The Intercept quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that the Taliban had seized biometric devices used by the US military in Afghanistan.Some people worry that Afghan nationals who have previously worked for the US government and assisted the coalition forces may be retaliated against by the new government for this.
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Data map (from: US Army | PDF)
According to sources, these handheld inter-agency authentication devices, called HIIDE, were seized by the Taliban last week when they marched towards Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, it was reported that the device stored information including iris, fingerprints, photos, etc., and could be used to access a wide range of centralized databases.
In an interview with The Intercept, a U.S. military contractor said: During the daily routine anti-riot inspections and intelligence collection work, they need to verify the identity of thousands of locals every day, and HIIDE is a biological ID. Recognition tools play an important role in this.
In the decades-long anti-terrorism operations, the US military has proven that these devices can play a key role. For example, during the raid on Bin Laden in 2011, HIIDE helped the operation team identify him in a compound in Pakistan.
However, according to NPR’s report this morning, HIIDE is also used to collect biometric information for 80% of Afghanistan’s population (approximately 25 million in total).
According to the International Rescue Committee, more than 300,000 Afghan civilians have been involved in operations related to the US military in the past two decades. Due to the chaos caused by the U.S. military withdrawal in Afghanistan, about 2,000 Afghans were evacuated to the United States together. At the same time, it is said that thousands of people have been trapped for several years due to the lack of special immigrant visas required to travel to the United States.
Regrettably, as of press time, the US Department of Defense has still not responded to foreign media’s request for comment on this matter.
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