Thousands of Afghans resettled in UK after data leak

Thousands of Afghans who worked for the British government were brought to the United Kingdom along with their families under a secret relocation scheme, after a major data breach in 2022 put them at risk of reprisals by the Taliban. The details were heard in parliament after the UK High Court on Tuesday lifted a gag order banning reports on the scheme. As per AFP reports, Defence Minister John Healey informed to parliament that in February 2022 a spreadsheet containing the names and details of almost 19,000 Afghans who had asked to be relocated to Britain was accidentally leaked by a UK official just six months after the Taliban seized Kabul, Healey said. "This was a serious departmental error," Healey said, adding "lives may have been at stake". The previous Conservative government put in place a secret programme to help those "judged to be at the highest risk of reprisals by the Taliban", he said.

Some 900 Afghans and 3,600 family members have now been brought to Britain or are in transit under the programme known as the Afghan Response Route at a cost of around £400 million, Healey said. They are among some 36,000 Afghans who have been accepted by Britain under different schemes since the August 2021 fall of Kabul, said the report. "Ministers decided not to tell parliamentarians at an earlier stage about the data incident, as the widespread publicity would increase the risk of the Taliban obtaining the dataset," he added.

Healey set up a review of the scheme on becoming defence minister in the new Labour government. This concluded there was "very little intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution". The Afghan Response Route has now been closed, the minister said, apologising for the data breach which "should never have happened." The incident ranks among the worst security breaches in modern British history because of the cost and risk posed to the lives of thousands of Afghans, some of whom fought alongside British forces until their chaotic withdrawal in 2021.

British forces were first deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, and they played a major role in combat operations there until 2014. The superinjunction was first granted in 2023 after the Ministry of Defence, under the former Conservative government, argued that a public disclosure of the breach could put people at risk of extra-judicial killing or serious violence by the Taliban. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's center-left government, which was elected last July, launched a review into the injunction, the breach and the relocation plan.