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The former UK government secretly barred thousands of elite Afghan commandos from resettling in Britain—despite knowing their lives were in danger—because it feared they might give evidence to a war crimes inquiry.
At the same time, it quietly brought thousands of other Afghans into the UK under a covert scheme, launched after a Ministry of Defence official leaked the personal data of nearly 19,000 people by emailing a spreadsheet using an unsecured system—just like members of Boris Johnson’s government were criticised for doing during the Covid crisis.
One group was seen as a threat to military reputations. The other, a liability to be contained after the government’s own failure put them in harm’s way. One group was excluded, the other evacuated. Both responses were hidden from the public.
This is not just hypocrisy – it is a damning indictment of a system that prioritised secrecy and damage control over justice, safety, and accountability.
In the years following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, thousands of Afghans who had fought, served, or supported British forces during the UK’s military campaign found themselves stranded and hunted in the country they had risked everything to protect.
As the months wore on, two parallel, secretive responses to this crisis unfolded within the British government.
Each response tells a story of state failure, secrecy, and a callous disregard for truth and justice.
But taken together, they reveal a culture of concealment where the instinct to avoid accountability outweighed the duty to protect.
The first secret was a denial of help.
The UK Special Forces, it emerged through High Court testimony, vetoed more than 2,000 applications for sanctuary in Britain from elite Afghan commandos known as the “Triples”—men who had fought side by side with British troops in some of the country’s most dangerous operations.
One officer alone is said to have blocked more than 1,500 of these cases.
Why? Because allowing these men into the UK risked something else: that they might be called as witnesses in the ongoing inquiry into alleged war crimes committed by British forces in Afghanistan.
In other words, the very individuals who had shown the most loyalty, courage, and sacrifice were now being treated as legal liabilities by the state they had once served.
The second secret was help to escape.
After a catastrophic data breach in February 2022, in which an official from the Ministry of Defence emailed a spreadsheet containing personal details of nearly 19,000 Afghan allies using an unsecured system, thousands of those placed at risk were offered a way out.
The government covertly launched the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), a hush-hush resettlement scheme that eventually brought more than 4,500 Afghans to safety.
The public was not told.
Journalists were gagged under a sweeping super-injunction.
MPs were barred from discussing it.
But behind the veil of secrecy, a vast and costly operation unfolded, its price tag now nearing £850 million.
This is the hypocrisy at the heart of this scandal: The same government that had secretly barred the entry of men who might testify against British soldiers quietly relocated thousands of others endangered by its own bureaucratic incompetence.
Both responses were hidden from public view.
Both relied on extraordinary secrecy.
But they diverged at one crucial point: who the state chose to save.
Risk and reputation
The risk posed by the Afghan commandos was not to public safety, but to institutional reputation.
The UKSF’s veto—now proven in court and publicly condemned—was not based on genuine national security concerns.
Instead, it reflected an apprehension that these loyal allies might confirm, in a court of law, what some already suspected: that British soldiers had engaged in unlawful killings and other breaches of international law during their deployment.
To silence that threat, the state chose exclusion.
Not overtly, not with legislation or official policy, but covertly—through a behind-the-scenes veto process that allowed serving UKSF personnel to override civilian caseworkers.
Hundreds of these decisions were later found to be legally defective.
Some have now been overturned.
But many of the affected applicants remain in hiding, or in danger, their trust in Britain irrevocably broken.
In contrast, those endangered by the 2022 leak were resettled not because of what they knew, but because of what had been done to them.
A government official had breached protocol—using an unsecured system to circulate sensitive information—placing thousands at risk of Taliban reprisal.
When fragments of this data began appearing on Facebook in 2023, the then-Tory government panicked.
The super-injunction followed swiftly.
So did the backroom flights.
To date, there has been no public accountability for the breach, and the official responsible has not been named.
Here again, the reputational instinct kicked in—not to protect those at risk (that was just a consequence), but to shield the state from exposure.
Culture of concealment
These two responses—one exclusionary, the other protective—are connected by a deep-seated culture of concealment.
The UK’s recent history is replete with examples of government bypassing official channels, obscuring records, and hiding evidence.
During the COVID-19 crisis, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and senior officials routinely used private messaging services—WhatsApp, personal emails, even disappearing messages—to conduct government business, often outside the reach of Freedom of Information laws.
