Middle East
Inspector General report: Taliban using fingerprints, gun records to track down Afghans who assisted US
A new inspector general report has been released detailing “the chaos in Afghanistan following the American troop withdrawal in 2021″ and explains the Taliban is now using “fingerprint and gun records to hunt down Afghans who worked with the U.S. government” reports Fox News.
The 148-page report shows that the Taliban are going after former Afghan National Defense and Security Forces “on a daily basis.”
“They search their homes and if they cannot find the individual they will go after their family members,” an ex-Afghan military intelligence officer said. “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.”
The officer has had to relocate four times and says if the Taliban finds out where he is, he “will be executed.” The officer explained that the report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction that “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.”
“The Taliban are using biometric devices to detect and find former ANDSF,” he added. “They take fingerprints and if there is a match, they take the individual to the police station.”
“A lot of National Directorate of Security, Afghan National Army, and Afghan National Police officers were arrested through the use of biometric devices,” the former intelligence officer also said. “Some are still in prison right now. Their families have no food or money. If the Taliban continue with this [these families] won’t last, they will collapse.”
The report says there are “a number of Afghan-owned and operated biometric databases, including the Afghan Automatic Biometric Identification System and e-tazkira, the country’s electronic national ID card system.
“SIGAR has received reports of Taliban attempting to summon former government employees to provide access to servers belonging to the former government that included biometric data,” it said. “The risk may be mitigated if the networks where the biometric data was stored were wiped, but whether they were remains unclear.”
International
Mental health crisis spikes among Afghan women after Taliban regained control two years ago
The women of Afghanistan are suffering a mental health crisis since the Taliban regained power two years ago. According to a joint report from three U.N. agencies released Tuesday, approximately 70% of women experience feelings of anxiety, isolation and depression.
The numbers continue to rise, as there has already been a significant jump between April and June of this year alone, with an increase from 57% the preceding quarter.
The report, conducted by U.N. Women, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, interviewed women online, in-person and in group consultations as well as individual telesurveys.
592 Afghan women in 22 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces took part in the study. The Associated Press reports:
They have barred women from most areas of public life and work and banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade. They have prohibited Afghan women from working at local and non-governmental organizations. The ban was extended to employees of the United Nations in April.
Opportunities to study continued to shrink as community-based education by international organizations was banned and home-based schooling initiatives were regularly shut down by the de facto authorities — a term use by the U.N. for the Taliban government.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world with restrictions on female education and the rights of Afghan women and children are on the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
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