Imported vice gives Afghans a headache

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Behind an unmarked door on a quiet residential street, a half-dozen young Chinese women in miniskirts shimmy to disco tapes or sit with beefy European men. Next to the fully stocked bar, a plastic Christmas tree pulses with tiny lights.

Behind a desk in a spartan government office, a bearded official says he is swamped with job applicants for a proposed department to promote virtue and discourage vice, which would send out religious monitors to uncover and correct un-Islamic behavior.

Both scenes coexist in a confused, newly democratic Muslim society grappling with a five-year influx of foreign troops and visitors, who have provided aid and protection but also have brought alcohol, prostitution and other tempting taboos.

In recent weeks, the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai has moved aggressively to crack down on what Afghans call imported vices. He is acting partly in response to pressure from domestic religious leaders and partly to upstage Islamic Taliban insurgents in the south.

Police in this capital of 4 million, which also is home to several thousand foreigners, have raided about a dozen restaurants and shops suspected of selling alcohol to Afghans and have seized and destroyed thousands of bottles.

Officers have detained more than 100 Chinese women as suspected prostitutes, seven of whom were deported at the airport here Aug. 2.

The Cabinet also approved reviving the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Discouragement of Vice, a body that Afghan governments have maintained through much of the country's history.

It became notoriously punitive under Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001.

The proposal, which must be ratified by parliament, has outraged human rights groups, Western-oriented Afghan leaders and Western diplomats because of the Taliban link.
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