Prohibition comes to Baghdad

By HUSSEIN al-YASIRI
INSTITUTE FOR WAR & amp; PEACE REPORTING
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Nabil Yousif says he has plenty of customers. His problem is that he's unable to find drivers will to make deliveries to his liquor store. When a shipment of alcohol does arrive, it's invariably hidden under boxes of Coca-Cola.
Such is the life of the few liquor store owners still operating in Baghdad. Like most other store owners, Yousif is a Christian and therefore does not face the Muslim prohibition against selling alcohol. But unlike others, he said he is able to keep his shop open only because it is located inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, where most Iraqi government and American offices are located.
While beer, wine and spirits are readily available in the Kurdish-controlled northern areas of Iraq, most shops that once sold alcoholic beverages have been shut down in the capital as well as the southern and western parts of the country.
It's quite a change for a country that, in the 1970s and 1980s, was famous for its nightlife, especially in the bars along Nawas Street on the east bank of the Tigris River.
In the 1990s, Saddam Hussein launched something of a temperance movement in an attempt to gain support from conservative Muslim clerics. Many of the nightclubs were shut down and drinking was banned in a number of neighborhoods. Anyone found drunk in public could be detained for a month.
Today, it's religious extremists who are imposing an enforced sobriety on the nation.
Eight months ago, Sirood Ahmed, 29, said he was planning to open a liquor store in the Karrada district of the capital. He decided to go ahead with his plan even after finding a bullet hole in the door of his shop and receiving a threatening letter warning him to shut down.
He finally decided to abandon his business plan after four gunmen showed up and ordered him to close.
"I am lucky to be alive, because many others were killed in several Baghdad neighborhoods," he said.
Recent phenomenon
Such threats are a relatively recent phenomenon.
Six months ago, there were plenty of stores where people could choose between beer, Lebanese or French wine, Scotch and Iraqi-made Arak in shops in the Karrada, Arasat and Mansoor districts.
Today, most are gone, driven out of business by militants.
Hasanen Murad, 60, witnessed an attack on a store near his house in Mansoor. An explosion shook the windows in his apartment, and when he went out to see what had happened, he saw that a nearby liquor store had been badly damaged.
The shop's owner failed to take the hint and close down his shop.
A month later, the militants returned. They set fire to the store and murdered the owner, along with four customers. Their bodies were found on the ground surrounded by bottles of whisky and Arak.
"Ever since, no liquor store has been opened in the area," Murad said.
Local police say they're powerless to stop such attacks.
All this has driven up the prices of beer and whisky by as much as 50 percent in recent months.
Given the current situation in Baghdad, however, it should come as no surprise that many are willing to go to great lengths to get a drink.
"Sometimes my friend and I drink in the car, while roaming around Baghdad," said Dhiya al-Amiri, 33. "I can't drink at home because my family is too conservative. What sort of a life is this?"
That helps explain why there are long queues outside the few liquor stores that are still open.
Salam Muhsin, 30, said he's grown used to waiting in line for food or gasoline. Now, he patiently waits in line at the local liquor store.
Later that day, he'll mix alcohol with cola so that no one can see what he's drinking.
"If someone saw what I was doing, I end up dead on the roadside," he said.
Hussein al-Yasiri is a journalist in Iraq who writes for The Institute for War & amp; Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.