Uzbekistan bans billiards as morally harmful pastime

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- Bakhrom Sadykov forlornly fingers the black-and-gold scoreboards at his once-bustling billiard club, where the sharp crack of balls hitting one another has gone silent.

A few weeks ago, Uzbek authorities banned the popular pastime, apparently in the belief that billiard halls, which have multiplied here since the country's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, have become places of vice.

But Sadykov, president of Uzbekistan's Billiard Federation, still comes here to pass the time with a game of cards. "We'll need just two days to put things together again and open the club," he said longingly.

The ban came as a shock to many Uzbeks, who see it as a blow to their freedom, already limited in this nation still ruled by communist-era boss.

Some liken it to the ban on television and music by Afghanistan's radical Taliban, or a ban on opera and ballet in nearby Turkmenistan.

Yet while Uzbekistan is mostly Muslim, the crackdown on vice doesn't square with the government's history of staunchly secular policies.

What government agency initiated the ban is a mystery. Officials say there was no government decree, and city officials also don't know where the order came from.

The authoritarian government run by President Islam Karimov doesn't face any free press that compels it to explain its decisions in depth.

And yet, all billiard clubs are now under lock and key, their signs torn down. Managers at one supermarket that had a few billiard tables were told to cover them so they couldn't be seen.

Tashkent city spokesman Dilshod Nazirov said billiard halls were a public nuisance, noisy places where people were doing drugs and drinking too much.

But many Uzbeks question whether public morality was indeed the motive, noting vodka is still the national drink and striptease shows are a regular feature at nightclubs and restaurants.

But no one agrees on the real reason might be. Rumors on the street range from a purge of organized crime to possibly just that some bureaucrat's son lost big at the table.