The government data breach of about 18,900 Afghans who had worked for Britain and British interests, and the attempts to conceal much of the detail under a legal superinjunction, are bewildering, convoluted and shameful. In all, the lives of some 80,000 Afghans and their families may have been put at risk.
They had worked as drivers, guards, and health and aid workers, as well as interpreters and education assistants for British troops, overseas aid and NGO missions and the British Council. They were vulnerable to vengeance from Taliban fighters, and their sometime allies and foes from ISIS – that is to say, affiliated groups. To this day, it is not known how many have been killed, kidnapped and tortured.
Britain’s latest 20-year venture in Afghanistan came to an abrupt halt in the four days in August 2021 when the Taliban finally took Kabul amid scenes of chaos. Six months later, Britain set up a scheme, the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) to bring vulnerable Afghan co-workers to the UK.
In February 2022, a soldier emailed what was supposed to be a list of some 150 applicants trying to join the ARAP relocation programme. Inadvertently, he sent a list of 18,714 Afghans involved, and copied in contacts, relations and friends – potentially compromising up to 10,000 individuals, if the Taliban chose to find out.
Part of the list started appearing on Facebook, and by 2023 the cat was out of the bag – the list was known quite widely and drew the attention of blackmailers. In late summer 2023 a new rapid rescue plan was developed, the Afghan Response Route, ARR, was set up. Its existence was kept secret by a superinjunction gagging order. Initially intended to rescue only 200 compromised Afghans who had worked for the Brits, it was extended to 3,000. By today some 4,400 principals have been signed up and actually rescued.
This Tuesday the government has been forced to come clean – a High Court Judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain has said that the continuing superinjunction cannot be sustained, as it flies in the face of the norms of public accountability and democracy. In his statement about the facts, as he put it, the Defence Secretary John Healey, said that a further 600 Afghans and associates had been invited to apply for the ARR rescue. The whole scheme is now to be closed – thus far it has cost £450 million. It will now require a further £400 million to see it through.
Healey claimed the list of Afghans being considered under the UK support schemes no longer posed much of a risk. The Taliban were unlikely to be interested in vendetta, a report by a former civil servant, Paul Rimmer, concluded. It’s impossible to test the strength and truth of this notion – given the almost total lack of reporting from Taliban Afghanistan nowadays
Eight journalists and news organisations were gagged under the injunction for nearly a year and a half. Many were mindful of the Afghans they had worked with as translators, fixers and drivers – on whom not infrequently their lives had depended.
Around 39,000 Afghans have been brought to the UK under various schemes such as ARAP, with several thousand more to come from the ARR response plan. The last Conservative government and Chancellor Rachel Reeves, when she was informed in October, had concluded that the whole episode could cost up to £7 billion in compensation, support and litigation – though this week the Cabinet Office has suggested that the figure will be much less. Surely though, it will run into the billions.
This is another chapter in the story of chaos and self-deception caused by Britain and its allies’ involvement in Afghanistan, which came to a juddering halt between 17 and 21 August 2021. The enterprise had cost the lives of 457 British soldiers and military personnel, and had cost billions. With the expedition to Iraq, which wound down five years earlier, it wrecked Britain’s defence posture and credibility, hit morale and has left a long shadow over the armed forces.
The end, with chaos and anarchy across Kabul, should have been foreseen, and was by many. It was the most shameful episode in all the lukewarm inconsistency of Joe Biden’s foreign policy. In January 2021, the American contractors, on whom Afghan army and air force depended, were pulled out. The threat from the advancing Taliban was exaggerated – just a bunch of ‘farm boys’ according to a senior British general. Throughout the five day crisis of the fall of Kabul, the British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and senior Foreign Office officials declined to break their holiday; they stayed away.
Mr Justice Chamberlain said the injunction had led to “free speech concerns” and “a scrutiny vacuum.”
The Taliban rolled through most of the strategic cities in under three months. The Americans abandoned the huge airbase at Bagram overnight, not even bothering to turn out the lights. A population suffering from no sense of justice and government, and four years of drought, welcomed the Taliban with open arms. Climate change, especially the drought and unseasonal floods caused by the melts of the high glaciers, had become a major driver to conflict.
It is not that the Brits and Americans of the ISAF international force weren’t warned. A number of journalists gave more than timely notice. Larisa Brown of The Times first warned of the data breach revealing the names of vulnerable Afghans on the ARR rescue list – during maternity leave she had been writing her book about a refugee family, The Gardener of Lashkar Gah. For her pains, she was asked to report with her lawyer to the MoD, only to be formally superinjuncted.
Out on the ground in the year of Taliban victory, 2021, Jerome Starkey then of The Times, now of The Sun, did heroic work. In the final days the British Ambassador, Lawrie Bristow worked with the energy of a sorcerer’s apprentice to get vulnerable refugees away from Kabul airport. The late Kim Sen Gupta of The Independent, saved a dozen lives by getting them through the crowds at the perimeter – where they suffered a suicide bombing and a gunfight by trigger-happy US Marines.
It was all part of a dreadfully muddled policy, particularly after 2005 when allied forces, including Britain and half of Nato, spread out across Afghanistan in a totally half-baked pacification and nation-building mission.
John Healey’s announcement of the data breach and cover up of Afghans who had helped Britain, should now open up a major inquiry – otherwise the lessons will never be learned. Presumably we have to wait first until Charles Haddon-Cave finishes his Inquiry into Special Forces’ alleged misdemeanors in Afghanistan.
The super injunction lasted a record 683 days, and was the first of its kind to be brought by government. Mr Justice Chamberlain said the injunction had led to “free speech concerns” and “a scrutiny vacuum.” Erin Alcock of the law firm Leigh Day, who have helped numerous Afghans forced to flee, said the latest data breach was a symptom of “catastrophic failure”.
Robert Fox is Defence Editor at The Standard
