KABUL: The Taliban maintain taken over the opulent mansion of ex-vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum — located within the neighbourhood domestically known as the “Thieves’ Quarters”.
Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ex-vice president of Afghanistan, modified into once rumoured to maintain hugely profited from the corruption and embezzlement that discredited the frail executive.
Several officials illegally took land to make luxurious mansions in one neighbourhood, incomes it the nickname “Thieves’ Quarter” amongst locals.
Following the autumn of Kabul in mid-August, Qari Salahuddin Ayoubi — one in every of the unusual regime’s most great commanders —took sustain watch over of Dostum’s villa, where now 150 males are stationed.
The opulent villa has given the Taliban a learn about into the lives of Afghanistan’s frail rulers, and they affirm the luxurious is the proceeds of years of endemic corruption.
AFP on a tour of the mansion seen luxury that will most definitely be inconceivable for most traditional Afghans.
Tall glass chandeliers grasp in cavernous halls, orderly cushy sofas furnish a maze of lounges and an indoor swimming pool is finished with intricate turquoise tiles internal the mansion.
The villa even boasts a sauna, a Turkish steam bathtub and a fully equipped gym.
The mansion is a whimsical abilities for the unusual occupants, who for years sacrificed creature comforts for riot residing within the plains, valleys and mountains of rural Afghanistan.
Ayoubi, alternatively, has made it positive that his males will no longer accumulate at menace of the luxurious.
“Islam never wants us to maintain an dear life,” Ayoubi urged AFP, adding luxury is available in paradise, “the life after death”.
The ‘Thieves’ Quarter’
The mansion’s proprietor, Dostum, is a notorious figure woven into the cloth of Afghanistan’s most unusual history.
A frail paratrooper, communist commander, warlord and vice president, he modified into once the very definition of a cunning political survivor who weathered over four a few years of battle in battle-torn Afghanistan.
No matter a series of battle crimes linked to Dostum’s forces, the frail Afghan executive hoped his protection power acumen and seething hatred of the Taliban would abet them continue to exist.
But his stronghold modified into once overrun and the greying 67-year-prone fled correct via the border to Uzbekistan.
The Taliban maintain a correct reason to abominate Dostum.
In 2001, he modified into once accused of killing bigger than 2,000 fighters — locking many in containers within the course of the barren space where they suffocated below a hot solar.
But Commander Ayoubi rejected any desire for revenge.
“If other of us who had been oppressed fancy us came here, you do no longer maintain considered the chairs and tables. They would possibly possibly well maintain destroyed them,” he said.
However the unusual regime will no longer enable such luxury to be constructed with sick-gotten beneficial properties at some point, he said.
“We’re on the aspect of the glum,” he says, as dozens of company wait patiently within the hall, idly looking out at the indifferent fish.
