Data leak was inevitable after Afghan chaos, says whistleblower

Telegraph

19-07-2025

The Afghan data leak was 'bound to happen' after ministers ignored warnings about the UK's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a Foreign Office whistleblower has said.
Three years ago, in July 2022 Josie Stewart, 44, a career diplomat, lost her job after giving an anonymous interview to BBC Newsnight, raising the alarm over the government's handling of the crisis.
But speaking to The Telegraph after one of the most damaging leaks in British history, she said the scenario was precisely one she had been trying to prevent.
Ms Stewart, who was one of only two civil servants to go public with their concerns in 2021, said: 'To some extent it is an endorsement of the fact that we were right – the government's chaotic handling of the Afghanistan evacuation was risking lives.
'But it also brings the realisation that we did all of this in terms of speaking out – in different ways, we both lost our careers because of it – and it didn't change anything. The chaotic management continued, and the suppressed facts continued – and got worse. So much for accountability.'
The other civil servant, Raphael Marshall, resigned after a week working on the Afghan Special Cases team, which was helping eligible Afghans at risk because of their UK ties to get evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover.
He claimed desperate emails went unread, junior staff with no regional expertise were assigned to complex cases, and the prime minister prioritised animals over people at the 'direct expense' of humans.
Ms Stewart, who had volunteered to work on the UK's Afghan crisis response following the fall of Kabul, said she felt morally compelled to speak out. She knew that, as a senior official with 15 years of experience in the Foreign Office, she could corroborate Mr Marshall's account.
Speaking about the Afghan data leak, Ms Stewart said: 'The biggest thing for me is just, 'how was it possible that data like this was still [...] being dumped into random spreadsheets and emailed around without proper controls?'.
'And I do know how, because it was a continuation of what I had witnessed first-hand in August and September. And the fact that, despite all the attention, nobody took seriously the need to fix it by February. And then – surprise, surprise – of course this happened.'
In December 2021, she gave an anonymous interview to Newsnight supporting Mr Marshall's testimony. But her identity was exposed when a BBC reporter tweeted a photo of a leaked email addressed to Ms Stewart, which had been shared with the reporter for background only. Her security clearance was revoked and she was dismissed.
In a landmark tribunal ruling in February, three judges unanimously found the Foreign Office had unfairly sacked her after she leaked information in the public interest.
Speaking about her reaction to the story this week, she said: 'I thought, 'This is what happens in such chaos when you fail to take seriously the responsibility of managing vast amounts of the most sensitive personal data there could be.' It's exactly what we were saying was bound to happen, and it did.'
'The next reaction I had, later that evening, was absolute fury. Raphael [...] had gone to the [Foreign Affairs] select committee in September 2021, which was published in December and hit the news. This data leak happened the following February.
'So even though there'd been so much public and political focus by that point on the chaos, the damage and the risk, nothing was done for at least another two months to put proper systems in place that would have stopped this happening. The hubris of it just blows my mind.'
In the evidence she gave to the select committee in March 2022, Ms Stewart said: 'I feel a strong sense of moral injury for having been part of something so badly managed, and so focused on managing reputational risk and political fallout rather than the actual crisis and associated human tragedy.'
She told The Telegraph she was 'surprised' that more commentators have not drawn a link between the whistleblowers' warnings and this week's revelations that the Government imposed an unprecedented two-year 'contra mundum' super-injunction to suppress details of the breach.
'I'm surprised that so few people within commentary this week have made this link,' Ms Stewart said. 'It's a tricky one, because the risk element is real, I can see the line that this super-injunction was necessary in order to mitigate damage or risk. But it's also very convenient.'
'This is just my own personal view, I wouldn't be confident calling it either way, but in terms of what motivations were from the government's perspective, there are strong parallels. It could have been very convenient for them to have this in place.'
Ms Stewart said that she has heard from Afghans who made it to the UK that others they know, who are 'for sure' eligible under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme, remain stuck abroad.
'I know Afghans who have not been able to get any kind of response in relation to their applications, they've not even been able to get an acknowledgement in 14 months.'
'I know of numerous Afghans who are for sure Arap-eligible, but have spent the last three years in Islamabad trying to get responses from the British government. They just haven't got a decision yet on their Arap application, and so they're still there.'
When asked why the system was still failing, Ms Stewart blamed indifference at the top of Government.
'The first thing is that nobody cares enough, and so nobody's doing anything about it. The fact that you can't get an answer or even an update on an Arap application in 14 months, and you need to get an MP involved to get one after 14 months. I think there's no resource, there's no political pressure, nobody cares. It's last year's news.'