It's Official: Taliban Decide That Petraeus Must Be Shot By Paula Broadwell's Family Members Due To Adultery

The story comes from The Telegraph.

David Petraeus: gleeful Taliban ponder correct way to execute adulterer


As generals, journalists and military analysts in the United States continue to ponder the national security and political implications of Mr Petraeus's spectacular fall from grace, his affair and resignation have tickled the famously humourless Taliban.

One official burst into laughter at the mention of the Petraeus affair during an interview in Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar.

"What a b------! But all Americans are the same, it's nothing new," the official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Adulterers suffered severe punishment under the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which ran from 1996 until they were forced from power in 2001. Offenders were flogged in public.

But there is a dilemma for the Talib, balancing the demands of Islamic law against the norms of his conservative Pashtun tribe.



"From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress's family," the Taliban official explained helpfully.

"From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death."

Mr Petraeus, a four-star general married for 37 years, resigned from his position as head of the Central Intelligence Agency last week over an affair with his biographer.

Before taking up the post, he had been head of Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, where he led the fight against Taliban insurgents as they re-established themselves in pockets of the country.

The Taliban official said he was not surprised by lurid revelations of the affair.

"It's quite normal for Americans and Western people to behave like this - they live in free sex societies where nobody cares about this sort of thing, so what do you expect?" he said.