Get ready to cope” was the message from an aid worker to women returning to Taliban rule in Afghanistan after their expulsion from Iran.

Darkly comic videos made by a tour agency and shared by Taliban-linked accounts on social media are encouraging people to travel to Afghanistan. View on euronews

The previous government learned of the breach in August 2023, when some of the details appeared on Facebook. A new resettlement scheme for those on the leaked list was set up nine months later, and has seen 4,500 Afghans arrive in the UK so far.

The news this afternoon that the previous government set up a secret relocation scheme, the Afghan Response Route (ARR), involving 20,000 people at a cost in the order of £2bn after a 2023 data breach in the Ministry of Defence has caused a political sensation. The data leak put the lives of thousands of Afghans at risk.

The Defence Secretary has apologised for the leak and said he was "confident" there was a reduced risk of future data breaches.

The rise of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISIS-K, or ISKP) militant and terrorist group in Afghanistan and the growing security threats posed to Central Asia pushed Moscow toward a pragmatic re-engagement with the Taliban.

A former Afghan interpreter told LBC that the Taliban may have used the major Ministry of Defence (MoD) data breach to target Britain's allies.

The U.N. General Assembly has adopted a resolution over U.S. objections calling on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to reverse their worsening oppression of women and girls and eliminate all terrorist organizations.

Two men suspected of links to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were arrested by Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism agencies. They are believed to be involved in separate terror operations this month, raising concerns in India about the Pakistan-based group’s growing influence in Bangladesh.

Keir Starmer has said former ministers in the previous Conservative government have "serious questions to answer" over the data leak that exposed the details of thousands of Afghans who supported British forces.

Russia has become the first country to formally recognize the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan since it seized power in 2021, after Moscow removed the group from its list of outlawed organizations.