SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
The U.K. government said this week it had relocated thousands of Afghan nationals to Britain under a secret program after a defense ministry official mistakenly leaked their identities. The data breach involved the names, contact details and some family information belonging to Afghans who were at risk of harm from the Taliban, in many cases because they'd helped British forces in Afghanistan. Reporter Willem Marx has been following this all from London and joins us now. Thanks for being here.
WILLEM MARX: Thanks for having me.
MCCAMMON: So what can you tell us about this data breach? What happened?
MARX: This began in February 2022, when the personal details of nearly 19,000 Afghans who'd applied for resettlement in the U.K. were leaked inadvertently by an unnamed official at Britain's Ministry of Defense. These folks had sought relocation under a government program called the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy because of fears they'd face Taliban reprisals after U.S. troops withdrew during the Biden administration and the Taliban, you may remember, took control of Kabul.
MCCAMMON: Right.
MARX: But the U.K. government only became aware of this breach in August 2023, when some of the leaked details surfaced on Facebook. In response to this pretty egregious oversight, a new secret resettlement sort of program - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route (ph) - was established in April 2024 to relocate those on the leaked list to the U.K.
MCCAMMON: OK. So let's talk about that relocation effort a bit more. How many people were brought to the U.K. from Afghanistan, and why was it all kept a secret?
MARX: Well, so far, around 4 1/2 thousand Afghans have arrived in the U.K. under this program. The existence of both the original leak and the new relocation program was kept under wraps due to a court decision that the government had applied for in secret. That essentially prevented any public reporting on the matter until a British high court judge this week ruled that it could be lifted, and that's prompted a renewed debate about Britain's moral responsibility to those Afghans who risked their lives to, you know, work alongside U.K. forces over nearly two decades. Many of those folks had trusted the U.K. would keep them safe, so the leak severely undermined that trust.
For those still in Afghanistan, the fact that the leak happened has raised fresh concerns about retaliation from the Taliban. And for those who've made it to the U.K., it may make them feel a bit unwilling to ever return home. There are still hundreds of other Afghans - particularly Afghan soldiers who fought alongside British forces, as well as their dependents - who remain in Afghanistan, and it's been a - kind of a major political debate, getting them to safety, that's raged for years in the U.K.
MCCAMMON: So you're talking about thousands of people who were brought to the U.K. secretly. What did it take for the British government to pull this off?
MARX: Well, a huge amount of effort and a huge amount of money. It's going to, in total, cost around a billion dollars, it seems. That kind of underlines the consequences of these kinds of data breaches, even for governments. But in the court ruling this week that's allowed us to even talk about this, one of the judges said the previous court ruling, to keep it secret, had also, quote, "shut down the ordinary mechanisms of accountability" that operate in a democracy.
The political ramifications, they've been pretty swift, forcing, for instance, the former British Defense Minister Ben Wallace to insist this was about protecting people at risk rather than covering up a mistake. Several lawmakers have criticized that lack of transparency, but others have said, you know, this was a decision to keep the secret set against such a sensitive issue, and it involved life-or-death situations.
MCCAMMON: That's reporter Willem Marx in London. Willem, thanks for your reporting.
MARX: Thank you.
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