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Only liquor consumption by foreigners is allowed, fomenting resentment among both liberal and conservative Muslim citizens of Afghanistan
By Kim Barker
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published April 25, 2005
KABUL, Afghanistan – No one wants to see Abdul Jabar Sabit when he walks into a bar. Yet nervous workers still rush up, with forced smiles and handshakes, asking if he’d like a soda or a seat.
Sabit wants neither. In his traditional robe and hat, with a full, white beard, he is the Afghan equivalent of the moral police, the main enforcer in Kabul against alcohol and prostitution.
“You are Muslim, aren’t you?” he said to the Turkish manager of one fully stocked bar. “You aren’t allowed to serve this liquor.”
“We are Muslim,” manager Cenk Acar said. “But this is business.”
The business of selling alcohol is one measure of how life has changed in Kabul since the Taliban, which banned it as un-Islamic, fled in late 2001. Alcohol has become lucrative but it has also become a sore point between foreigners here and many locals. Afghanistan has struck an uneasy balance between law and practicality. The constitution bans alcohol, but foreigners are allowed to drink it.
This double standard has caused resentment among liberal and conservative Afghans. Many liberal Afghan men would like to drink alcohol. Conservative Afghans would like to rid the country of all alcohol, and, if necessary, the foreigners blamed for bringing it in.
The growing number of bars and restaurants symbolizes the power of the estimated 2,000 foreign workers in Kabul and a potential spark for any backlash from ordinary Afghans. This is still an Islamic republic, where women are jailed for marrying against family wishes or for adultery.
As of late March, 84 businesses were licensed to serve liquor in Kabul, according to tourism officials. Sabit, the legal adviser to the Interior Ministry, insists there are many more.
He is responsible for making sure businesses that serve alcohol refuse Afghan customers. For the first time, his office raided some of these businesses in February. Several clubs were caught serving alcohol to Afghans. Others were nabbed providing foreign prostitutes to foreigners, and sometimes to Afghans.
Police shut down 11 clubs, accusing several of doubling as brothels, Sabit said. They arrested seven Afghan men and five Chinese women in one.
“I don’t want any of these places to be here,” Sabit said.
No teeth to booze laws
But as with many laws in the new Afghanistan, the ones governing alcohol and other vices have no teeth. Most of the shuttered clubs have reopened, Sabit acknowledged. He is still waiting for the Supreme Court to sign deportation orders for the 30 foreigners accused of prostitution.
Still, every week or two, Sabit and several police officers tour the clubs, search guest houses and question workers. Many workers are foreign, speaking no Afghan languages and only a little English. If female workers dress conservatively, Sabit asks them in English what happened to their revealing clothes. If they dress provocatively, Sabit points it out. “No English,” the workers inevitably say.
On one recent visit, he gestured at a Chinese woman dressed in a fur jacket, fishnet stockings, white miniskirt and white boots–almost unbelievable in a country where many Afghan women still cover their faces and everything else. “Look at that,” he muttered. The only customer was a Western man, sitting at a table by himself.
Although Sabit would like all these places to disappear, he will probably end up disappointed.
Alcohol has increasingly seeped into Afghan culture.
Along the road between the cities of Jalalabad and Kabul, several stalls sell Heineken beer openly, near cases of soda. “No problem,” one stall owner said, as a police officer walked nearby. “Foster’s, Heineken, Beck’s, whiskey, vodka. I have wine for women too.”
Mmm–antiseptic and Pepsi
About six months ago, police in Kabul started checking cars for alcohol on a road leading to the tomb of a former king, one of the few recreation spots here. Near the tomb, people have left behind empty bottles of brandy, vodka and “96% Alcohol,” an antiseptic that some Afghans mix with Pepsi, police said.
“You brought the freedom,” officer Zarwali Jabarkhail told a foreigner asking about the search.
Many clubs that cater to foreigners try to maintain a low profile. But in late March, the Disco Restaurant opened in an Afghan neighborhood–as opposed to areas where foreigners live–behind a hospital. The new club hung a banner along the sidewalk featuring a half-naked dancing couple. Within hours, several Afghans complained, and the couple was ripped off the banner.
When about 20 Afghans tried to enter on the first two nights, they were turned away. Many in the neighborhood wanted to go to the Disco Restaurant, which serves no food, instead serving up music, liquor, disco lights, high school prom decorations and four Chinese women willing to dance with any foreign man.
Zhaogia Guo, who opened the club, said he wanted to make some money and give foreign men a place to dance. His club is the first so-called disco in the country.
“Because of Islam, maybe the disco is not yet possible,” the club owner, who is Chinese, said. “But Afghanistan has developed very rapidly. Maybe people will accept it in the future.”