The secret Afghan resettlement scheme offers an insightful look into the depths of elite irresponsibility
It is, alas, beyond my descriptive powers to plumb the depths of establishment irresponsibility in Britain. Where does one begin? Where does one end? Following the course of the newly exposed — and long covered up — Afghan resettlement scheme will at least give us a sense of how deep and dark it is. Failure was added onto failure until the whole thing was concealed from view.
Britain should never have been in Afghanistan to begin with. Certainly, intervention was somewhat understandable in the aftermath of 9/11. I suspect that there are few Brits who can honestly claim to have opposed it at the time (I did not — though in my defence I was 10 years old). But the idea that one of the most tribal, religious and corrupt societies on Earth could have been converted to liberal democracy was still so hubristic that the people in power should have recognised that it was doomed to fail. It was not as if there were not ample precedents.
Fail it did. After decades of fighting, and the loss of tens of thousands of Afghan lives as well as hundreds of British service personnel, the Taliban simply took control again. What an appalling waste of life. (How does Tony Blair sleep at night? And how can I get some?)
In the aftermath of the Taliban’s return to power, the British establishment was naturally concerned about the safety of the Afghans it had worked with. In a devastating example of incompetence, though, it appears that a Royal Marine inadvertently leaked a spreadsheet which contained personal information about all the Afghan applicants for asylum. This was devastatingly incompetent — though it is worth asking if that personal information should have been on an eminently shareable spreadsheet to begin with.
The British authorities hurried to relocate tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked with the Britons. If there was a specific threat to their lives, there is certainly an argument that Britain had a duty of care. It is worth adding, though, that Paul Rimmer, former deputy head of Defence Intelligence, has since suggested that “if the data breach became public knowledge it would not substantially increase the risks to those mentioned in it”.
But the British authorities raced ahead. Not only were they relocating Afghans but they were committed to covering it up. A super-injunction was applied to prohibit journalists from even mentioning the scheme. This should be considered not just in the light of the fact that billions were being paid out of the public purse but in the light of the fact that according to the government’s own figures Afghan migrants are 20 times likelier to be convicted of sexual offences than British citizens. Some have also been responsible for appalling violence on the continent, such as in the Munich car-ramming attack or the fatal Aschaffenburg stabbings. It is simply a fact, then, that Britons were being endangered without their knowledge.
According to the Telegraph, even an Afghan man who had threatened to publicly share the list of Afghan asylum applicants after his own application was rejected — thereby, in the terms of the establishment, endangering thousands of his compatriots — is now living in Britain. This is the quality of human being that British citizens should be expected to welcome.
He made a terrible mistake — but it was one terrible mistake in a tidal wave of errors
I wonder how the Royal Marine who leaked the list of Afghan asylum applicants is feeling now. Perhaps he is just a rotten incompetent — but as an absent-minded person I can’t help feeling a twinge of empathy. It was not him who took Britain into a hopeless war. It was not him who made data so vulnerable in the first place. It was not him whose smug incuriosity about average differences between populations inflicted a vastly, destructively overextended project of multiculturalism on Britain. It was not him who covered up the whole affair so British citizens would be left in the dark. He made a terrible mistake — but it was one terrible mistake in a tidal wave of errors.
Meanwhile, the BBC is focused on the firing of a Masterchef presenter. Just another day in Britain.
