Man fears family ‘at risk’ over Afghan data breach

An Afghan man who worked with British forces for nearly a decade has said he fears family members still in Afghanistan are at “very high risk” after a major data breach.

It emerged in July that personal details of about 19,000 people who had asked to come to the UK to flee the Taliban were accidentally leaked in 2022.

Ahmad, not his real name, who came to West Yorkshire with his wife and children in 2021, said he understood the Taliban had “all the information” on family members who had remained in Afghanistan.

In a statement, a Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson said a review had concluded that being named in the leak was “highly unlikely” to mean someone was more likely to be targeted.

Ahmad said before the summer of 2021, when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan again, he had worked with the British military for almost 10 years.

“No one thought the past regime would take over. We thought we had a bright future and there was lots of investment,” he explained.

As the country fell to the Taliban, Ahmad said he received an email which told him he could go to Kabul Airport where, along with his wife and children, he would be airlifted to the UK.

He said that once in the airport, things were calm: “No scare, no fear, because there was no Taliban.”

Ahmad’s mother, father and members of his extended family had accompanied him and his wife and children as they fled, but they were then separated due to a blast at the airport and Ahmad and his immediate family eventually had to leave without them.

Ahmad said that once he was safely in West Yorkshire, he had applied for his extended family to join him, via what is known as the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, believing their lives were at risk due to his work for British forces.

His fears for their safety then grew earlier this year when the media were first allowed to report details of the MoD data breach which had happened in February 2022.

Details of the leak, the response and the number of Afghans granted the right to live in the UK as a result only came to light in July after a High Court judge ruled that a gagging order should be lifted.

It emerged that the leak had contained the names, contact details and some family information of 19,000 people potentially at risk of harm from the Taliban.

The leak had only come to light in August 2023, when the names of nine people who had applied to move to the UK appeared on Facebook.

Ahmad said while he, his wife and children had built a new life in West Yorkshire, the picture was very different for those who had worked with the British forces and who remained in Afghanistan – and even more so for their families.

He said their “futures went to zero within a week when the Taliban took over”.

Ahmad said that until his extended family could join him in the UK, he feared for their safety in Afghanistan – especially following news of the data leak.

He said one of his brothers-in-law had been arrested and killed by the Taliban, while another was tortured to the point of “insanity”.

“I don’t know if it is because of me and my work, or something else, but when you watch the news in Afghanistan no one can speak out against the Taliban,” he said.

“Once I saw the data breach, I understand why the Taliban has all the information about my family, why they were searching for each person I put on that list.”

Ahmad said he wanted the UK government to get the rest of his family out of Afghanistan, along with everyone else whose data was leaked.

He said he believed the data breach had put them all at “high risk”.

Ahmad added that for females in Afghanistan, such as his sister, the situation was “very critical”.

Their “hopes of being doctors, nurses, midwives and lawyers went to zero once the Taliban took control”, he said.

Prof Sara de Jong from the Sulha Alliance, which supports Afghans who worked for the British Army, said the data breach had a “huge impact” on the lives of people whose details were leaked.

Prof de Jong explained: “Normally, any other data breach – if an insurance company loses our data – we would have to be informed.

“This wasn’t the case. People found out years later,” she said.

Those affected were “incredibly alarmed and it made a lot of people who were safe in the UK worried about family at home”, Prof de Jong said.

She backed Ahmad’s calls, saying she would like to see the “interest of Afghans put front and centre – and that is something they are not confident has happened”.

Prof de Jong said she believed the MoD needed to restore confidence in the system as “the information the MoD is handling is extremely sensitive” and people needed to have confidence their data was being protected.

An MoD spokesperson said: “We are committed to honouring the moral obligation we owe to those Afghans who stood with us and risked their lives, and we have brought nearly 36,000 individuals to safety under our Afghan resettlement schemes.

“As the public would rightly expect, anyone coming to the UK must pass strict national security and eligibility checks before being able to relocate to the UK. In some cases people do not pass those checks.

“The independent Rimmer Review concluded it is highly unlikely that merely being on the spreadsheet means an individual is more likely to be targeted, and this is the basis on which the court lifted its super-injunction.”