A spokesman for the Taliban said on Monday that his regime is thinking about repurposing an abandoned U.S. plan for increased electronic surveillance in the cities of Afghanistan, and has “consulted” with Chinese telecom giant Huawei about the equipment that would be needed.
Abdul Mateen Qani, spokesman for the Taliban “Interior Ministry,” claimed that plans for enhanced surveillance for urban areas were among the many U.S. assets the Taliban captured after President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal in 2021.
“At the present we are working on a Kabul security map, which is (being completed) by security experts and (is taking) lots of time. We already have two maps, one which was made by U.S.A. for the previous government and second by Turkey,” Qani said.
The plan he referred to was first mentioned by former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh in January 2021. Saleh said his U.S.-backed government was planning a major upgrade of Kabul’s already formidable camera surveillance system.
Qani said Taliban officials had a “simple chat” with Huawei about the logistics of implementing the upgraded surveillance plan in August. The Taliban issued a press release about these meetings in mid-August, announcing that senior executives from Huawei had been consulted about installing advanced surveillance systems for the repressive Islamist regime. The Taliban claimed these capabilities were needed to crack down on Islamic State terrorists who were conducting attacks to undermine the Taliban regime.
Among those attacks was a gun and bomb slaughter in December 2022 at a hotel frequented by Chinese businessmen in Kabul. The Chinese government was enraged by the attack and publicly upbraided the Taliban for not doing enough to guarantee the safety of Chinese visitors.
Huawei has considerable expertise in developing the kind of surveillance system the Taliban wants. In December 2020, the Washington Post reported that Huawei participated in the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can scan crowds of people through cameras and identify targets of a particular age, sex, and racial background.
China was interested in using such technology to track the movements of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other minorities it disapproves of. Whatever beef it might have with ISIS, the Taliban also has some racial groups it would like to keep a close eye on, and it has proven very interested in micromanaging the affairs of women.
Qani estimated the plan for increasing surveillance would take about four years to complete.
Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported on September 1 that the Taliban has already installed about 62,000 cameras in Kabul, and planned to expand its surveillance network to cover the entire country. The Taliban Interior Ministry did not reveal where it got all those cameras from, or whether it had assistance from outside powers to install them.
“Implementing such a vast architecture of mass surveillance under the guise of ‘national security’ sets a template for the Taliban to continue its draconian policies that violate fundamental rights of people in Afghanistan – especially women in public spaces,” Amnesty International researcher Matt Mahmoudi told RFE. His warning was especially prescient given Huawei’s ability to create camera networks that can identify the race and sex of people under surveillance.
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