The Defense Department accidentally reposted over one thousand photos from the Afghanistan War that had been taken offline in 2021 to hide the identity of Afghans working with U.S. troops.
The photos, a defense spokesperson said, have now been taken down again after they were inadvertently published during a recent data migration between computer systems.
Months after the Taliban overran Kabul in late 2021, the Pentagon announced that it had removed more than 120,000 photos and 17,000 videos of the Afghanistan War from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, or DVIDS. A publicly accessible website is a vast online archive of photos and videos produced by military photographers and public affairs troops, including many thousands of images of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, often capturing them working with local allies.
A wide range of photos that did not show Afghan troops or civilians were also taken down. Many other photos, from portraits of U.S. service members to patrols in combat, have also been archived.
On Aug. 1, The Washington Examiner first reported that several of the images had reappeared online, including photos of former Afghan troops and other U.S. allies who, if identified by the photos, could be in danger from Taliban reprisals.
Task & Purpose was also contacted by a DVIDS user who had noticed that some photos had been reposted to the service that showed the faces of an Afghan security forces commander and another image of Afghan women interacting with U.S. forces. Task & Purpose was sent examples of several images, some of which have since been removed from DVIDS again.
A defense spokesperson told Task & Purpose that about 1,400 images had been “unintentionally made publicly accessible during a routine archival data transfer.”
“This transfer was part of the process to restore content following a migration to a different content management system,” the defense spokesperson said. “All affected images have since been removed and are no longer accessible online.”
Yet it remains unclear if all the reposted images have been taken down again. Task & Purpose found some photos on DVIDS of U.S. service members deployed to Afghanistan that were taken several years ago and reposted online since June.
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One photo taken in November 2010 shows a Marine giving a high-five to a young Afghan girl. The image is marked with a request for its removal, but was still visible on DVIDS as of Wednesday morning.
The defense spokesperson had no further information on the issue.
Two service members who spoke to Task & Purpose on condition of anonymity said that many pictures they took in Afghanistan remain removed from DVIDS, including photos of U.S. troops that do not show any members of the Afghan security forces. Images of troops holding memorial services, for example, remain off the website.
Until recently, it appeared that the photos and videos might be gone forever.
Since the fall of Kabul in August 2021, Afghans who worked with U.S. forces or served under the former government have been at risk of being targeted by the Taliban In August 2023, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan issued a report that documented at least 218 “extrajudicial killings” of former Afghan government officials and members of Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.
John Kirby, who was the Pentagon’s press secretary in the final stages of the Afghan war, told reporters in November 2021 that the Defense Department had decided to archive images and videos to protect Afghans who had worked with the U.S. government.
“We removed thousands of still imagery and videos that would show the faces or any other identifiable information about many of the Afghans that we have worked for, and we have supported and who have supported us over the last 20 years,” Kirby said during a Pentagon news conference.
Still, Kirby described the move as “temporary,” and he indicated that they could be republished one day if circumstances permitted.
“Nothing has been deleted from the record,” he said. “It is simply being archived until we believe it’s the appropriate time to put them back up.”
Years after the Taliban defeated the United States and its Afghan allies, it remains unclear when the appropriate time might be.