At the time, critics warned that such practices risked not only legality but accountability.
The Ministry of Defence leak followed the same pattern.
A civil servant sent sensitive files via an unapproved method, echoing the informal, unsecured communications culture cultivated at the highest levels of government.
The consequence this time was not (initially) a political scandal—but a mortal danger to thousands.
And lessons were not learned.
The ARR was not created as an act of transparency, but as a contingency to avoid scandal.
The state’s first response was to cover up.
It did not announce the leak.
It did not admit fault.
It did not offer the public a chance to hold it to account.
Meanwhile, those Afghans who posed a political risk—not because they were dangerous, but because they knew too much—were left behind.
The human cost
The outcome of this dual betrayal is not abstract.
It is measured in lives lost, families fractured, and trust betrayed.
Afghan commandos have been assassinated by the Taliban while awaiting resettlement.
Others have disappeared.
Some have reportedly been tortured.
They were left vulnerable not by accident, but by choice.
Meanwhile, more than £800 million has been spent evacuating those placed at risk by a single bureaucratic error.
That cost is not too high—if anything, it is morally necessary.
But it stands in cruel contrast to the callous, penny-pinching rejection of the men who once stood on British front lines.
One group was saved because of what was done to them.
The other was abandoned because of what they might say.
Accountability, not amnesia
Now Parliament must reckon with this scandal.
Select Committees must demand transparency.
The Afghanistan Inquiry must hear testimony from the men who have so far been silenced.
And the Ministry of Defence must publicly explain how its own personnel were allowed to block resettlement decisions in ways that contravened both the letter and spirit of the law.
There must also be consequences for the culture that enabled this: a culture of secrecy, of backchannel communications, of reputational obsession.
The official responsible for the 2022 leak must be identified and investigated.
And the use of super-injunctions to suppress matters of overwhelming public interest must be reviewed.
The UK made a promise to those who stood with it in war.
That promise was not conditional on politics, nor revocable through legal sleight of hand.
It was a promise of protection.
It is not too late to honour that promise.
But the first step is truth.
That, more than anything, has been the casualty of this scandal.
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Two secrets, one shame: the UK’s Afghan betrayal and the culture that enabled it
Share this post:
The former UK government secretly barred thousands of elite Afghan commandos from resettling in Britain—despite knowing their lives were in danger—because it feared they might give evidence to a war crimes inquiry.
At the same time, it quietly brought thousands of other Afghans into the UK under a covert scheme, launched after a Ministry of Defence official leaked the personal data of nearly 19,000 people by emailing a spreadsheet using an unsecured system—just like members of Boris Johnson’s government were criticised for doing during the Covid crisis.
One group was seen as a threat to military reputations. The other, a liability to be contained after the government’s own failure put them in harm’s way. One group was excluded, the other evacuated. Both responses were hidden from the public.
This is not just hypocrisy – it is a damning indictment of a system that prioritised secrecy and damage control over justice, safety, and accountability.
In the years following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, thousands of Afghans who had fought, served, or supported British forces during the UK’s military campaign found themselves stranded and hunted in the country they had risked everything to protect.
As the months wore on, two parallel, secretive responses to this crisis unfolded within the British government.
Each response tells a story of state failure, secrecy, and a callous disregard for truth and justice.
But taken together, they reveal a culture of concealment where the instinct to avoid accountability outweighed the duty to protect.
The first secret was a denial of help.
The UK Special Forces, it emerged through High Court testimony, vetoed more than 2,000 applications for sanctuary in Britain from elite Afghan commandos known as the “Triples”—men who had fought side by side with British troops in some of the country’s most dangerous operations.
One officer alone is said to have blocked more than 1,500 of these cases.
Why? Because allowing these men into the UK risked something else: that they might be called as witnesses in the ongoing inquiry into alleged war crimes committed by British forces in Afghanistan.
In other words, the very individuals who had shown the most loyalty, courage, and sacrifice were now being treated as legal liabilities by the state they had once served.
The second secret was help to escape.
After a catastrophic data breach in February 2022, in which an official from the Ministry of Defence emailed a spreadsheet containing personal details of nearly 19,000 Afghan allies using an unsecured system, thousands of those placed at risk were offered a way out.
The government covertly launched the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), a hush-hush resettlement scheme that eventually brought more than 4,500 Afghans to safety.
