Taliban Using US Tech to Hunt Down and Kill Afghans!
As the Joe Biden-caused debacle in Afghanistan continues, there have been reports that the Taliban is using US tracking technology left behind to hunt down and kill Afghans who worked with our military!
According to reporting by Politico and the NY Post, the Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces — and it’s using US equipment and data to do it.
Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders over the Al Isha unit, bragged in an interview with Zenger News that his unit is using US-made hand-held scanners to tap into a massive US-built biometric database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed computer records that the US left behind in its frenzied withdrawal.
The existence of the Al Isha unit has not been previously confirmed by the Taliban; until now, the Haqqani Network, a terror group aligned with the Taliban, has not admitted its role in targeting Afghans or its use of America’s vast biometric database.
The Haqqani Network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting the US, Coalition, and Afghan forces,” according to the US National Counterterrorism Center.
The US separately has provided the Taliban with a list of Americans and Afghans it wants to evacuate from the country, a move one defense official told Politico was “just putting all those Afghans on a kill list.”
Unfortunately for those that it is using to hunt down, the power and reach of the US biometric database are very large and comprehensive. Virtually everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the US military, including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries, was fingerprinted and scanned for the biometric database over the past 12 years.
US officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 hand-held scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database could be remotely deleted. The US State and Defense departments acknowledged receipt of questions from Zenger for this story. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth said he would forward them to “the right folks” but did not provide answers by press time. State Department press officer Nicole Thompson said the questions were “being worked” inside the agency but also didn’t provide a response, according to The Post. White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Now that Kabul is taken, operational work has taken a back seat, and we’ve turned our focus on counterintelligence,” Nawazuddin Haqqani told Zenger in a mobile phone conversation over the weekend. “While most of the brigade is now resting in different madrassas [Islamic religious schools], the Al Isha group is now the principal agency handling this [biometric] data project.”
“We’re in control of the Interior Ministry and the national biometric database they kept. We have everyone’s data with us now — including journalists and so-called human rights people. We haven’t killed a single foreign journalist, have we? We aren’t arresting the families of these people [who are on the blacklist] either,” he said.
“But American, NDS [Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security] and RAW’s [India’s Research and Analysis Wing] puppets won’t be let off. They will always be watched by Al Isha. Those who were barking about having US dollars in their pockets till a few days back — they won’t be spared. They can’t be spared, can they?”
The Al Isha unit has more than doubled in size, from 500 to nearly 1,100 over the past month, he told Zenger and spread out into many of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
Asked about reports that Pakistani intelligence officers were supervising the Al Isha unit’s use of biometric data to interrogate former U.S. allies, Nawazuddin Haqqani didn’t deny the Pakistan connection.
“You are not that naive — you know the answer to that,” he said according to a source. “But what I can say is, it’s not necessary to train everyone in Pakistan. The Emirs [local Taliban chieftains] are quite capable of training the foot soldiers to handle the equipment.”
This isn’t advanced technology. The Taliban, including the 5,000 that trump let out of prison, are able to get this technology from anywhere.
That being said, lemme know if Biden turns the other way when another Country puts a bounty on the heads of American Military.
Keep trying Bill, this is as weak as your Bagram story
You aren’t good enough to give Trump a rim job you stupid communist
he wont be able, you already have your nose up his fat ass.
Carlos, that’s a weird reply. Like when I want to insult someone, licking butt holes isn’t something that would ever cross my mind.
To each his own, but if you spent that much time thinking and typing such a response , you may want to explore your curiosity a little more.
What is the source of your information that it was Trump that released the ISIS prisoners? It was the Taliban.
Why is my comment awaiting moderation? Why am I being censored when the person to whom I replied was not?
Czerny… Umm.. trump’s words.
The GOP website, ALL ( but faux) news outlets.
Trump let out 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
Isis k ( or X if trump is telling the story) bombed the airport. These are two different groups.
I’m not surprised you didn’t know this. The Radical Right “news” outlets won’t tell you anything dear leader doesn’t want you to know.
Why not send in B-52’s and drones to destroy left behind US military hardware (which should have been destroyed or booby trapped before leaving it behind, anyway)?
And wipe out the ragheads at the same time Opps. According to the leftist trolls on this site I shouldn’t disrespect them
I think most of the equipment you’re talking about was in control of the Afghan army; given the rapid collapse, I would gather little was destroyed. Not sure how much the US itself left behind, probably not much. Here’s the total compendium, but really not sure that bombing the Taliban would be productive at this point. Might be better to see if their actions match their words before we go to war again.
With regard to the biometric identification systems, IMO, Ben is on the right track that this kind of ID is available from anything from voting records, to phone records. DOD spokesman said: “the U.S. has taken prudent actions to ensure that sensitive data does not fall into the Taliban’s hands. This data is not at risk of misuse,” whether we believe him or not, there is plenty of data probably in the manner that Ben notes, available.
For the digital stuff, I am a bit surprised we didn’t build in a kill switch since it was pretty well known how extensive these databases might be. However, having and using are two different things, one expert said “narrowing the datasets” can require extensive knowledge and skill. Everyone is in the database, finding everyone is pretty easy, figuring out the data proving collaboration is another thing, a more difficult thing.
There is little doubt that the Taliban, with the handheld devices, that they may or may not have, and with the use of someone familiar with the system, which the Taliban may or may not have, could easily establish a new database for tracking going forward. But proving someone is a collaborator from this data would be much more difficult, probably easier just to grab the phone records.
Bottom line IMO: even if this is Taliban 2.0, looking to play on the International Stage as a legitimate government, being an ally of the US is not a good place to be. At the same time, pretty hard to destroy all the data for all the infrastructure, unless you decide at the get-go that you are going to burn it all down when you leave. Seems a bit counter to the nation-building concept.
More bottom line, IMO: have a plan to extract collaborators and not leave them on the field.
Even more bottom line: does this even put the US in physical danger in any way? Don’t think so.
Probably a better course in the future is to avoid nation-building, but if we do decide to do that, then try to avoid putting corrupt governments in place and then artificially prop them up while protecting these corrupt people with the lives of our sons and daughters. Creating police states has never really been great for the US, especially after 20 years
more of the same blah blah get over it. our sons and daughters will not die in Afghanistan anymore be thankful and don’t politicize the dead with your stupid propaganda.