Afghans fought for Britain. Their reward? A data breach betrayal – The New Arab

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Breadcrumb
On August 20, 2021, I sat in a New York hotel room with two clocks open on my laptop. One was set to Eastern Standard Time. The other, to Kabul.
At 5:00 am Kabul time, a bus carrying 40 people was scheduled to pass through the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport — at that moment, one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Among the waiting passengers were Afghans who had served as translators, military liaisons, and cultural advisors during the UK’s 20-year presence in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s overthrow in 2001.
One of them was my relative. Trained by both the US and UK governments, he had supported their military work through his role in the Afghan government. He stood at the designated collection point outside the airport, clutching his UK-issued documents. 
A few minutes after 5:00 am, the bus came into view. He began frantically waving, shouting to signal his presence — only to be shoved back into the chaos of a desperate crowd pushing toward an open gate. His voice disappeared into the noise. A soldier we were in contact with later told us the bus had been redirected to another location. It was too late.
He spent the next several months in hiding, sleeping in a different place each night. The Taliban were swiftly targeting anyone associated with the West, moving to eliminate any remaining bastions of resistance in the capital.
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And in a bitter twist, it wasn’t high-tech surveillance or biometric tracking that put Afghans at risk — it was technology at its most crude. Highly sensitive information was shared and exchanged like everyday phone content: forwarded emails, screenshots, and WhatsApp messages.
In one striking case, a paper-based US visa — dark blue and oddly reminiscent of a Willy Wonka golden ticket — was leaked. Someone at an internet café in Kabul copied it hundreds of times, and the image ended up on Facebook. By morning, US forces were facing crowds of Afghans holding printed copies of a document that had never been theirs. 
Without names or identifiers, there was no way to verify who was being let in or why. As the image spread to other provinces, circulated through word of mouth and social media, people urged relatives to print it and rush to the airport. Eventually, the so-called visa ticket was no longer accepted.
It was chaos amplified by technology. A breakdown that exposed the profound disregard for Afghan lives. After decades of loyalty, those who had risked everything for the West found their fates tied to a broken digital chain. These were the first hours of the Taliban’s return, and the West’s response collapsed into a crude, inconsistent patchwork of improvised tech solutions. 
That pattern of neglect resurfaced just weeks ago, this time from the highest levels of the UK government. In February 2022, a Ministry of Defence official sent an unprotected spreadsheet outside secure systems, mistakenly believing it listed 150 Afghan applicants to UK resettlement schemes. In fact, it contained personal data for 18,714 people. All had applied under ARAP or ACRS, programs designed to resettle Afghans who supported British operations, including interpreters, advisors, and embassy staff.
The breach wasn’t discovered by ministers until August 2023, when personal information for nine individuals appeared online. The government responded by securing a super-injunction, barring any public mention of the breach. In court documents later unsealed, the judge wrote: “The risk in question is to the lives of many individuals and their families.” The order was meant to buy time to evacuate those most at risk before the Taliban found them.
To do that, the Ministry of Defence established a covert programme: the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR). It was designed to resettle Afghans affected by the breach who were not eligible under existing schemes.
To date, 6,900 people, including 900 principal applicants and their families, have been relocated or are in transit. Another 600 remain trapped in Afghanistan. That leaves more than 11,000 individuals from the breached dataset unaccounted for. Most have received no invitation, no support, and no clear path to safety.
This comes as regional pressures mount. This week, Pakistan announced mass deportations of Afghans, and starting in July, Iran expelled nearly a million Afghans in just one month. For those still in hiding, borders are closing and options are vanishing. The aftermath of NATO’s two-decade intervention now feels like a final abandonment — not just of ideals, but of the promises made. What was once called a mission to deliver democracy and freedom now stands as evidence of failed intervention and quiet retreat.
And yet, in July 2025, the UK courts lifted the super-injunction. This decision came just as the danger to Afghans was growing, not shrinking. An internal Ministry of Defence review concluded that “the Taliban likely already possesses the key information in the dataset” and that “the acquisition of the dataset is unlikely substantially to raise the risk.”
That conclusion is as chilling as the breach itself. A government failure that exposed thousands of Afghans, including interpreters, analysts, civil society partners, is now deemed inconsequential because the Taliban may have already obtained the data.
The message to Afghan allies is clear: even if our mistake endangered you, the damage is done. Your lives, once essential to our mission, no longer carry enough weight to warrant protection.
This is more than an administrative failure. From the days of empire to the modern battlefield, colonial powers have depended on local guides, translators, and cultural intermediaries – those who made military expeditions possible. These relationships were rarely forged on trust. More often, they were shaped by desperation, coercion, or the hope of protection.
In Afghanistan, as in earlier colonial campaigns, local actors bore the risk while foreign powers held the terms. Without these Afghans, NATO forces could not have lasted long. They broke down language barriers, brokered fragile relationships in devastated communities, and helped reduce civilian casualties in the rare windows when peace seemed possible.
And yet, the response has been insultingly small. The UK has relocated only a fraction of those eligible. A recent parliamentary committee found that over 70 percent of eligible Afghans under ARAP remain stranded. In some cases, those promised protection have died waiting. The UK’s data breach only compounds that betrayal.
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To claim now that the breach does not increase the risk of reprisals is to erase everything these Afghans endured. In the age of digital fingerprints and facial recognition, leaked names are not just lines in a spreadsheet. They are death sentences.
The age of the ally is over. For Afghans, working with Western governments no longer means protection. It means being branded. It means placing trust in a system that discards you when it becomes politically inconvenient. This failure lies not with the individual soldier — many of whom have risked their lives to support and evacuate their Afghan colleagues — but with leadership at the highest levels.
Last week, the Trump administration announced it would cancel Temporary Protected Status for Afghans, stripping away one of the last remaining legal safeguards for those seeking refuge in the US, as similar policies sweep across NATO countries that now claim Afghanistan is safe under Taliban control.
There is a deep disconnect between the commitments made on the ground and the political decisions made at the top. And it is Afghans who continue to bear the brunt of this dichotomy. It also helps explain why the world now turns to drones and automation. Machines don’t seek protection, and they’re easier to abandon.
Meanwhile, thousands of Afghans remain in hiding, still waiting and hoping that the promises made to them will be kept. We have a moral imperative to see their safety through.
Sara Wahedi is an Afghan-Canadian tech entrepreneur and humanitarian. She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Civaam, a civic-technology firm centring technologists in crisis regions. 
Follow her on X: @SaraWahedi
Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

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