Kabul on edge amid standoff between Afghan government and vice president

WASHINGTON POST, 29th JANUARY, 2017- An ominous week-long standoff between the government and its rogue first vice president is choking traffic and dominating talk in the edgy Afghan capital. Police units have been stationed at strategic points near his fortified compound, and everyone is asking the same question: Are they going to arrest Abdurrashid Dostum?

Six weeks ago Dostum, 62, a powerful ethnic Uzbek boss and former warlord with a history of alleged war crimes and personal abuses, was publicly accused of brutality and rape by a former governor and political rival, Ahmad Eschi, who charged that Dostum had held him captive in a rural stronghold and ordered him sodomized with a military rifle.