THE vice-president of Afghanistan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, spent November 25th watching a game of buzkashi, a traditional version of polo in which the carcass of a goat serves as the ball. With his boss abroad, Mr Dostum was acting president. But his behaviour allegedly became downright unpresidential when he encountered Ahmad Ishchi, a political rival, amid the crowd. Mr Dostum is said to have punched Mr Ishchi in the face and then pinned him to the ground with his boot. His bodyguards administered a further beating before carting the injured Mr Ishchi away in an armoured vehicle. He has not been seen since. Protesters demanding his release were turned away when they visited Mr Dostum’s palace, a sprawling pink and baby blue compound plastered with large posters of its owner.
Mr Dostum likes to talk about himself in the third person. He is a warlord first, politician second. He is known to Westerners chiefly for the time his henchmen packed hundreds of Taliban prisoners into shipping containers, leading to mass suffocation. It was startling, then, when Ashraf Ghani, a technocratic...Continue reading
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