KARAKUDUK, Kazakhstan: Scanning shop shelves in the Kazakh village of Karakuduk, locals will not find a drop of alcohol due to a prohibition movement growing in popularity across the Central Asian country. “We don’t sell any alcoholic drinks. If you want something to drink, we’ve got water, juice, fizzy drinks and fermented milk,” said Aigerim Mukeyeva, who owns a shop in the village of around 650 people, located in central Kazakhstan’s vast steppe.

Like many ex-Soviet republics—particularly its neighbor Russia—Kazakhstan has long-standing problems with alcoholism. The country’s authorities are keen to promote healthy living and have supported moves to establish “dry” villages such as Karakuduk—although there is no legal ban on alcohol sales.

The country’s interior ministry lists 97 “sober” places, half of them in the vast industrial Karaganda region, where Karakuduk is located. But local media have reported that even larger numbers of villages have gone alcohol-free. Although most Kazakhs are Muslim, religion does not appear to be a major factor in the prohibition push.

The country is a secular state, influenced by decades of Soviet atheism. Officially, the authorities are not imposing prohibition. A police spokesman told AFP that the impetus “comes from the people”.

The decision to go dry is usually proposed by influential local elders, who act as a form of social control in Central Asian societies, often in conjunction with the state. The fear of judgment by such community leaders can act as a powerful incentive for people to quit booze. “The only shop here that sold alcohol closed a few years ago, due to lack of demand,” Karakuduk mayor Bauyrzhan Zhumagulov, a former special operations police officer, told AFP. He admitted, however, that he had quietly suggested to shop owners not to extend their alcohol licenses.

In other places, people have used more radical methods. In the village of Abai in central Kazakhstan, locals removed bottles from shelves and ceremonially smashed them. “We’re against... vodka!” the mayor and a group of villagers shouted, pumping their fists, before throwing the bottles into a metal bin, footage on state television showed. In another village, Aksu in the north, police used a bulldozer to smash 1,186 bottles from a shop that had been secretly selling alcohol at night. Statistics on Kazakhstan’s alcohol consumption are incomplete. — AFP