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• When in Iraq, lovers of Cuban cigars find rare satisfaction 

Regimes may come and regimes may go, but for nearly a decade now, the fashionable cigar-smoker has found his way to Ali Qournawi's Zenobia.

The tobacco store in an exclusive Baghdad district has been shattered by a car bomb, seen its supplies wilt in wartime power outages and lost its original Baath Party clientele to exile and jail.

But Qournawi reports that postwar business has skyrocketed 200 percent, thanks to the tastes of U.S. service members and more stealthy security men, who snap up his $12 Cohiba Esplendidos, $10 Romeo y Julietas and $8 Montecristo Torpedos, all from Cuba, all brought to Iraq by boat from a supplier in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

"People who smoke cigars are high class, they have style," said Qournawi, 28, who set up shop during U.N. sanctions in the 1990s and started catering to senior officials of Saddam Hussein's regime. Now he thinks his customers are from the CIA.

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