The great Afghan cover-up

New Statesman​

16-07-2025

British armed forces work with the U.S. military to evacuate eligible civilians and their families out of the country on August 21, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by MoD Crown Copyright via Getty Images
On the great Afghan leak and cover up, where to start? The answer – the only decent answer – is with the principal victims, the volunteer soldiers, translators, support staff and their families who helped British forces during the so-called war on terror, and who did so in the hope of forging a better country but who were then betrayed by a butter-fingered official (still employed) and left in great danger.
That their state enemy, the Taliban, did not use the leak of more than 18,714 names – and not just names but telephone numbers, personal details, family members' details – to institute a general slaughter of the up to 100,000 people thought to be affected in total, is fortunate. Although, come to think of it, how would we know if any of our former allies were killed or tortured because of the leak? All this is shrouded still in secrecy, and yet another government injunction. But this week I spoke to one former Afghan interpreter who told me of the recent public murder of the brother of a former pro-British soldier.
Even as we lean on the possibility of an effective and assertive state to bring us greater economic growth and equality, we are left slack-jawed and embarrassed at the continuing incompetence of the actual British state as it exists today. From our military blunders to our shrivelled aid programme, British state failure has often been, as it were, foreigner-facing. In this case, at least the government tried to remedy things by bringing some 24,000 Afghans affected by the data breach to this country, either already or soon. The total cost, over time, could be up to £7 billion.
At which point, however, the British state starts to remember the British voter, and panics. We can well believe that the original ordinary, non-super injunction, was a reasonable short-term precautionary step while the numbers of those in danger were established and swift measures were taken to get them out of harm's way. But what followed was, let's be clear, a cover-up. The true story was hidden from Parliament, journalists and the public, quite deliberately and for years.
Why? Again, some of the hesitation must have been because of worry that release of the facts would put more people in even more danger. Only once the Rimmer inquiry decided that wasn't true did John Healey, the Defence Secretary, act. One of the few politicians left in public life who can command respect across the Commons, he sounded convincing about the difficulty of that decision. But much of this, particularly before the election last year, was about backside-covering.
MPs are well aware that more migration is not popular, and that Afghans, despite all the heroism of some of them, are not a particularly popular group. In the first ten months of last year, foreign nationals were twice as likely to be arrested for crimes, and Afghans were among the top five nationalities for arrest rates. They were also among the most highly represented groups convicted for sexual offences. So the Tory cabinet knew a new scheme for Afghans, coming at great cost, would not be popular in an election year; particularly if it was the result of a government blunder. The new scheme, therefore, became a state secret. This was disgraceful.
Ministers hate ruling things out because they don't know what's going to happen in the future. But the armed forces minister Luke Pollard came close to telling me this week he would never support another super-injunction of this kind. Indeed. Keir Starmer, now on his second career, should resolve to keep away from secret courts.
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And there is a far bigger lesson. Our most recent military adventures have brought only grief. The Falklands War was no model for anything. The Iraq War removed a bloodthirsty dictator but it brought civil war and devastation in its wake, plus waves of migration, and the arrival for a time of Isis, a genuinely Islamo-fascist regime which by the end of 2015 ruled an area in which some 12 million people lived. In all those ways, intervention failed.
The war in Afghanistan also failed. It failed to dislodge the Taliban. What did not kill them made them stronger. It failed the women and girls of Afghanistan dreaming of a decent education. It failed to make the Middle East safer and it humiliated both the United States and Britain at a time when our enemies, not least in Russia, were closely watching. This probably contributed to the subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine.
So as Labour ministers contemplate this latest inherited state humiliation, can they please resolve to stop foreign wars – unless they are absolutely sure there is no alternative and that it is, existentially, in our national interest? For our modern experience, rammed home this week, is that warfare fails.
[See also: The Tories are responsible for the Afghan resettlement fiasco]
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