from
long distance," says Mr Aboud. "I ran away with my uncle, dodging from
store front to store front, and we were lucky we were not killed. We
were left with our al-Kindi Street store, but we received threats that
if we did not close it we would be killed and the shop burnt so we shut
that too."
As the sectarian pogroms turned into a civil war
between Sunnis and Shias in Baghdad after the Shia shrine in Samarra
was blown up in February 2006, almost all the drink stores closed in
the capital. The few remaining shops nestled in a heavily defended
enclave close to the Green Zone.
Despite the improvement in
security, the return to any form of normal social life is so far edgy
and limited. The shopkeepers selling alcohol are wary that they may
have to shut again. "We opened our shop again in April 2008 next to an
army checkpoint," said Mr Aboud. "We don't think anybody will be able
to shoot at us, but we are worried that we might be killed when we go
to our homes."
But for now, his shop is full of young men buying beer, confident they can sip it openly without anybody trying to kill them.
Saddam's favourite drink
*
The favourite tipple of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was Mateus
Rose, the Portuguese wine fashionable in the Seventies, and the
occasional glass of whisky.
* Saddam's son Uday had a more lethal
reputation as a drinker. He was prone to dangerous rages and once shot
dead one of his father's aides during a drunken tantrum.
* The
older generation of Iraqis in Saddam's day drank arak, made from
fermented dates but after 1992 beer and whisky became more popular. The
present Shia/Kurdish government is made up of members of religious
parties, who largely don't drink, and Kurdish leaders, who do.
Iraq demands withdrawal date for US forces
Iraq
will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it
includes dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government's
national security adviser said yesterday.
The comments by
Mowaffaq al-Rubaie underscore the US-backed government's hardening
stance towards a deal with Washington that will provide a legal basis
for American troops to operate when a UN mandate expires at the end of
the year.
On Monday, the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki,
appeared to catch Washington off guard by suggesting for the first time
that a timetable be set for the departure of US forces under the deal
being negotiated, which he called a memorandum of understanding. Mr
Rubaie said Iraq was waiting "impatiently for the day when the last
foreign soldier leaves Iraq".
"We can't have a memorandum of
understanding with foreign forces unless it has dates and clear
horizons determining the departure of foreign forces. We're
unambiguously talking about their departure," he said in the holy Shia
city of Najaf.
Mr Rubaie was speaking to reporters after meeting
Iraq's top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He said they
spoke about the US talks, but did not say if the ayatollah had an
opinion on the negotiations.
The Bush administration has always
opposed setting a withdrawal timetable, saying it would allow militant
groups to lie low until its 150,000 troops left. Reuters
