Afghanistan war logs: Nato feared Taliban could tap its mobile phones‎

Given the US-led coalition's obsession with security, the realisation that Taliban sympathisers and foreign spy agencies were routinely tracking top secret phone calls made from its military headquarters in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan must have come as a bit of a blow.

But the findings contained in a classified "threat report" circulated by the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) on 25 August 2007 were both unequivocal and alarming.

Mobile phone calls, whether made by top diplomats, commanding generals or frontline soldiers, were vulnerable to interception by hostile forces, it said. In fact the Taliban, the Pakistanis, the Iranians, the Russians, the Indians and the Chinese were probably all listening in.

Investigating possibly the first instance of cyber warfare in the Afghan theatre, the report detailed how mobile phone calls in Afghanistan and in "major border crossing" areas with Pakistan, Iran and Uzbekistan were handled by the Roshan network, Afghanistan's largest service provider for GSM (global system for mobile communications).

"Even when using a European or North American GSM provider (phone brought from home), the call is routed through the Roshan GSM infrastructure in Afghanistan," the report said.

"Every GSM provider in the world has the ability to locate and track a GSM phone as soon as it is turned on. This means that the Roshan network is able to identify which phones have been turned on in the Isaf HQ area and can further track their movements."

Classified intelligence – generated earlier in 2007 by the US National Security Agency and Nato headquarters in Brussels and cited in the report – suggested the potential locating and tracking of phone users by enemies was only half the problem.

"At this time it is doubtful insurgents have the technical ability [to] eavesdrop on conversations and numbers dialled from Roshan GSM.

The insurgents do, however, have the ability to obtain data from sympathetic or coerced human sources inside the Roshan network (who obviously track calls) or from sympathetic foreign intelligence personnel."

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) was at the top of the list of suspects, but the report claimed other spy services were in on the act. It noted that Russian signals intelligence (sigint) had assisted Roshan to expand its nationwide cellular services. "During this time Russian sigint units were monitoring Isaf and coalition communications through the Roshan network.

"There is evidence some foreign embassies and consulates located in Afghanistan are capable of sophisticated signals interception to include the least protected mobile phones. Embassies with known sigint capabilities currently targeting Isaf include Russia, China, Pakistan, India and Iran.

"Of these embassies, the Pakistan embassy is 700m from Isaf HQ and Iran's consulate is 1,200m away."

The report hints at possible collaboration, voluntary or involuntary, between some Roshan workers and the Taliban. "In mid-November 2006, Taliban militants in Zharey [Zhari] district of Kandahar [province] provided safe passage to Roshan equipment and personnel through their area to Sangin and Musa Qala districts of Helmand … This offer of safe passage shows co-ordination at some level between Taliban elements and Roshan workers."