Former UK Defence Sec Unrepentant Over Afghan Scandal

The Tory ex-cabinet minister in charge of Britain’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in  2022 has refused to apologise for the secret scheme cooked up in its aftermath.

On Tuesday, July 15th, a “superinjunction” was lifted that forbade any discussion of the policy—even mentioning the existence of the superinjunction itself. From here onwards, it was clear that:

• a data breach, traced back to a Royal Marine, had put the names and details of Afghans applying for asylum in the public domain;
• since many of those listed in the leaked document had aided British forces, they feared reprisals from the Taliban;
• a special scheme was put in place to secretly extract these individuals and their families from Afghanistan for relocation inside the UK.

According to Wallace, his “first priority was to protect all those that might be at risk” from Taliban retribution. He “made no apology” for ordering officials to apply for the injunction in August 2023, although he expressed surprise that it became a ‘superinjunction’ which was then kept operational for almost two years.

In contrast, current Secretary of State for Defence John Healey has apologised unreservedly for an error which put between 19,000 and 100,000 Afghans on a Taliban ‘kill list,’ while saying it was “never the plan to bring everyone” on the leaked dataset to the UK, with no automatic right of resettlement.

With the injunction lifted, various estimates of the financial cost and inbound migrant numbers involved have been made public (complicated by the resettlement of some data-compromised Afghans under different official schemes). Official figures point, to date, to airlift operations having brought 18,500 Afghans to Britain already. 

Working from estimates that the whole affair would cost at least £6 billion (€6.91 billion) to resolve—not including the cost of a data protection lawsuit from the Afghans affected—the Labour government moved to close existing resettlement programmes (stranding an estimated 70,000 eligible individuals in Afghanistan).

Critics of the scheme point to the cost, secrecy, and lack of accountability. While Britain has an ethical responsibility to look after its close allies, there has been a lack of proper vetting of the individuals being admitted, according to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.