Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday that the Pentagon had just purged tens of thousands of pictures connected to Afghans who had assisted the US in military operations over the last two decades. Kirby announced the board eliminated thousands of still pictures and videos from DVIDS “that would show the faces or any other identifiable information about many of the Afghans that we have worked for, supported, and have supported us over the last 20 years” around the time the United States began evacuating forces from Afghanistan in August and September.
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When asked how many photos were taken down, Kirby responded, “about 124,000 photographs, still images, and around 17,000 films remain unpublished.” On Friday, John Sopko, the chief inspector for Afghan reconstruction, told reporters that the State Division had ordered that some research be removed off his company’s website or censored to protect Afghan identity.
The photographs and films were previously uploaded to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, or DVIDS, a massive library of public domain information that is open for use by the public and the press. According to Kirby, around 120,000 images and 17,000 movies have been unpublished. He did not explain when the imagery would be republished. According to him, none of the photos or videos is classified.
Kirby went on to say that the “massive undertaking” of erasing all photographs and movies had been announced earlier to protect the identity of Afghans who “were still attempting to go into another country, and perhaps, are still doing so right now.” According to Kirby, the Protection Division anticipated the Taliban would target anyone suspected of working with the US, as well as their family members. The Pentagon spokeswoman said he decided to take the photographs down and that he passed the responsibility to the management of the Protection Media Exercise.
