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Over the past two years, the U.K. government relocated thousands of Afghans to Britain at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And it was done in secret. As Willem Marx reports, the program has prompted questions and accusations in Parliament.
WILLEM MARX, BYLINE: In the summer of 2021, Taliban forces had surrounded the capital Kabul, and thousands of Afghans who'd worked alongside American, British and other foreign governments were afraid they'd face reprisals that could include death. They crowded to the airport, some clinging to departing aircraft.
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MARX: In response, the U.K. government quickly established a new program to help Afghans with links to British officials or troops to resettle in Britain. Some 19,000 people applied to be relocated under that program. Then, in early 2022, an official in Britain's Ministry of Defense released their names, contact details and family information by mistake, as the former Defense Minister Ben Wallace explained to the BBC this morning.
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BEN WALLACE: That individual was doing - as I've said, in the midst of chaos, was trying to verify these applications. Yes, it was a mistake. Yes, the person was found accountable. Of course I was angry with it, but I do take responsibility and so does the government.
MARX: That mistake placed the lives of these Afghans, many of them former interpreters for British forces, at risk. It took more than a year for the British government to realize that data had been released. That same minister, Ben Wallace, got a court to insist the breach stay secret, with a publication ban included. And as he established a new relocation program in 2023, he made sure that was kept secret too. Four-and-a-half thousand Afghans have since arrived in Britain via that route, with more expected. On Tuesday, Britain's current Defense Secretary John Healey for the first time detailed a program before the U.K. Parliament...
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JOHN HEALEY: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement on a significant data protection breach from February 2022.
MARX: ...Answering questions that went on for almost two hours. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer sought to place blame on the opposing Conservative Party in power at the time.
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PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: The defense secretary set out the full extent of the failings that we inherited - a major data breach, a super injunction, a secret route that has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds.
MARX: Jim Townsend, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Obama administration, told NPR the actions to relocate these Afghans was not just a moral obligation for countries like the U.K. and U.S.
JIM TOWNSEND: It's something that we have to do if we expect to have people from the local areas where we might have to operate for one reason or another, if we want them to help us. And so we need it not just for our own operations, but it's the right thing to.
MARX: An initial review commissioned by the current British government found no one had died necessarily because of the leak, but parliamentary hearings into the data failure and the secrecy it spawned will follow soon.
For NPR News, I'm Willem Marx. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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