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Biden blasted for ‘abrupt and uncoordinated’ Afghanistan exit in scathing watchdog report
Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Pete Ricketts reacts to a watchdog report on Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, telling ‘America’s Newsroom’ the pullout ‘projected weakness’ and was not planned well.
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.”
Fox News’ Liz Friden contributed to this report.
Greg Norman is a reporter at Fox News Digital.