Afghanistan: Taleban deny beheading 17 people as punishment for partying

AFGHAN president Hamid Karzai has accused the Taleban of beheading 17 villagers, including two women, in a gruesome attack recalling the dark days of the hardline group’s rule before their 2001 fall from power.

He ordered a full investigation into the “mass killing” in volatile Helmand province, which a local official said was punishment to revellers attending a party with music and mixed-sex dancing.

“This attack shows that there are irresponsible members among the Taleban,” Mr Karzai said in a statement yesterday.

The Taleban denied being involved in the attack, which Mr Karzai’s office said took place in Kajaki district.

“The victims were killed for throwing a late-night dancing and music party when the Taleban attacked,” Nimatullah, governor for neighbouring Musa Qala district, said.

Men and women do not usually mingle in ultra-religious Afghanistan unless they are related, and parties involving both genders are rare and kept secret.

However, another provincial government official said that those killed were caught up in a fight between two Taleban commanders over two women, who were among the dead.

Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial government, said shooting broke out during the fight. He said it was unclear whether the music and dancing triggered the violence and whether the dead were all civilians or possibly included some fighters.

He said all of the bodies were decapitated, but it was not clear if they had been shot first.

But Taleban spokesman Qari Yousuf, who oversees the south-west of the country, denied the group was involved. “I spoke to our commanders in those villages, but they know nothing of the event,” he said.

During their five-year reign, the Taleban banned women from voting, most work and leaving their homes unless accompanied by their husband or a male relative. Though those rights have been painstakingly regained, Afghanistan remains one of the worst places on Earth to be a woman.

Some more general democratic freedoms have also been wound back in what rights groups fear is an effort to reach a political reconciliation and possible power-sharing with the Taleban, who had also banned music and dancing.

Taleban gunmen stormed a lakeside hotel near Kabul in June demanding to know where the “prostitutes and pimps” were during a party, witnesses said. Twenty people were killed.

The Taleban said they launched the attack, on Qarga Lake, because the hotel was used for “wild parties”.

Mr Ahmadi said a team had been sent to the site of the latest killings to investigate.

In another setback for Nato, an Afghan soldier shot dead two US troops yesterday, the latest in a series of insider killings that have strained trust ahead of a 2014 handover to Afghan security forces.

The deaths, in Laghman province in the east of the country, brought to 12 the number of foreign soldiers killed this month, prompting Nato to increase security against insider attacks, including requiring soldiers to carry loaded weapons at all times on base.

“ISAF troops returned fire, killing the ANA [Afghan National Army] soldier who committed the attack,” the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey visited Kabul last week to talk about rogue shootings and urge Afghan officials to take tougher preventative action.