The British Ministry of Defence’s data breach endangered the lives of up to 100,000 Afghans, prompting many to be evacuated to Britain under a covert £7bn operation, which was kept secret for nearly two years due to an unprecedented superinjunction.
In February 2022, a leak revealed the identities of thousands of Afghans who claimed to be in danger from the Taliban due to their affiliations to UK forces and sought refuge in Britain. The leak included the names, contact information, and some family information of those who were possibly vulnerable to Taliban attacks.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) stated to the BBC that 23,900 Afghans associated to the breach have been offered resettlement to the UK, with more than 16,000 already relocated by May 2025. It was done by a top-secret government operation known as Operation Rubific.
Defense Secretary John Healey stated that the serviceman believed the list contained only 150 names, but he recognized that the leak “should never have happened” and issued a “sincere apology on behalf of the British government” for the data breach.
The government has spent £400 million on the initiative so far and plans to invest an additional £450 million.
The government estimates that the overall cost of all attempts to transfer Afghans since 2021 will be between £5.5 and £6 billion. Since the evacuation of international troops, around 36,000 Afghans have arrived in the United Kingdom.
What is Behind this Leak Scandal?
In a 2024 High Court decision made public on July 15, Mr Justice Chamberlain stated that it was “quite possible” that some of those who viewed parts of the leaked document in a Facebook group “were Taliban infiltrators or spoke about it to Taliban-aligned individuals”.
It was previously anticipated that the number of persons at “risk of death or serious harm” because they featured on the list or a family member did may be as much as 100,000.
On Tuesday, High Court judge Mr Justice Chamberlain lifted the superinjunction, calling for additional investigation after an official evaluation of the data leak “fundamentally undermined the evidential basis” for the superinjunction.
As the catastrophic breach is ultimately made public, it may be revealed that at least 17 people mentioned in the dataset are thought to have been killed by the Taliban, 14 of them died following the disclosure.
The official study of the leak, commissioned in January 2025, stated that the government may have made the dataset more tempting to the Taliban by developing a special evacuation program and issuing a superinjunction to journalists.
Earlier Afghan nationals whose personal information was unintentionally disclosed by the Ministry of Defence in 2021 will be compensated up to £4,000 each, the government has announced.
The MoD is facing a compensation claim from over 650 Afghans who claim they were affected by the breach, which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds.
Resettlement Scheme for the Afghans Threatened by the Taliban
The highly confidential database contained information from applications to the MoD’s resettlement scheme, called Arap, which was set up in the wake of the disastrous withdrawal from Kabul as a way to manage the relocation of Afghans who had worked with British forces.
Some 18,714 applicants, as well as their family members, were named in the database, which was shared by a member of the armed forces who was trying to verify cases.
In order to explain the need for a new resettlement scheme without alerting the Taliban to the leak, Mr Healey told MPs in a written statement that the change would “deliver greater efficiency”. Officials said the plan would “provide cover” for the thousands arriving in the UK and would explain to councils why Afghan families needed to be housed in their areas.