by Peter Ladd, CARE
It’s been called “the most expensive email in history”. The news that a Royal Marine had inadvertently circulated a list of 25,000 Afghans, who had applied for resettlement in the UK after they claiming they had helped the British during the war with the Taliban, has been met with widespread horror.
I call it “news”, although there is really nothing “new” about it; The Times and other newspapers had been aware of the leak for nigh-on two years, only to be prevented from reporting on it by a super-injunction; this means that the press could not only not report on the disaster, but were not even allowed to report that an injunction had been taken out.
The Royal Marine had been asked to check with trusted Afghans about a small number of applicants for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), which was designed for Afghans who had fought alongside British forces. The Marine instead shared the whole spreadsheet, twice. It is estimated that the cost of the error will reach £7 billion.
The leaked dataset is believed to have put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk of “death, torture, intimidation or harrassment” when families and other dependents are included; excerpts from it were posted on social media back in 2023 in a Facebook group with more than 1,300 users, some of whom may have been Taliban infiltrators, causing panic amongst the Ministry of Defence.
Yesterday, the story became even worse, as it was revealed that the data leak also contained the names of more than 100 British special forces troops, MI6 spies and military offices.
The story touches on a number of areas of interest.