Taliban Hunt ‘U.S. Collaborators’ Through Biometric Identification

By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

Finally, Afghan nationals who had joined America’s war on terror and extended cooperation are being hunted-down by Taliban jihadists through biometric identification. It is also learnt that a section of heavily Islamist officers inside Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) are also selling information about ‘American collaborators’ to the Taliban.

Commenting on this extremely disturbing scenario, American journalist and counterterrorism expert Robert Spencer said: “Some Afghans put their lives, and the lives of their families, on the line by aiding US troops during our two-decade misadventure in their country, and now the very thing they risked everything to prevent has come to pass: the Taliban is back in power, and according to a new report, they are being hunted down in Afghanistan every day. The desperate situation in which these people find themselves is yet another terrible result of the fecklessness and indifference of Old Joe Biden and his handlers”.

Recently, Fox News said that a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction “detailing the chaos in Afghanistan following the American troop withdrawal in 2021 says the Taliban is now using fingerprint and gun records to hunt down Afghans who worked with the US government”.

According to a former officer of the fallen Afghan national government’s military intelligence apparatus, this is happening “on a daily basis”. The officer added: “They search their homes and if they cannot find the individual they will go after their family members. They punish their family until the person they are looking for surrenders. They will arrest someone at their home and beat them all the way to the police station”. This is, of course, because “the Taliban fear these forces because they think these people might be against them one day or have connections to the opposition fighting the Taliban”.

According to Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF), the Taliban is carrying out a sophisticated operation “using biometric devices to detect the find former ANDSF members. “They take fingerprints and if there is a match, they pick up the individual to the police station for interrogation”. Through this method of identifying ‘American collaborators’ through biometric data, a large number of officers and members of National Directorate of Security, Afghan National Army, and Afghan National Police have already been arrested. Most of these detained Afghans are in prison thus leaving the families in severe sufferings with no food or money. Most of the family members of these arrested individuals are cursing the United States and President Joe Biden for pushing their lives into extreme difficulty by abruptly withdrawing from Afghanistan and without doing anything for their safety and protection.

On condition of remaining anonymous one family member of a detained officer of Afghan National Army said, “We believed in the words of Americans, thinking they would liberate us from the clutches of the Taliban. Many of Afghan nationals have sacrificed their lives in America’s war in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans were critically injured while many of them have become physically paralyzed. Americans were paying huge incentives to their own soldiers who had fought in Afghanistan, while Washington has also given hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan. But they did nothing for us, as if our lives have no value”.

Gen. Besmullah Taban, who was previously the director of the Afghan National Police’s criminal investigative division, confirmed all this, saying that his mother has told him “that the Taliban sent people to my family’s house asking for my gun. They are looking for everything now, because there were systems showing which pistol or whatever belongs to whom”, thus alerting the Taliban to the identities of people who worked with American troops. “They are going through and trying to get that stuff”.

Meanwhile, a US Marine infantry officer observed that “you’ve got guys who certainly do deserve to come to the US who aren’t able to, and they’ve got a target on their back. The Taliban knows where they are and how to find them. It’s like we gave this guy a rope and noose around his neck and then kicked the chair out from under him”.

With this heart-breaking fate of Afghans who had helped America in fighting Taliban jihadists, one may possibly assume what fate waits for those Ukrainians who are joining Western nation’s hostility and war in Ukraine targeting Russia and few other countries in that part of the world. Sooner or later, Joe Biden will give those Ukrainians rope and noose around their necks and then kick the chair out from under saying – “go and die son of a bitch”. (IPA Service)

By arrangement with the Arabian Post