2 U.S. troops, 17 Afghan civilians killed

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Insurgents beheaded 17 people at a party in a Taliban-controlled area, and an Afghan soldier killed two U.S. troops Monday, bringing the two-day death toll to about 30.

Near-daily attacks by militants and increasingly frequent deadly violence against NATO troops by their Afghan allies point to an embarrassing failure of Western policy: After nearly 12 years of military intervention, the country is not pacified.

Once the United States and other countries pull their troops out, chaos seems almost certain to return and Taliban domination in large parts of the country is hardly implausible.

The beheadings were in southern Helmand province, where more than 100 insurgents attacked an Afghan army checkpoint, killing 10 soldiers.

Helmand was the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's surge, when he ordered 33,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan in the military's counterinsurgency plan.

That plan hoped to turn the tide in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar and establish the governmental institutions that would allow the Afghan government to take control of the Taliban heartland. Two years later, Helmand is still so lawless that government officials couldn't even go to the Taliban-controlled town where the beheadings were reported.

Many Afghans in the south, birthplace of the Taliban and home to the Pashtun-speaking population, are leery of a government that many consider to be corrupt and ineffective.

In the beheadings, a local official initially said the victims were civilians at a celebration late Sunday involving music and dancing in the Musa Qala district. The official, Neyamatullah Khan, said the Taliban killed the partygoers for flouting the extreme brand of Islam embraced by the militants.

But a provincial government official said later that those killed were caught up in a fight between Taliban commanders over two women, who were killed. The official, Daoud Ahmadi, said it was unclear whether the music and dancing triggered the violence and whether the dead were all civilians or included some fighters.

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

The Taliban denied any responsibility for the attack.