BAGHDAD, April 18 (UPI) -- Residents of Baghdad say they are slowly but surely embracing vice-like acts that had been limited while the Iraqi city was mired in conflict.
Screenwriter Ahmed Assadee said with the international conflict in Iraq apparently on the decline, Baghdad residents are once again turning to public romantic interludes and nightclub visits, The New York Times reported Saturday.
"Everything is going back to its natural way," Assadee said.
Walid Brahim, an Iraqi Army bomb disposal expert, agreed that the Iraqi capital has once again become a place where residents can openly consume alcohol at local bars and nightclubs.
"This is great," Brahim, 25, said. "We used to buy alcohol and just drink secretly in our house."
Col. Abdel Jaber Qassim Sadir, the assistant police chief in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karada, told the Times that police are now facing prostitution rather than car bombing clean-up.
"Prostitution, this kind of behavior cannot be stopped," Sadir said. "It's very hard to find it in public; it goes on in secret, isolated places."
