WASHINGTON—The Taliban sued the Middle East Institute after anti-Taliban armed groups reportedly used MEI’s open-source tracker to target its officials with IED attacks, burqa-disguise attacks and other methods the movement claims to have invented.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid urged the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Justice Department to investigate what he called “the unauthorized reproduction of our proprietary insurgency techniques.”
Javid Ahmad, who helped build the tracker, announced a review after the lawsuit alleged the database crossed Washington’s ethical line between making Taliban figures easier to locate and helping unlicensed combatants locate them.
Founded to improve American understanding of the region, MEI had assumed the information would pass through the customary safeguards: a fellowship, a panel, and Elon Musk's Grok explaining Afghanistan to Afghans.
Mawlawi Abdul Hakim Sharayi said the tracker was intended for journalists, researchers and policymakers, who identify armed men only to place them in reports titled “Key Actors.” Armed groups, by contrast, were allegedly using the same names before infringing on decades of Taliban research and development.
“The issue is not violence,” the attorney said. “The issue is attribution. If an IED, suicide-vest, ambush or bushka-based infiltration substantially resembles our original work, the perpetrators must either pay royalties or cease and desist.”