Baghdad has never seen anything quite like it: in the newly reopened al-Khyam bar on the banks of the Tigris a group of American paratroopers, fully armed and dressed for battle, were linked arm in arm with drunken Iraqi revellers as they danced the night away.

“It is good to get a bit of Iraqi culture,” said a soldier from the 82nd Airborne. Three or four of his brothers-in-arms, still wearing body armour and with M4 machineguns slung from their shoulders, did their best to get into the swing. They laughed and joked. Some danced hand in hand with Iraqi women. Some even danced with the men, as is the custom in the Arab world.

“I really wish I wasn't wearing all this s*** but it's dangerous,” said a soldier from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as he tugged on his body armour and adjusted his helmet.

The atmosphere was relaxed, the music Arabic and tinny. Occasionally a singer emerged to entertain the customers, a mix of drunken men with shiny shirts, pointy shoes and gelled hair; their companions a disparate group of prostitutes in bright, tight T-shirts.

The Iraqis seemed pleased to have the Americans with them. “If I see the Americans here I am happy, it means we have a good relationship,” said Shada, 25, an elfin waitress.

For a few hours the violence of the past six years was eclipsed by beer and music.

The burgeoning nightlife in the Iraqi capital is the most dramatic evidence so far that this city is returning to its old, pre-war ways, after the nightmare of sectarian violence and a bloody insurgency punctuated by suicide bombings and beheadings.

Even during British rule, Baghdad's residents enjoyed their alcohol, music and dancing. For the best part of 15 years, however, those pleasures have been denied them.

First, Saddam Hussein moved to close down the bars and nightclubs around the city. In 1994 he launched the “Faith Campaign”, an attempt to persuade the Islamic world that he had become a Muslim believer after years of sectarian rule. He shut bars and nightclubs to demonstrate his faith.

Baghdad's nightlife made a brief reappearance after the US-led invasion but within a few months only the bravest or most foolhardy would venture out on the city's streets after dark.

At the lowest point, sellers of alcohol were killed and their shops blown up by militants. Only the CIA and the British Embassy had bars but they were both reserved for foreigners and were located deep inside the green zone, the protected area that was out of bounds for most Iraqis.

Today Iraqis have a choice of about 30 nightspots in Baghdad, from hole-in-the-wall dives for the working classes to plush Arab houses complete with dancers and bottles of Scotch on every table.

Top of the list is al-Moudif, a twostorey, yellow-brick house in Abu Nawaz street, on the banks of the Tigris. The establishment was once the watering hole of foreign journalists, Palestinian guerrilla leaders and top Iraqi officials.

When I visited it this week, 80 men, wearing sharp suits and pointed leather brogues, were packed into Baghdad's version of Stringfellows.

This was what was left of the city's old money; the traders and professionals who stuck it out in the lean years. They drank Scotch and beer and were entertained by a dancing girl wearing a red, figure-hugging dress that seemed to excite the audience but left her looking just a little bored.

“Iraq is reborn and coming back to life,” said Abdul Zahara Abu Ali, 52, an enthusiastic communist and partowner of the bar, who is finally able to indulge himself.

Across town at the Writers Union, a watering hole in Andalucía Square that is popular with Iraq's authors, the atmosphere was slightly more down at heel. The bar, with its low ceiling and strip lights, was decidedly short on ambience. Despite extractor fans lining the walls, a fog of cigarette smoke hung in the air. Football was on the television.

“I don't recommend the Scotch — it's fake. The beer too. Go for arak, it's Greek,” said Nasir, a regular.

The Corner Star, where the menu is in English and Arabic, is where many of the new elite in Baghdad go. It has the feel of an Eighties Italian restaurant in Islington, North London.

The Bee Gees are the music of choice. There is Lebanese wine for sale and a bottle of Chivas whisky will set you back more than $110. They even had waiters from Bangladesh and peppered steaks on the menu.

There is an area for couples upstairs and during our visit one amorous pair was ejected from the toilet. Eat your heart out, Soho.

US troop numbers

150,000 March 2003, invasion

122,000 December 2003, arrest of Saddam Hussein

150,000 January 2005, first democratic elections for 50 years

168,000 September 2007, height of the “surge”

142,000 Today

Source: brookings.edu

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