The public was not told.
Journalists were gagged under a sweeping super-injunction.
MPs were barred from discussing it.
But behind the veil of secrecy, a vast and costly operation unfolded, its price tag now nearing £850 million.
This is the hypocrisy at the heart of this scandal: The same government that had secretly barred the entry of men who might testify against British soldiers quietly relocated thousands of others endangered by its own bureaucratic incompetence.
Both responses were hidden from public view.
Both relied on extraordinary secrecy.
But they diverged at one crucial point: who the state chose to save.
Risk and reputation
The risk posed by the Afghan commandos was not to public safety, but to institutional reputation.
The UKSF’s veto—now proven in court and publicly condemned—was not based on genuine national security concerns.
Instead, it reflected an apprehension that these loyal allies might confirm, in a court of law, what some already suspected: that British soldiers had engaged in unlawful killings and other breaches of international law during their deployment.
To silence that threat, the state chose exclusion.
Not overtly, not with legislation or official policy, but covertly—through a behind-the-scenes veto process that allowed serving UKSF personnel to override civilian caseworkers.
Hundreds of these decisions were later found to be legally defective.
Some have now been overturned.
But many of the affected applicants remain in hiding, or in danger, their trust in Britain irrevocably broken.
In contrast, those endangered by the 2022 leak were resettled not because of what they knew, but because of what had been done to them.
A government official had breached protocol—using an unsecured system to circulate sensitive information—placing thousands at risk of Taliban reprisal.
When fragments of this data began appearing on Facebook in 2023, the then-Tory government panicked.
The super-injunction followed swiftly.
So did the backroom flights.
To date, there has been no public accountability for the breach, and the official responsible has not been named.
Here again, the reputational instinct kicked in—not to protect those at risk (that was just a consequence), but to shield the state from exposure.
Culture of concealment
These two responses—one exclusionary, the other protective—are connected by a deep-seated culture of concealment.
The UK’s recent history is replete with examples of government bypassing official channels, obscuring records, and hiding evidence.
During the COVID-19 crisis, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and senior officials routinely used private messaging services—WhatsApp, personal emails, even disappearing messages—to conduct government business, often outside the reach of Freedom of Information laws.
At the time, critics warned that such practices risked not only legality but accountability.
The Ministry of Defence leak followed the same pattern.
A civil servant sent sensitive files via an unapproved method, echoing the informal, unsecured communications culture cultivated at the highest levels of government.
The consequence this time was not (initially) a political scandal—but a mortal danger to thousands.
And lessons were not learned.
The ARR was not created as an act of transparency, but as a contingency to avoid scandal.
The state’s first response was to cover up.
It did not announce the leak.
It did not admit fault.
It did not offer the public a chance to hold it to account.
Meanwhile, those Afghans who posed a political risk—not because they were dangerous, but because they knew too much—were left behind.
The human cost
The outcome of this dual betrayal is not abstract.
It is measured in lives lost, families fractured, and trust betrayed.
Afghan commandos have been assassinated by the Taliban while awaiting resettlement.
Others have disappeared.
Some have reportedly been tortured.
They were left vulnerable not by accident, but by choice.
Meanwhile, more than £800 million has been spent evacuating those placed at risk by a single bureaucratic error.
That cost is not too high—if anything, it is morally necessary.
But it stands in cruel contrast to the callous, penny-pinching rejection of the men who once stood on British front lines.
One group was saved because of what was done to them.
The other was abandoned because of what they might say.
Accountability, not amnesia
Now Parliament must reckon with this scandal.
Select Committees must demand transparency.
The Afghanistan Inquiry must hear testimony from the men who have so far been silenced.
And the Ministry of Defence must publicly explain how its own personnel were allowed to block resettlement decisions in ways that contravened both the letter and spirit of the law.
There must also be consequences for the culture that enabled this: a culture of secrecy, of backchannel communications, of reputational obsession.
The official responsible for the 2022 leak must be identified and investigated.
And the use of super-injunctions to suppress matters of overwhelming public interest must be reviewed.
The UK made a promise to those who stood with it in war.
That promise was not conditional on politics, nor revocable through legal sleight of hand.
It was a promise of protection.
It is not too late to honour that promise.
But the first step is truth.
That, more than anything, has been the casualty of this scandal.
Share this post:
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