标签： Asia

More than three years after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, a long-delayed parliamentary inquiry has delivered a scathing rebuke of the UK Ministry of Defence’s management of its flagship Afghan relocation program, concluding that a massive 2023 data breach that exposed the personal information of thousands of at-risk Afghans was entirely preventable.

The House of Commons Defence Committee published its highly anticipated report on Thursday, which outlines a cascade of institutional failures that led to the breach, saying the MoD lacked the core technical and administrative expertise to run the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) — a scheme launched in 2021 to resettle Afghans who had assisted British forces during the 20-year conflict, and who faced grave danger of Taliban reprisal. The report also accuses the department of using excessive secrecy to avoid proper public and parliamentary accountability for the failings.

Details of the breach first emerged internally in August 2023, but an extraordinary super-injunction — a court-ordered gagging order that not only bans reporting on sensitive information but also bars media from acknowledging the injunction itself exists — prevented any public disclosure of the incident for nearly two years, until July 2025. The inquiry found the injunction, which was originally scheduled to expire after four months, remained in place far longer than necessary, inflicting lasting damage to public trust and democratic oversight.

Contrary to early claims that the leak was an isolated error by a single staff member, the committee’s investigation confirmed it was a systemic failure rooted in longstanding institutional shortcomings. The breach occurred when an MoD employee shared an unsecure Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing applicant data with an external trusted third party. The file held personal details for more than 18,500 ARAP applicants — every individual who had applied to the scheme by January 2022. This was not an isolated incident: the committee confirmed the 2023 leak was just one of 19 separate data security incidents reported at the ARAP program between February 2022 and November 2023. Earlier BBC reporting confirmed the breach originated at the headquarters of UK Special Forces (UKSF).

ARAP was launched in April 2021 to offer safe resettlement in the UK to Afghans who faced mortal risk due to their work with British military forces, including interpreters, support staff and members of Afghan special forces who fought alongside UK troops. The UK government closed the scheme to new applications in July 2025.

Committee chair Tan Dhesi condemned the core structural decision to put the MoD in charge of an immigration casework program, saying: “The Ministry of Defence should stick to defence – it should never have been left to run immigration casework schemes.” The report singles out the MoD’s reliance on basic Excel spreadsheets to store highly sensitive personal data as a “continuing cultural failure” and labels the entire ARAP program as “utterly and obviously inadequate”.

Dhesi also criticized the prolonged secrecy around the breach, noting that the two-year super-injunction “imposed serious costs on accountability and trust”. The inquiry further raised questions about the refusal to provide confidential briefings to senior opposition parliamentarians, revealing that then-Defence Secretary Grant Shapps blocked plans to inform then-shadow defence secretary John Healey about the incident. The committee also pushed back against the government’s longstanding policy of declining all comment on special forces matters, arguing that UKSF involvement in the program does not justify hiding administrative failings from Parliament and the public. “Secrecy has been too easily used as a shield against proper accountability in areas far removed from sensitive operations,” Dhesi said.

The inquiry also amplified longstanding concerns about UKSF’s role in reviewing ARAP applications from Afghan special forces, who served alongside British troops on some of the war’s deadliest missions and are at extremely high risk of Taliban retaliation. A 2024 BBC Panorama investigation revealed that UKSF had been given a de facto veto over applications from their former Afghan counterparts, and internal MoD documents obtained by the BBC showed a single UKSF officer rejected 1,585 Afghan special forces resettlement applications in a matter of weeks in 2023 — approving not a single one.

Many of those rejected have been left in hiding in Afghanistan, living in constant fear of targeted attacks by the Taliban. Former Afghan special forces members described their desperate situations to the BBC: one said he had been beaten and interrogated by the Taliban before going on the run, while another said, “I’m living in a very bad situation. I am in hiding and mostly my family can’t live together and we cannot go out and we cannot work. I feel I have been left alone in the midst of hell.”

Following public outcry in 2024, the government ordered a formal review of the rejected applications, and to date 884 of the UKSF-blocked applications have been overturned. The committee’s report notes that the high proportion of overturned decisions demonstrates the severity of the MoD’s failures, and emphasizes that the UK retains a “special responsibility” to the Afghan special forces who were wrongly rejected, many of whom have waited four years for a decision and still remain in danger.

Currently, the incumbent Defence Secretary is facing a high-profile legal challenge at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, brought by former Afghan special forces who are still trapped in Afghanistan and unable to access resettlement. During this week’s opening hearing, the court was told that one applicant’s family has just $200 left to cover all living expenses.

