Data is at the heart of the Afghan refugee scandal. It was a leaked dataset, the names of thousands applying for refuge from the Taliban, that first precipitated the debacle. And it was hidden data — a superjunction that kept even Parliament in the dark — that makes this week’s revelations so embarrassing to the Westminster establishment. But perhaps most damaging of all is the data we still don’t have about those Afghans now living in Britain, making even the most basic vetting procedures near-impossible.
Speaking about the refugees the Government spirited into the UK, Defence Secretary John Healey said that anyone who has come into this country “is checked carefully” in advance, telling Times Radio that known criminals would naturally be precluded from coming. I’m sure Healey speaks in good faith, having been assured by Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Home Office officials that the correct protocols were followed.
But there are reasons to worry. Robert Clark, a former soldier who worked on the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) suggests that many of this latest cohort weren’t properly vetted. They are here purely because their data was leaked. The suggestion, then, is that there haven’t been adequate checks to establish whether individuals had been radicalised or had extremist connections. Even the individual who threatened to leak the dataset to the Taliban has apparently been allowed into the UK, along with his family. I would suggest he has already provided ample evidence of his character.
Not that vetting is an exact science. As a counterterrorism officer, I held “DV”, or developed vetting status, for over 20 years. This clearance allows someone to routinely handle top secret material unsupervised in order to assess intelligence. I worked in anticorruption, the department responsible for investigating suspect officers and recruits. I know, in short, how the process works, and it’s a far from watertight process — and that’s before you factor in the data abyss that is Afghanistan.
Vetting foreign nationals allows authorities to assess risk. But without access to basic records from a newcomer’s place of origin, Britain is unable to perform even the most basic due diligence. Especially given this country’s rising community tensions, you don’t have to be especially cynical to suggest this might explain Whitehall’s frantic attempts to keep this operation secret.
At the outset, it’s worth emphasising that the British authorities aren’t completely blind when it comes to the Afghan arrivals. Operation Herrick, the UK military deployment to the country, operated for 12 years. British intelligence officers, from the military and Secret Intelligence Service, ran a range of local agents and informants in-country. At the same time, the Army has a proven, professional intelligence capability — UK police forces closely followed their intelligence corps model when developing their own information management models. And, to be fair, Afghans arriving on other refugee schemes do seem to have been checked out.
But the question I would ask here is how much their intelligence-gathering envisaged a situation like “Operation Rubific”. Presumably, while in Afghanistan, army sources would have been pointed towards operations against insurgents, not harvesting routine data of the sort often invaluable to vetting officers — the sort which would include employment and family histories, as well as financial records. Yes, there might be tangential or collateral intelligence, whether criminal records or local gossip. But there will also be gaps.
Then there’s the problem of local recordkeeping. Even if we were able to access pre-Taliban police records, I doubt that would yield a great deal of useful information. Add to this cultural differences, whereby matters considered noteworthy here would never be recorded in Afghanistan. This is a country with an unenlightened attitude to women and safeguarding.
“Then there’s the problem of local recordkeeping.”
If, meanwhile, relocated Afghans have ever been to the EU, or have family there who they might seek to bring here, we’ll also need to access foreign records. That poses yet another information headache for hard-pressed British officers, especially when European standards aren’t always great. I remember dealing with the Polish police force and receiving an impressive amount of data, including criminal records and case files, allowing me to make an informed assessment of risk to an individual. On the other hand, asking the same questions of a police force in the Low Countries or Romania only got me the basics.
There’s a broader problem here too. Basic police checks run the names of individuals through a range of systems. As someone’s vetting level increases — in other words, the risk their role or presence poses — inquiries will include character references and financial disclosures. “Developed Vetting”, the highest level, involves officers holding intrusive one-to-one interviews with candidates. The point here is that all these procedures rely on the quality of data available. And, again, that poses real challenges for arrivals from somewhere like Afghanistan, especially when Operation Herrick was wound down over a decade ago, leaving a significant information gap.
The data gap, then, is full of risks — and that’s before we consider the broader political dimension. As former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace assures us, his motives for hushing up Operation Rubific were primarily for those of operational security. But concerns around the public reaction — including serious disorder — would surely have featured. As one Cabinet Office official noted, “15 out of the 20 primary disorder hotspots” during last summer’s riots were in the 20% of local authorities hosting the highest numbers of resettled Afghans.
Might this explain why the superinjunction lasted so long? Our politicians know our multicultural model has the potential to turn into a powder keg. They would surely have been keen to prevent Operation Rubific from lighting another fuse.
