A coalition of warlords including Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum are trying to convince the government to drop an inquiry into his possible wrongdoing, The Washington Post reports.
Dostum is currently in the midst of a standoff with his own government after he was denied permission to land in his own country in late July. Dostum fled the country in May after a December 2016 accusation surfaced that he facilitated the sodomizing and severe beating of a political rival.
The entire December fracas reportedly began during a horse match in front of nearly 2,000 people. Dostum owned one team, and Ahmad Ischi, his political rival, owned the other. After his team lost, Dostum began beating the man in front of the entire crowd. Eventually, Dostum and his men tied Ischi’s hands and threw him in the back of a truck. When he reached Dostum’s private residence, he claims he was further beaten and repeatedly sodomized with the barrel of an assault rifle.
Dostum is a famous Afghan warlord, allied with many ethnic leaders in northern Afghanistan. The group of leaders are threatening the Afghan government to drop the probe into Dostum’s role in the beating and to ease corruption restrictions. “We may have to take control of administrative buildings and airports to put pressure on and paralyze the government,” Dostum ally Attah Mohammed Noor told WaPo.
Dostum and his allies threat’s highlight the pervasive instability within the U.S.-backed Afghan government. The U.S. has spent approximately 700 billion dollars in Afghanistan, much of it dedicated to bolstering the legitimacy of the central government based in Kabul. Despite this aid, the government is beset by massive corruption allegations and its forces increasingly falter in face of a robust Taliban insurgency.
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