The Taliban have mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped U.S. and Allied forces, and is using U.S. equipment and data to do so.
Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the commanders of the Al Isha unit brigade, boasted in an interview with Zenger News that his unit uses hand-made scanners made in the United States to take advantage of a huge biometric database built in the United States and identify positively. anyone who helped NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans trying to deny or downplay their role will be contradicted by the detailed computer records the United States left behind in its frantic withdrawal.
The Taliban have not previously confirmed the existence of the Al Isha unit; so far, the Haqqani Network, a terrorist group aligned with the Taliban, has not admitted its role in the Afghans or the use of the vast U.S. biometric database.
The Haqqani Network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting U.S., coalition and Afghan forces,” according to the National Counter-Terrorism Center.
The U.S. has provided the Taliban with a separate list of Americans and Afghans it wants to evacuate from the country, according to a defense official who told Politico[ing] all those Afghans on a death list “.
But the power and reach of the U.S. biometric database is much greater and more complete. Virtually everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the U.S. military, including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries, was hired and scanned for the biometric database over the past twelve years.
U.S. officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 portable scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database could be remotely deleted. U.S. state and defense departments confirmed receipt of questions from Zenger about the story Tuesday. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth said he would refer them to “the right people,” but gave no answers for press time. State Department Press Officer Nicole Thompson said the questions were “being worked on” inside the agency, but did not respond. White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Now that Kabul is being taken, operational work has gone into the background and we have focused on counterintelligence,” Nawazuddin Haqqani told Zenger in a mobile phone conversation on Saturday. “While most of the brigade rests in different madrassas [Islamic religious schools], the Al Isha group is now the main agency in charge of this [biometric] data project “.
“We have control of the Ministry of the Interior and the national biometric database they maintained. We now have the data of everyone with us, including journalists and so-called human rights people. We haven’t killed any foreign journalists, have we? We are not arresting the families of these people [who are on the blacklist] neither, ”he said.
“But American, NDS [Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security] and RAW’s [India’s Research and Analysis Wing] the dolls will not let go. Al Isha will always see them. Those who barked at having US dollars in their pockets until a few days ago will not be spared. They can’t be saved, right? ”
The database, which includes fingerprints, iris scans and other biographical data, was housed in a whitewashed Interior Ministry building in Kabul. “The centerpiece of the program is the Afghan Automated Biometric Identification System (AABIS), administered by about 50 Afghans at the Interior Ministry in Kabul,” according to a 2011 FBI press release. -American published in 2011 an official manual on the “Guide to the Commander of Biometrics in Afghanistan.”
The United States began with data from some 300,000 Afghans in 2009, mostly Afghan prisoners and soldiers according to NATO, and the biometrics center opened in November 2010. U.S. officials intended to compile information on up to 25 millions of Afghans, about 80% of the population. , Annie Jacobsen, author of “First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in The Age of Identity Dominance” (Penguin, 2020), told National Public Radio last year. The exact number of Afghans covered by the database continues to be classified.
At first, the United States hoped to use the biometric database to detect Taliban infiltrators or trap road bomb makers, who had claimed the lives of hundreds of American and Allied sources since 2001. It later became a way to identify virtually all Afghans. that American forces hired or visited. In 2014, the U.S. military called its strategy “identity dominance.”
Now, the domain of identity belongs to the Taliban.
“We don’t collect new data, we already have it,” Nawazuddin Haqqani said. “The group [Al Isha] just take a look if someone has worked for America or the National Security Directorate [the former Afghan government’s intelligence agency]”.
The database is also used to find anyone who works with British, European or Indian intelligence services, he said. “The issue is being overwhelmed by foreign media and it is nothing more than a campaign to malign us,” he said. He claimed that the database was used to save the lives of foreign journalists.
Al Isha’s unit has more than doubled in size from 500 to nearly 1,100 in the last month, he told Zenger, and has spread to many of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
Nawazuddin Haqqani did not deny the connection to Pakistan when asked about reports that Pakistani intelligence officers were monitoring the use of biometric data by the Al Isha unit to interrogate former U.S. allies.
“You’re not that naive, you know the answer,” he said. “But what I can say is that it is not necessary to train everyone in Pakistan. The emirs [local Taliban chieftains] they are able to train the standing soldiers to handle the equipment ”.
This suggests that the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, has access to the US biometric database. If Al Isha can identify Indian intelligence sources in Afghanistan, Pakistanis will also pursue them.
Asked about the details of the data collection, he declined to answer and said, “This is a question that [Taliban political spokesperson Suhail] Shaheen should respond. ”
Shaheen declined to comment on the existence of Al Isha, the presence of Pakistani intelligence officers and the use of U.S.-made biometric technology in Afghanistan.
Nawazuddin Haqqani revealed the history and command structure of the Al Isha unit. “Al Isha is nothing new. It is one of the three groups of the Khalil Haqqani Brigade, ”he said.
The brigade is a military unit of more than 2,000 fighters named after Khalil Haqqani, who has a $ 5 million reward in his head and leads the Badri 313 unit, which recently mocked the iconic photo of the United States Marines. United raising an American flag at Iwo Jima. .
Khalil Haqqani is the brother of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was Osama Bin Laden’s mentor and later served as the Taliban’s cabinet minister in the 1990s.
Nawazuddin Haqqani is a member of the Haqqani clan to whom Khalil personally commissioned counter-espionage operations in Kabul. In many ways, Nawazuddin is treated as the son of Khalil. But their exact family relationship is debated among Western intelligence analysts and is a sensitive issue that Taliban and Haqqani sources refuse to comment on.
In a different part of Kabul, a 26-year-old Afghan National Army Corps commander was contacted with his mobile phone on August 16, hours after the Taliban seized the city.
“Well, I got home safely and I’m with my parents, my wife and my son,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s been there for a long time. They will go door to door and explore everyone with biometric scanners and knock on my doors at any time. ”
Asked if he was referring to the Taliban, his words were accurate: “Al Isha actually.” The corps commander, who called for his name to be withheld because Al Isha is actively pursuing him, says he is in the biometric database because of his volunteer work as a media coordinator with a nonprofit organization. Afghan profit.
“The Afghan Taliban are unable to handle the biometric equipment or the database,” he said. “All research groups are overseen by a Pakistani officer or a member of the Haqqani network.”
The phone of the former corps commander has since disappeared.