Kabul Goes Dry as Muslims Cork Hotel Bar

For the first time since the 1978 Communist revolution that triggered Afghanistan’s Islamic rebellion, the Nuristan bar in Kabul’s state-owned Inter-Continental Hotel, the last bastion of Western civilization in this city, was ordered to close and all its liquor stocks sealed Monday.

The order came not from the new interim ruling council, which includes many Muslim fundamentalists, but from the armed rebel group that seized control of the five-story, 200-room hotel during the moujahedeen takeover of the capital city late last month.

The rebel commander who took the hotel, along with about two dozen heavily armed guerrillas, ordered the hotel’s general manager Monday to lock up all liquor stocks, remove all photographs and drawings of women from the hotel walls and begin requiring all Afghan women to cover themselves while moving through the hotel lobby and restaurant.