From Khilafah, posting from The London Daily TelegraphFinding a pint can be a deadly business in Basra. Most alcohol sellers were systematically shot by extremists last summer. Religious groups threatened to kill the rest and anyone they found drinking. In the once liberal port city there is now only one place where alcohol can regularly be found: outside the British headquarters. Every night, 100 or so determined drinkers meet beside the base. They are the city’s liberal elite - lawyers, doctors, judges, students - either sitting in cars or hunkering down behind crash barriers. It is the only place they can meet openly, drinkers say.
They like to think the British presence protects them, although that is a conclusion that can be reached only after a few pints. Three nights ago, two cars pulled up and gunmen sprayed the area beside the Shatt al-Arab river with machine-gun fire. Three drinkers were killed. "This sort of thing happens every night but I’ll never stop drinking," Walil al-Jabiri, an ice-cream seller, and former soldier, said. "I drink beer for freedom. I’ll never hide my cans." .... Basra’s pubs have been closed since the Iran-Iraq war, although under Saddam Hussein, a champagne drinker, alcohol was not forbidden. Few of the drinkers are impressed with the progress made since the fall of Saddam. They say religious parties have come to dominate intellectual life in the city and are imposing a climate of fear redolent of the Saddam era.
Yasser, a 27-year-old law student, said: "People are afraid to stand up for their rights, to tell the religious parties that this is not the way we want to live our lives." The Mahdi Army - responsible for attacks on British forces as well as drinkers - is referred to contemptuously. "Thieves and lying propagandists," al-Jabiri said. "I wish they’d all go back to Iran and leave a man to have a drink in peace." |