The United Kingdom(UK) has disclosed a secret plan to resettle thousands of Afghans in Britain following a data breach that exposed the personal details of over 33,000 individuals, putting them at risk of reprisals from the Taliban.
The British government revealed that approximately 4,500 people, including 900 applicants and 3,600 family members, have been brought to Britain under the secret program, known as the Afghan Response Route, at a cost of around 400 million pounds ($540 million).
Defence Minister John Healey told Parliament that the data breach, which occurred in early 2022, involved sensitive information of nearly 19,000 Afghans and their families who had applied for relocation to the UK.
The breach went undetected until August 2023, when parts of the dataset surfaced on Facebook, prompting the Ministry of Defence to seek a superinjunction to suppress public knowledge of the incident. “I have felt deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to Parliament and the public,” Healey said.
The UK government has now closed the Afghan Response Route, but not before relocating more than 16,000 people affected by the breach, as of May this year. An independent review found little evidence that the leaked data would expose Afghans to greater risk of retribution from the Taliban.
Healey apologized for the data breach, stating that “this breach should never have happened”. A total of around 36,000 Afghans have been relocated to the UK under other resettlement routes.
The program was set up after British forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, leaving behind many local allies who had assisted them during the conflict. British troops were sent to Afghanistan as part of a deployment against Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. At the peak of the operation, there were almost 10,000 British troops in the country.