Alcohol returns to Baghdad

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.

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.

* 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.