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US General David Petraeus, with his wife Holly seated behind him, testifies at his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing to become commander of US forces in Afghanistan on Capitol Hill in this June 29, 2010 file photo. The scandal that felled CIA Director Petraeus widened on November 13, 2012, to snare the top US commander in Afghanistan, Marine General John Allen, who was being investigated for "flirtatious" communications with a woman at the center of the case (REUTERS)
The sex scandal that has brought down CIA chief David Petraeus may be causing heartache in the Washington security establishment but the affair has prompted laughter among the Taliban.
Petraeus resigned last week to pre-empt revelations of an affair with his married biographer Paula Broadwell, bringing to an end a glittering military career that included a spell commanding NATO forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
A stony-faced Taliban official burst into laughter at the mention of the Petraeus affair during an interview with AFP in northwest Pakistan this week.
The Islamists dealt harshly with adulterers during their brutal 1996-2001 rule in Afghanistan, dishing out public floggings for offenders.
The traditional moral code of the Pashtuns, the main ethnic group the Taliban draw their members from, also demands severe punishment for adulterers.
"From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress's family," the Taliban official explained.
"From a Shariah point of view, he should be stoned to death."
Petraeus, a four-star general married for 37 years, stepped down as head of the US spy agency just three days after President Barack Obama's re-election over his fling with Broadwell, an army reservist who travelled to Afghanistan to write a glowing biography of the general.
The scandal has also implicated the current NATO commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, as well as an FBI agent and a glamorous Florida socialite.
The Taliban official said he was not surprised.
"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.
The White House has backed Allen and Obama has assured Americans the affair has not compromised national security.
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