Days after David Petraeus stood down from his position amid the fall-out of an extramarital affair, a stony-faced Taliban official burst into laughter at the mention of what happened to the man who served as head of US and international forces in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. “What a b*****d! But all Americans are the same, it’s nothing new,” the unidentified official told Agence France-Presse.

The moral code of the Pashtuns, the main ethnic group from which the Taliban draw their members, 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 continued. “From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.”