Rapper Stu Stone entertains the troops during 2010, but Baghdad nightlife is scarce outside of U.S. military bases. (Image by Spc. Cal Turner.)

Baghdad discos and nightclubs, once legendary, are now strobe-less thanks to the U.S. war in Iraq and the religious conservatism that has arisen in the city in its aftermath. According to a Washington Post piece by Yahya Barzanji, the party has relocated north into liberal Kurdish territories. An excerpt:

“Dozens of dance halls and clubs have opened across the Kurdish region during the past months, capitalizing on a crackdown against alcohol in Baghdad, where officials in November began closing clubs serving booze and banned alcohol sales at stores.

That prompted the capital’s nightlife – its musicians, dancers and impresarios, and the patrons who flock to them – to migrate north.

‘Baghdad has become a dead city where there is no more amusement, no drinks and no music. They have dressed the capital in religious clothes,’ said Hameed Saleh, a Baghdad Academy of Music graduate who plays the drums and oud, the Arabic forerunner to the lute, at Kurdonia Club. ‘Now I play music in Sulaimaniyah and my life is secure.’

Baghdad in the 1970s and 1980s was renowned for being the capital of Middle East nightlife with the most raucous nightclubs and an endless flow of whiskey. U.N. sanctions and Saddam Hussein’s newfound piety dimmed its star a bit in the 1990s, but it was the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the violence that ensued and the rise of conservative Islamic militias that all but snuffed it out.

Nightlife in Baghdad tried to rise from the dead after violence declined in 2008, but the final blow came when religious conservatives began enforcing a Saddam-era ban on alcohol in clubs and added a ban in stores.”