Among the jaw-dropping revelations in the past few days of the mishandling of Britain’s responsibility towards Afghans who fought alongside our troops, one stands out. No one has been disciplined for any of the failures of the British state in dealing with the after-effects of our withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
No one has been held to account for the leak of thousands of names of Afghans whose lives have been put in danger. We are not talking here about the British serviceman who pressed “send” on the email to which a spreadsheet was attached containing hidden data, so much as about the senior officials responsible for ensuring secure communication of sensitive information.
Holly Bancroft, our journalist who has won awards for her coverage of the Afghan special forces left behind by Britain, has reported on many other cases in which the Ministry of Defence has failed to keep data safe, including being fined by the information commissioner for mishandling of emails linked to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap).
Nor has anyone been disciplined for the failure to use the time bought by the superinjunction after the leak was discovered to bring all those affected to safety. The Independent has spoken to two Afghans who served alongside British forces who are still in Afghanistan, waiting for decisions on their applications for the right to come to the UK. Their situation has now become perilous, despite the Ministry of Defence having had two years to put it right.
Indeed, instead of trying to identify the remaining Afghans put at risk by the leak and to make sure that they were quickly protected, the MoD was seeking to have the injunction extended, possibly indefinitely. As we have commented before, the instinct not just of the bureaucracy but of its former political leaders seems to have been to cover up the problem rather than deal with it.
This is part of a wider failure, on which The Independent has reported with a consistent sense of urgency, to deal efficiently with the relatively small numbers of people left in a vulnerable position by the allies’ withdrawal four years ago. In some cases, officials have denied that members of the Afghan special forces were paid by the British, only for the evidence to be discovered later.
In another case, one official was found to have refused 1,500 applications for assistance without checking them individually.
We have campaigned for years against foot-dragging by the MoD, the Foreign Office and the Home Office, which has left brave Afghans who risked their lives to assist our forces in their country in limbo.
Some of them were left in a state of uncertainty in the UK, such as the pilot who came to Britain in a small boat – because there was no other way – only to be threatened with deportation to Rwanda. Thanks to our campaign, he was finally given permission to stay.
But there are hundreds more, some still in Afghanistan, others in Pakistan or Iran, still waiting for the British state to acknowledge its responsibility to them.
This cannot go on. It is high time that the prime minister and John Healey, the defence secretary, got a grip on this issue – and that must include identifying and punishing those responsible for this shameful episode.
