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Basra discos, booze dry up: The Asian Age
Basra, May 25: The discos here used to close at dawn. The bars served up everything from Scotch whisky to Iraqi wine. Basra was a party town in the 1970s and `80s, one that drew not only locals but Kuwaitis and other foreigners eager for revelry in a region that is otherwise as dry as a bone.
Basra, May 25: The discos here used to close at dawn. The bars served up everything from Scotch whisky to Iraqi wine. Basra was a party town in the 1970s and ’80s, one that drew not only locals but Kuwaitis and other foreigners eager for revelry in a region that is otherwise as dry as a bone.
"There would be dancing and drinking until the sun came up," said Kassim Salman, an Iraqi tour guide who used to partake in the nightlife.
Those days are long gone, squelched under Saddam Hussein’s rule and now wiped out completely by a wave of Islamic activism that has taken its place. Saddam shuttered Basra’s dance halls and bars in the early 1990’s, though he allowed the minority Christian population to keep their liquor stores open under government oversight. Since Saddam’s fall, however, the owners of the liquor outlets have seen their livelihoods dry up with a series of attacks on the alcohol industry.
One liquor store owner recently had a firebomb thrown into his shop. At least two have been shot and killed. Numerous store owners in the city, Iraq’s second largest, have received threats from armed men, telling them that the new Iraq does not allow alcohol. "They told me, ‘If you don’t close the shop in an hour, we’ll destroy it,’" said a liquor store owner, speaking in a whisper and insisting that his name not be printed. "I closed."
His shop may be closed, but he still manages to unload some of his supply, which is now stored at his home. Loyal customers place their orders by telephone and he heads into the city after dark with the alcohol in his trunk. Transactions are done in alleyways, he said, and both he and the buyer are always anxious. "I was freer before the war," he said. "We’re all afraid now." Attacks on alcohol sellers have become a problem countrywide in the free-for-all that has followed the war. But it is the south, where Shia Muslims are in the majority, that the phenomenon appears at its worst.
Clerics and representatives of Islamic political parties maintain that they have not ordered the alcohol-related attacks. They blame zealots out of their control. "We don’t like alcohol but if others want to drink liquor they are free," said Kasim Gbory, an official at the Dawah Party. "We don’t tell anyone what to do." Concerned about the attacks, the archbishop of Basra, Reverend Gabriel Kassab, said he had encouraged all of the estimated 150 liquor store owners in Basra to shut their shops for their own safety. He told them the church would supply them with enough money to live on until a resolution is found. He views the anti-alcohol attacks as part of a wider problem as Islamic fundamentalists attempt to fill the power vacuum left by Saddam.
Christian women, he said, complain that they are now harassed in the street for not covering themselves, which happened only rarely under Saddam’s regime. Hussan Majed, 50, an unemployed mechanic, witnessed one of the liquor store attacks earlier this month. He said that two men got out of a taxi and walked briskly toward an owner as he opened his shop. One man shot the owner and the assailants then fled in the cab. The store’s contents were promptly looted, like so much else in Basra. The British military officers who now run Basra say they are training thousands of Iraqi policemen to handle such crimes.
In the meantime, the liquor store attacks remain unsolved. As for Basra’s nightlife, it remains as raucous as ever. Now, though, it is bands of looters and gunmen who stay up until all hours, pursued through the streets by British soldiers with night-vision scopes on their assault rifles. Everybody else remains huddled in their homes.
"There would be dancing and drinking until the sun came up," said Kassim Salman, an Iraqi tour guide who used to partake in the nightlife.
Those days are long gone, squelched under Saddam Hussein’s rule and now wiped out completely by a wave of Islamic activism that has taken its place. Saddam shuttered Basra’s dance halls and bars in the early 1990’s, though he allowed the minority Christian population to keep their liquor stores open under government oversight. Since Saddam’s fall, however, the owners of the liquor outlets have seen their livelihoods dry up with a series of attacks on the alcohol industry.
One liquor store owner recently had a firebomb thrown into his shop. At least two have been shot and killed. Numerous store owners in the city, Iraq’s second largest, have received threats from armed men, telling them that the new Iraq does not allow alcohol. "They told me, ‘If you don’t close the shop in an hour, we’ll destroy it,’" said a liquor store owner, speaking in a whisper and insisting that his name not be printed. "I closed."
His shop may be closed, but he still manages to unload some of his supply, which is now stored at his home. Loyal customers place their orders by telephone and he heads into the city after dark with the alcohol in his trunk. Transactions are done in alleyways, he said, and both he and the buyer are always anxious. "I was freer before the war," he said. "We’re all afraid now." Attacks on alcohol sellers have become a problem countrywide in the free-for-all that has followed the war. But it is the south, where Shia Muslims are in the majority, that the phenomenon appears at its worst.
Clerics and representatives of Islamic political parties maintain that they have not ordered the alcohol-related attacks. They blame zealots out of their control. "We don’t like alcohol but if others want to drink liquor they are free," said Kasim Gbory, an official at the Dawah Party. "We don’t tell anyone what to do." Concerned about the attacks, the archbishop of Basra, Reverend Gabriel Kassab, said he had encouraged all of the estimated 150 liquor store owners in Basra to shut their shops for their own safety. He told them the church would supply them with enough money to live on until a resolution is found. He views the anti-alcohol attacks as part of a wider problem as Islamic fundamentalists attempt to fill the power vacuum left by Saddam.
Christian women, he said, complain that they are now harassed in the street for not covering themselves, which happened only rarely under Saddam’s regime. Hussan Majed, 50, an unemployed mechanic, witnessed one of the liquor store attacks earlier this month. He said that two men got out of a taxi and walked briskly toward an owner as he opened his shop. One man shot the owner and the assailants then fled in the cab. The store’s contents were promptly looted, like so much else in Basra. The British military officers who now run Basra say they are training thousands of Iraqi policemen to handle such crimes.
In the meantime, the liquor store attacks remain unsolved. As for Basra’s nightlife, it remains as raucous as ever. Now, though, it is bands of looters and gunmen who stay up until all hours, pursued through the streets by British soldiers with night-vision scopes on their assault rifles. Everybody else remains huddled in their homes.