U.K. secretly resettled thousands of Afghans after data leak, says British government

The British government has said that thousands of Afghans, including many who had worked with British forces, have been secretly resettled in the country after their identities were leaked and fears of a Taliban threat mounted.

The government also announced plans to close the secret route.

In 2022, the British Defense Secretary John Healey said that a set of personal details of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had applied to immigrate to the UK after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban was mistakenly published and parts of it were posted online.

This led the then Conservative government to launch a secret resettlement program for these Afghans. At the same time, the government obtained a court order known as a “super-injunction” prohibiting any information about the program.

The ban was lifted on Tuesday when the current British Labour government decided to make the program public. The government also said that an independent review had found that the disclosure of the information did not pose a significant risk to Afghans from the Taliban.

Healey told parliament:

“I was deeply concerned about the lack of transparency with parliament and the public.”

Around 4,500 people — including 900 principal applicants and around 3,600 of their family members — have been secretly relocated to the UK through the scheme, according to the report, with a total of 6,900 expected to be relocated by the end of the scheme. The total cost of the scheme is estimated at £850 million ($1.5 billion).

In addition, around 36,000 Afghans have been relocated to the UK through other resettlement routes.

British forces were deployed to Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks as part of a coalition against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. At the height of the operation, there were around 10,000 British troops in the country — mostly in Helmand province in the south. Britain ended its military operations in Afghanistan in 2014.

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