Afghanistan and the Email That Endangered Thousands: Britain’s Transparency Crisis
In February 2022, a UK MOD civil servant, internally codenamed “Nincompoop,” pressed send. The email contained an Excel spreadsheet—a list of 33,000 Afghan nationals, including those who worked alongside British forces, interpreters, intelligence contacts, and logistics personnel. Names, birthdates, phone numbers, case notes—all exposed. By accident.
That email triggered (33k names on just one non-passworded email!) one of the most catastrophic security breaches in British military history.
Taliban units reportedly began targeting known collaborators within weeks. A leaked Facebook screenshot of the dataset confirmed the exposure. But Parliament and the public heard nothing until today. Why?
The answer: a superinjunction sought from High Court judges by the MOD so sweeping it gagged the media, MPs(!), and even frontline evacuation teams. For 683 days, the UK evacuated over 25,000 Afghans under a secret mission dubbed Operation Rubific, spending £7 billion (almost half the much better known GPO scandal!) in covert relocation. Families were extracted from Kabul, Pakistan, and Iran, while threat levels soared.
The Cost of Silence
At least 17 deaths have been linked to the breach. Survivors now live in hiding. Some still wait for safe passage. Others received email apologies—years after their personal details were leaked into Taliban hands. Some weren't even told by the MOD they were on the kill list. The MoD apologised, but only after relentless pressure from legal teams, whistleblowers, and veterans' networks.
In parallel, the case of Agnes Wanjiru, murdered by UK soldiers in Kenya and dumped in a septic tank, reveals a pattern: cover-ups over justice. Her death, known internally for years after 2012, was met with silence until a whistleblower released WhatsApp messages mocking the crime.
The killer is still on the run in UK, dodging UK and Kenyan police. And questions remain for the Duke of Lancaster regiment, and MOD Police, officers on what they knew and when - and what they did.
But why does this keep happening in the MOD and across Whitehall? The Hillsboro Law of police failure and cover up derailed this week.
D-Notices and Gagging Orders: Britain's Invisible Shield
The UK's D-Notice system (now called the Defence and Security Media Advisory Notices) allows the government to request press non-disclosure for national security issues. But when gagging becomes habitual, it stops protecting lives and starts shielding incompetence.
The Afghan breach, Wanjiru’s murder, and the Post Office Horizon scandal (Bates v Post Office) reveal how institutional failure often wears the mask of secrecy. The same culture enabled Grenfell Tower warnings to be ignored, infected blood victims to be misled, and whistleblowers to be punished instead of protected.
Escalating Threats While Facing the Wrong Direction
While the MoD continues to label Iran as one of the UK’s just 3 strategic threats (with Russia and China), reality paints a darker picture:
Russia has attacked energy grids in Estonia, jammed RAF signals in Cyprus, and deployed chemical agents in Ukraine, including banned choking gases
Syria sees ongoing drone incursions near British forces
Russian cyber units have attempted to breach UK defence servers
Yet the MoD’s internal reviews now remain preoccupied with Tehran, presumably daisy-chaining on the USA/Israel B2 raids, leaving the UK vulnerable to hybrid threats already on its doorstep.
Or perhaps even worse, such threats hyped up by the Military-Industrial-Thinktank Complex lacking the wars or likely threats to justify their tax pay-cheques.
While the MOD managing to kill UK's allies from within their secure cubicles is a spectacular failure beyond words. To then cover it up under a veneer of supposed excellence - and risk more lives, marks the MOD as one of the key threats to UK interests.
The legacy of Kit Carson Scouts—Vietnamese defectors and allies recruited by the US and UK—feels eerily present. From the MOD Afghan breach its clear if such scouts were/are deployed today in Syria or Eastern Europe as Forest Brothers, their survival would depend not just on stealth and loyalty to UK, but whether Whitehall left them out in the cold.
The MOD has weakened our allies and future Kit Carson scouts and the defence of UK. Who should receive a medal and promotion on the rates?
Kabul Chaos Again after Iraq Nation Building Fails
A USA Congress report called the 2021 Kabul airport evacuation “chaotic and confused,” citing poor planning and failure to prioritize vulnerable Afghan allies - after 20 years of occupation(!).
Over 124,000 people were airlifted, but thousands were left behind. Some Afghan commandos reportedly fled to Iran, raising security concerns.
The UK’s Operation Pitting evacuated 15,000 people, the largest British airlift since WW2.
A Call to Action
If Britain is to maintain moral and strategic integrity, it must confront the culture of secrecy that enabled these disasters. The Afghan breach was not just a spreadsheet glitch—it was a systemic failure rooted in silence.
We need:
A full parliamentary inquiry into Operation Rubific and all super-injunctions linked to defence
A reform of the D-Notice system, with independent oversight and appeal mechanisms - as a minimum editors confirming on their font page they have been officially gagged by the army
A public FOI/EIR record of all gagging orders issued by the MoD since 2001
Strengthened whistle blower protections across defence and intelligence sectors
A Victims' Compensation Framework, not delayed apologies
Greater cross-party scrutiny over military Cyber resilience and refugee data systems
Media training on journalists merely parroting MOD press releases or just interviewing Army types on Army matters - real scrutiny is overdue
Specific details of Russia, China and Iran cyber threats - Iran for example (never in the news until last month) by a closer reading of MOD info, seems to be just 12 plots on Iran dissidents in London in 2 years. And those from 3 years ago. China much the same
And real Russian threats after Ukraine or Wagner Africa are boosted to absurd heights by including bog-standard Microsoft cyber crimes not specific plots by the KGB nor Wagner. And Andorra ignored?
If the MOD Cyber teams have killed more allies than the Taliban on its own it's because we cannot protect our allies, cannot protect our own data, and cannot protect our principles—then what are we defending?
The reputation and tax-salaries of the bloated and incompetent MOD?
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