Alcohol deaths spotlight Pakistan's drinking culture

By Nadeem Sarwar Sep 22, 2007, 16:59 GMT

Islamabad - 'Doctors say my eyesight is gone, totally, irreversibly gone. Allah has punished me because I did not respect the holy month of Ramadan,' Mohammad Jamil says from his hospital bed in Pakistani port city of Karachi after a drinking experience that has scarred him for life.

Jamil, 22, may consider himself lucky to have been only blinded. More than 40 people who partook from the same batch of home-made hard liquor died hours after they were admitted to hospital suffering from nausea, severe cramps, shaking and blurred eyesight.

Police on Saturday arrested six people for selling Kuppi or Tharra, a cheap methyl-based alcohol intended for industrial use but which is a standard ingredient in illegal moonshine that is easily obtained across the predominantly Muslim country.

With only three per cent of Pakistan's population of 160 million are entitled to buy and consume alcohol, quality-controlled liquor produced by the country's monopoly brewery is pricey and restricted to the black market.

'A Muslim has to pay 650 rupees (11 US dollars), almost double the price a Christian pays at a liquor shop, to buy a one litre vodka bottle from an illegal supplier,' said Chaudhry Tariq, head of Islamabad's Excise Department which issues alcohol permits to non- Muslims.

High prices on the black market drive millions of Muslim imbibers to an underground network of brewers, whose businesses subsequently thrive despite a chronic lack of control over the product they ply with increasing ease.

Meanwhile, within discussion of Islam there are conflicting views about the reaches of the faith's ban on consuming alcohol. Conservative scholars even opine that medicines containing minor quantities of alcohol are forbidden by the Holy Koran. Others claim the prohibition is only partial as a person should not drink to the extent that they lose their senses.

For the first 30 years after Pakistan was founded in 1947, its liquor laws remained liberal and a widespread bar culture flourished in most towns and cities.

But in the mid-1970s, former prime minister Zulfiqar Bhutto imposed a comprehensive ban on alcohol consumption among the Muslim population in response to pressure from Islamic fundamentalist parties.

Today, being caught in possession of alcohol without a permit carries penalties ranging from fines to terms of imprisonment of several years.

Despite the restrictions, millions of Pakistani Muslims continue to drink, and nor is the indulgence limited to the western-educated elite class of prosperous liberals.

According to a police source, almost every third wedding in rural areas involves the serving of alcohol, and sometimes thousands of people are simultaneously served with 'desi,' a crude homemade liquor not based on methyl.

Now, it seems, the issue is slowly ripening for public discussion under President Pervez Musharraf's policy of 'enlightened moderation.'

Earlier this year, Ali Akbar Wains, a parliamentarian from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, caused an uproar when he called upon the government to loosen the ban on liquor in order to stem rising use of drugs like heroin, morphine and hashish among the youth.

'By banning the minor evil of alcohol, we have allowed the major evil of drugs to flourish in the country,' Wains told parliament in comments that were even endorsed by the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sher Afgan, who said that he knew many MPs who drank alcohol regularly.

But while some members of parliament were seen to exchange knowing glances, the comments were too much for the lower house Speaker, who outright dismissed the debate as unconstitutional.

The latest slew of deaths from the unregulated alcohol industry is expected to fuel a further round of discussion among Pakistan's drinking population and those who have to deal with the consequences of haphazard distilling and brewing.

'I believe that by introducing liberal policies towards alcohol we could save several of the patients who were affected by sub-standard alcohol and brought to this hospital,' a female doctor at the Karachi Hospital said.