Inside the Taliban’s surveillance network monitoring millions

At a crowded monitoring center, surrounded by dozens of TV screens, the Taliban Police Force is proud of its newly acquired network, which includes 90,000 CCTV-Cameras used to watch millions of people daily.

“We are watching the entire city of Kabul from here,” says Khaled Zadran, a spokesman for the Taliban police chief, referring to one of the screens.

The authorities say that such a monitoring will help fight crime, but critics fear that it will be used to get rid of the opposition and monitor the strict morals law imposed by the Islamic Taliban government Under their interpretation of the law.

BBC are the first international journalists allowed to see the system at work.

Inside the control room, police officers sit in ranks watching live tables from thousands of cameras, and they keep signs of a tab on the lives of six million people living in Kabul.

From the car license panels to facial expressions, everything is monitored.

“In some neighborhoods, when we notice groups of people and doubt that they may participate in drug use, criminal activities, or anything suspicious, we quickly communicate with the local police,” Zaddran says.

“They pray quickly to investigate the nature of the assembly.”

During the era of the previous government, Kabul was threatened daily by the Taliban attacks and the so -called Islamic State fighters, as well as kidnappings and prominent cars. When the Taliban regained power in 2021, they promised to contact the crime.

The dramatic increase in the number of surveillance cameras in the capital is a sign of the increasing development in the way the Taliban is implementing the law and order. Before their return, there were only 850 cameras in the capital, according to a spokesman for the security forces that were driven by the authority.

However, in the past three years, the Taliban authorities have also provided a set of dramatic measures that limit the rights and freedoms of people, especially women’s rights. The Taliban government has not been officially recognized by any other country.

The BBC’s monitoring system is characterized by the option to track people by facial recognition. In the corner of one screen image appears with each side classified according to the age and sex category, and whether they have a beard or a face mask or not.

“On clear days, we can enlarge individuals [who are] Zadran says, highlighting the camera that focuses on the intersection of a busy traffic.

The Taliban even monitor their employees. At a checkpoint, where the soldiers appeared in opening the car box for inspection, the operators focused their lenses, and enlarged to audit the contents inside.

The Ministry of Interior says that the cameras “contributed greatly to promoting safety, curbing crime rates, and arresting criminals quickly.” The entry of CCTV and motorcycle controls adds a 30 % decrease in crime rates between 2023 and 2024, but these numbers cannot be independently verified.

However, rights groups are concerned about who is monitored and for how long.

Amnesty International says that the installation of cameras “under the guise of” national security “puts a template for Taliban’s novel to continue its flowing policies that violate the basic rights of people in Afghanistan – especially women in public places.

Under the law, women are not allowed to hear outside their homes, although in practice it is not strictly applied. Teenage girls are prevented from accessing secondary and higher education. Women prevent multiple forms of employment. In December, women told BBC midwives and nurses that they were ordered not to return to the classroom.

While women are still visible in the streets of cities like Kabul, they are asked to wear a face cover.

Fariba, a young graduate who lived with her parents in Kabul, could not find work since the Taliban has reached power. BBC told “there” a great concern about the use of surveillance cameras to monitor the female veil [veils]”.

The Taliban only says that the city police that can access the CCTV system and that spreading virtue and prevention of the Ministry of the Ministry – the Police of Ethics in Taliban – do not use it.

But Fariba is concerned that the cameras will be at risk of those who oppose the Taliban rule.

“Many individuals, especially former military members, defend human rights and protest against women, are struggling to move freely and often live in secrecy,” she says.

“There is a great concern about the use of surveillance cameras to monitor the female veil,” she says.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch says that Afghanistan does not have the laws to protect the data in force to regulate how to hold CCTV shots collected and used.

The police say the data is kept for only three months, while, according to the Ministry of Interior, the cameras do not pose a threat to privacy because they “work from a private and confidential room completely by a specific and professional person.”

The cameras appear to be Chinese. The control and brands room monitors the extracts that have seen the BBC bearing the name Dahua, a company linked to the Chinese government. Previous reports that the Taliban were holding talks with Huawei technologies in China to buy cameras that were rejected by the company. Taliban officials refused to answer the BBC questions about the place of obtaining equipment.

Some of the cost of installing the new network is located on the ordinary Afghans monitored by the system.

At a house in the center of Kabul, the BBC spoke to Shalaf*, who was asked to pay the price of some cameras installed in the streets near her home.

“They demanded thousands of Afghan from every family,” she says. It is a large amount in a country in which women who have jobs only win about 5,000 Afghan ($ 68; 54 pounds) per month.

The humanitarian situation is still in Kabul, and in Afghanistan in general, unstable after years of war. The country’s economy is in crisis, but international aid financing has stopped significantly since the Taliban returned to power.

According to the United Nations, 30 million people need help.

“If families refuse to pay [for the cameras]”They were threatened with water and energy cuts within three days,” Sheila added. “We had to take loans to cover costs.

“People are starving – What are these cameras?”

The Taliban says that if people do not want to contribute, they can file an official complaint.

“The participation was voluntary, and the donations were hundreds, not thousands,” Khaled Zadran, a Taliban police spokesman.

Despite the assurances, rights activists inside and outside Afghanistan still have concerns about how this powerful monitoring system is used.

Jaber, a vegetable seller in Kabul, says the cameras represents another way in which he is unable.

He told the BBC: “We have treated like garbage, and we denied the opportunity to win a livelihood, and the authorities consider us no value.”

“We cannot do anything.”

*The names of women who were interviewed for this article were changed for their safety

With additional reports by Peter Paul