The advice Harold Macmillan gave to Alex Douglas-Home in 1963 not to invade Afghanistan is worth recalling in the aftermath of revelations that the names of 25,000 Afghanis who cooperated with the British there from 2001 to 2021 were leaked, endangering them and their relatives. The British state’s extraordinary measures to keep the leak secret and relocate many of them to Britain highlight the sensitivity of the issue and vulnerability of those involved.
It is part of a much larger story about Afghanistan’s troubles since the Taliban took power four years ago. The British decision to invade in 2001, along with US forces, was followed by a chaotic withdrawal in 2021 when the Biden administration pulled out. That left their many Afghani collaborators vulnerable to arrest and torture, alongside the many more – women especially – targeted by the new regime. Millions of Afghan refugees in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan are being expelled back home to a country of 41 million people that can ill afford to receive them.
That Afghan refugees outnumber most others on the boats from France to Britain echoes this wider suffering. It is a reminder of the continuing truth contained in the remark about migration to Britain by the Sri Lankan-British writer Ambalavaner Sivanandan: “We are here because you were there”. Afghans have shared in the racist abuse heaped on migrants in recent times, stoked by populist right-wing movements.
Fears that such sentiments would be further inflamed by news of the relocations and their cost prompted the clampdown on media coverage and sworn secrecy of state personnel when the leak was discovered in 2023. The Labour government has relaxed this after a court hearing, reduced the cost estimate and discontinued much of the transfer programme. Their efforts to blame the previous Conservative government for the fiasco should not disguise the role of the British state. Its resort to unprecedented clampdowns on media reporting set an unacceptable precedent at a time of declining trust in democracy.
