Few days ago, two people died because of alcohol overuse in the western Herat province. According to reports, the reason was overdrinking. The incident is the first of its kind in the highly conservative society, there are many unpublished health-related stories caused by overuse or low quality of alcoholic drinks, like blindness, severe headache and etc.
Such issues are assessable from two different points of view: one, alcoholic drinks are banned according to domestic laws. Those who are engaged in such trade can be persecuted and punished. Meanwhile this illegal trade has indeed become so widespread.
There are hundreds of shops in Kabul city which secretly sell different types of alcoholic drinks yet they hardly get disturbed by police. Police is mostly aware of shops and know sellers, but they never try to arrest them. And if they ever try to do so, exchange of small amount of money as bribe keeps them uninterested.
The reports reveal that some of the culprits among the policemen are also addicted to alcohol and they are regular customers themselves, so it is not very frequent to find them taking action in order to control the spread of the alcoholic drinks.
According to a report published in a German Newspaper about prostitutes in Kabul, some astonishing facts were revealed. The reporter made an interview with two girls whose mother and aunt were the root cause of their involvement in the business. In response to his question whether police created any problem for them, she burst in laugh saying that they never try to stop us; some of our customers are also police officers.
Nowadays, the womanizing and consumption of alcoholic drinks have increasingly changing to a matter of pride. Among Afghan youngsters who have not drunk or do not have sexual experience before marriage is changing to a matter of adulthood abject. Instead those who have such experience are considered honorable.
Certainly, this is a worrying issue. It is highly possible that conservative culture may shoot back as result of spread of social misbehaviors. In particular, officials should take the issue more seriously. Otherwise, the deep rooted conservative culture once again may lead the country towards resurgence of radicals and fundamentalists.