Taliban using fingerprints, gun records to track down Afghans who assisted US, inspector general finds

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A new inspector general report 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 U.S. government. 

An ex-Afghan military intelligence officer said in the 148-page report 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," the 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 said in 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." 

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A Taliban security member stands guard along the Pakistan border in Nangarhar province, on Feb. 23. A new report said the Taliban are using fingerprint and gun records to track down those who helped the U.S. (Shafiullah Kakar/AFP via Getty Images)

"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." 

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Newly recruited personnel joining Taliban security forces demonstrate their skills during their graduation ceremony in Herat on Feb. 9, 2023. (Mohsen Karimi/AFP via Getty Images)

The officer revealed he has relocated four times since the collapse of the Afghan government and if the Taliban finds out where he is, he "will be executed." 

Gen. Besmullah Taban, the former director of the criminal investigative division of the Afghan National Police, also said in the report that he had gotten a message from his mother "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," he said, speaking about the measures the Taliban are taking to track down U.S. allies. "They are going through and trying to get that stuff." 

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Taliban forces are seen holding a military parade with equipment captured from the U.S. army in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Nov. 8, 2021. (Murteza Khaliqi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A U.S. Marine infantry officer told investigators "you’ve got guys who certainly do deserve to come to the U.S. 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," the officer said. "It’s like we gave this guy a rope and noose around his neck and then kicked the chair out from under him." 

The biometrics being used by the Taliban are not linked to the biometric database used by the U.S. military, Fox News' Jennifer Griffin reports, but were devices that were left with Afghan defense forces that were abandoned when the Afghan army collapsed.

"The Department of Defense is well aware of SIGAR’s recent report seeking to determine the factors that led to the collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF)," the Pentagon said in a statement. "Since SIGAR’s inception, DoD has contributed to and facilitated their work- a fact the report echoes in its opening pages. DoD again contributed to this report and provided responses to SIGAR’s requests for information. While we take exception to SIGAR’s assertions of non-cooperation, and address them accordingly in our official response in Appendix II, the Department will continue to facilitate SIGAR’s work moving forward for security and defense related matters concerning Afghanistan."

Fox News’ Liz Friden and Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.