Taliban has announced that since their takeover last year, they have distributed electronic IDs to more than 2 million Afghans.
Taliban’s Statistics and Information Directorate said that distribution of electronic IDs had collected 1 billion and 67 million Afs in revenue.
Bakhtar News Agency, quoted the Taliban officials as saying that the income through electronic ID distribution has been deposited to the Taliban’s government account.
E-IDs are currently being distributed across the country while former government officials have expressed concerns about the issuance of Afghanistan citizenship to the terrorist groups’ members.
Massoud Andarabi, former minister of interior in the previous government, said, “The Taliban is distributing Afghanistan IDs and passports to international terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, in order to conceal their connections with them.”
Andarabi claimed that the Taliban started this initiative after the advice of their trusted circles among the Pakistan military.
Taliban’s Statistics and Information Directorate said that there are 73 centers for E-ID distribution across Afghanistan and this could boost the distribution process further.
According to reports, the increase in demand for IDs has been for the purpose of getting passports in order to leave Afghanistan.
Earlier, it had been reported that Mullah Hassan Akhund, Taliban’s prime minister, had ordered the group officials to distribute passports with paper IDs as well due to an increase in the demand for passports. The previous government had banned passport distribution with paper IDs.
Electronic ID distribution had begun in April 2018 and Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s fugitive president, was the first to receive it.