Up to 7,000 Afghans being relocated to UK after data leak blunder

A new scandal is currently rocking the British government. Almost 7,000 Afghan nationals are being relocated to the UK following a massive personal data leak in the military – the people were assisting British forces deployed to the country.

A dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (ARAP) was released “in error” by a defence official in February 2022.

The UK forces were, of course, unsuccessfully fighting the Taliban between 2001 and 2021. The leak is thought to have been triggered by the careless handling of an email that contained a list of the names of around 20,000 Afghan nationals.

The blunder has endangered the individuals and their families since the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan, still hunting down people who supported the US-led coalition.

“In February 2022, under the previous government, a spreadsheet with names of individual applicants for the ARAP scheme was emailed outside of official government systems,” the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) explained.

“This was mistakenly thought to contain the names of a small number of applicants, but in fact the email contained personal information linked to around 18,700 applicants of ARAP and its predecessor, the EGS (the Afghanistan Locally Employed Staff Ex-Gratia) scheme.”

According to The Guardian, the MoD only became aware of the breach more than a year after the release when excerpts of the dataset were anonymously posted to a Facebook group in August 2023.

A source told Sky News that a small number of people named on the list are known to have subsequently been killed.

The previous Tory government quickly created a secret Afghan relocation scheme in April 2024, and a super injunction – which lasted for nearly two years – prevented widespread knowledge of the incident, allowing the government to take any necessary protective action.

Nevertheless, a source told Sky News that a small number of people named on the list are known to have subsequently been killed, although it isn’t clear if this was a direct result of the data breach.

It’s also not clear whether the Taliban has the list – only that the MoD lost control of the information.

The relocation costs alone will be around £850 million ($1.14 billion), the MoD said. However, an internal government document from February this year said the cost could rise to £7 billion ($9.4 billion).

Defence Secretary John Healey apologized for the data breach in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon.

“This serious data incident should never have happened. It may have occurred three years ago under the previous government, but to all those whose information was compromised, I offer a sincere apology today on behalf of the British government,” said Healey.