Kokrajhar, Internal Security and Biometrics

The recent Kokrajhar riots were characterized by the fact that Army in the course of aid to civil authorities had to deal with a section of population, both locals and illegal immigrants, with no ethnic, linguistic or religious distinctiveness. The incident threw up numerous lessons for the country at the strategic and operational level, however, It is the operational issues which hold greater relevance for the Army given that it can be called upon to stabilize incidents of similar complexity in the future. The Kokrajhar disturbances, with their genesis in legal and illegal migration, have been extensively analysed. It was suggested, as an aid to deployment of security forces in response to such incidents, to “create up to date and accurate database of people living in the area and analysis of data as also of change occurring over periods of time can give insights into what is happening in the area. Data bases will mitigate fears of fresh illegal immigration; if such immigration does occur it can be detected and checked.”  It is an interesting recommendation, regarding which the US experience in Afghanistan provides a fascinating perspective.

 

In Afghanistan, during its operations against al Qaeda the NATO/ ISAF encountered a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society. The various ethnic groups such as the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimak, Turkmen, Baloch reflect the ethnicity of all the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan. To complicate the situation, few of Afghanistan's 30m people have a birth certificate, a second name, let alone a national ID documents. The US drew on their experience of biometrics from Iraq where U.S. forces segregated cities like Fallujah and used biometric based ID cards as the only means of access.

 

Consequently in Afghanistan, the US Task Force on Biometrics was called in. Any Afghan arrested or imprisoned, or who sought to be recruited into the army or police, was scanned for biometrics. In the process the ISAF/NATO and the Afghan government built up more than 2.5m digital records.  The main purpose of the programme was to restrict militant movement and to keep Taliban infiltrators out of the security forces.

 

The ‘biometric sweep’ was broad.  In areas around US deployments, local “fighting-age males” were sought out for biometric scanning. Patrols would gather all men from a village and scan them. Instructions were “Every person who lives within an operational area should be identified and fully biometrically enrolled with facial photos, iris scans, and all 10 fingerprints.”

 

The biometric access control measures implemented provided an additional level of security at checkpoints and major facilities. At other times buses are stopped at random and all the men aboard were scanned. Reportedly, 20- 25 Afghan suspects per week were detained in such biometric sweeps.

 

Biometric data, since April 2011 is also being gathered by the US military at all eight major Afghan border crossings in a programme which takes random samples. Also from September 2011, Afghanistan has been the only country in the world to fingerprint and photograph all travelers who pass through Kabul International Airport, arriving as well as departing, to build up its data base of Afghans travelling and living outside the country.

 

Biometrics is a part of the operational procedure too. After a Taliban attack at a restaurant beside Qargha Lake in Kabul, on June 21 2012, soldiers took fingerprints and scanned eyes of the seven Taliban fighters killed during the encounter. Depending on the ambient temperature usable scans can be taken off dead bodies as late as six hours after death for identification. In many cases, fingerprints found on bomb fragments have identified the bomb maker. Since 2007, when the US military commenced biometric collection in Afghanistan, it has identified 3,000 suspects on either Watch List 1 or  2, the US military’s two most serious classifications for suspected insurgents or terrorists.

 

Therefore, in Afghanistan there are two security related biometric projects. First project is the one run by NATO forces using the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) or the upgraded Secure Electronic Enrollment Kits (SEEK) to capture biometric information. The second project is the Government-run Afghan Automated Biometric Identification System (AABIS) which collects data on Afghan National Army and police recruits and is cross-referenced with biometric records from the Afghan National Detention Facility, Kabul Central Police Command, Counternarcotics Police of Afghanistan ect .

 

There is a third biometric project managed by the Afghanistan Ministry of Communication and IT which is the National ID card project (e-tazkira).

 

By the end of 2011, the AABIS covered 248,768 people, while the U.S. military says it has assembled 410,000 biometric dossiers.  However, the problem at hand is that the two systems are not compatible. NATO forces can capture an insurgent but they cannot cross reference his biometric data with AABIS and vice versa.

 

The B.A.T. equipment is portable and rugged, however, it is results can sometimes be unpredictable. Questions remain on the quality of its data. There have been claims by Afghans that they have been wrongly denied foreign visas or jobs after a biometric scan indicated their names on some watchlist. The errors can have a cascading effect as the military shares its biometrics with the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security through interconnected databases. Even the civilian-run airport program collecting fingerprints and photographs feeds its information into computers at the American Embassy, as well as at the Afghan Ministry of the Interior. There is this constant risk that a storehouse of irises and fingerprints and faces could be accessed by unauthorized entities and be misused.

 

India too, soon would have a biometrics based database of its citizens through its security-centric National Population Register (NPR) and the welfare-centric ‘Aadhar’ scheme. Notwithstanding the utility of this data to security forces engaged in CI operations, the country’s security framework/establishment is unlikely to allow the Army direct access to the database. Indirect access to the biometric data through central intelligence agencies is more likely. Biometric data of suspects could be made available at field level for operations and at the same time Army maybe permitted to collect biometric data from suspects in time sensitive situations and dead militants. Therefore, there is a requirement to evolve protocols/procedures under which security forces can leverage access to NPR data. This will increase the efficiency of their operations and at the same time eliminate any encroachments on the legal/human rights of the citizens.

 

US troops praise the biometric technology as a helpful CI tool as identified suspects can be easily separated from the wider, law-abiding populace. Nearly 500 Taliban prisoners had tunneled out of Kandahar's Sarposa prison last year, but since they had been scanned on arrest, within a month, 30 were recaptured through ‘biometric sweeps’.