Article about the Baghdad Country Club



[Video Link] Joshuah Bearman has a 10,000 word article in The Atavist. He says it's…

… about the one Western watering hole in Baghdad during the height of the insurgency! Basically, the Baghdad Country Club was like the Rick's Cafe Americain of the Green Zone. Or maybe the Mos Eisley cantina at times. Depending on who was there. But it was the one place where anyone — mercenaries and diplomats, contractors and peacekeepers, aid workers and iraqis — could walk in, get dinner, open a decent bottle of wine, and pretend that there weren't rockets falling all around them. Patrons would check their weapons in a safe, like coats in a coatroom, and wander past a sign that read: BAGHDAD COUNTRY CLUB. NO GUNS, NO GRANES, NO KNIVES — NO EXCEPTIONS! It didn't last long, but while it did, the BCC was a beloved place, and a refuge from the war. The story is a life and times of the bar, and the people behind it. (Some of whom risked their lives to bring beer to the Green Zone, as it was like Road Warrior every time the crossed the desert with their cargo of precious liquid.)


The video above "tells the story of how James, the proprietor, first hooked up with the hooch supply and became a war zone restauranteur."


Baghdad Country Club