In an official response to the report, an MoD spokesperson acknowledged the gravity of the failure, saying: “This incident should never have happened and we acknowledge the significant impact it has had on many people.” The spokesperson noted that thousands of eligible Afghans have already been resettled safely in the UK, and the department is committed to concluding the Afghan resettlement program by the end of the current Parliament. “We are learning the lessons from this incident and important reforms are already in place, including improved data protection standards, strengthened case-working processes and better programme governance,” the statement said. “We welcome the public and parliamentary scrutiny of our actions, so we can learn more and be held to account, and we’ll continue to work closely with the committee on this issue.”

Scheduled for autumn 2027, the National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is poised to become one of the most consequential and delicate gatherings in the party’s modern history. The event will formalize a fourth five-year term for General Secretary Xi Jinping, while overseeing a generational turnover of top leadership that will elevate a cohort of cadres born in the 1960s — roughly a decade younger than Xi — to key bodies including the 21-25 member Politburo and its 5-7 member Standing Committee.

Since rising to the top leadership in 2012, Xi, who was born in 1953, has steadily consolidated authority through three consecutive party congresses, navigating a political landscape long dominated by officials of his own age cohort or older. By any metric, he has achieved unprecedented success in reshaping the country’s power structure. A younger top leadership, personally aligned to Xi, will further expand his influence across the country, as he has more than 18 months to prepare for the congress with no visible political challengers in sight.

A landmark shift in China’s power dynamics came when Xi completed an unprecedented purge of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) without facing organized pushback from any party institution. Historically, the PLA has been a foundational political force for the CPC — the party itself grew out of revolutionary armed struggle, and the military long acted as a kingmaker in domestic politics. By neutralizing the PLA’s independent political influence, Xi has concentrated a level of personal authority unmatched by any of his predecessors, including Mao Zedong. Mao’s power was built on the PLA’s support and his victory in the Chinese Civil War, while Xi’s authority stems from his success in overcoming rival factions across the party in a sweeping internal political restructuring.

Xi has overseen tangible policy achievements that few Chinese leaders in more than a century can claim. He became the first Chinese leader in nearly 200 years to directly confront the United States in a high-stakes tariff dispute, forcing Washington to make concessions with far-reaching political consequences. He also guided China through the global COVID-19 pandemic while maintaining overall domestic stability.

Under Xi, the core criteria for evaluating governing performance have shifted away from the frameworks established by his predecessors. During Mao’s era, advancement for officials depended entirely on political alignment, ideological purity and adherence to Maoist doctrine. When Deng Xiaoping led China’s reform era, economic growth became the dominant metric for official promotion. Today, the new paradigm blends economic performance with non-negotiable party loyalty and political acumen, a shift that has positioned China as a direct global competitor to the United States.

Despite these shifts, China faces a web of interconnected short- and long-term challenges that will shape the context of the 2027 congress. While long-term issues are unlikely to disrupt the proceedings immediately, short-term risks could alter the political landscape ahead of the gathering. The article outlines four core long-term challenges for China: democratic governance, strained neighborly relations, expanding military capabilities, and mounting public debt.

First, the article frames lack of liberal democratic governance as a persistent vulnerability that undermines China’s global standing. It argues that Chinese state media is widely perceived as a mouthpiece for Xi and the party, limiting China’s soft power and international influence. Domestically, expanding domestic consumption requires overhauling the social welfare system and fiscal framework, steps that would force controversial political change. While growing disillusionment with democratic governance in many Western countries may temporarily deflect criticism of China’s system, mounting internal economic pressures will continue to build, the article contends.

Second, China faces strained relations with nearly all its neighbors and has no formal major power allies, a situation that complicates both commercial and political initiatives. While short-term incentives have kept tensions from escalating dramatically, long-term isolation has bred widespread suspicion and fear of China across the region, creating risks of negative outcomes for Beijing over time.

Third, China’s massive and growing military arsenal has sparked regional security anxieties and fueled an arms race. Unlike the United States, which operates a large military backed by a broad network of allies that see U.S. power as a guarantor of global security, no country near or far can rule out the possibility that China’s military could be used against their interests. China’s military is structured exclusively to advance its own national security interests, unlike the U.S. military’s stated role in upholding global security order.

Fourth, and most complex, is China’s mounting internal debt. Data shows that China has injected credit equivalent to nearly three times its total GDP into the economy to achieve annual growth of less than 5%, a trend that predates Xi’s tenure. This massive investment has delivered tangible results: world-leading infrastructure, unparalleled industrial scale, and roughly 30% of global manufacturing output, with no other country matching China’s full range of industrial capabilities from basic commodities to cutting-edge electric vehicles, robotics and semiconductors. But the economic return on this investment remains modest, with many large-scale projects delivering minimal long-term economic value. The article warns that this could create one of the largest public debt black holes in modern history, with the potential to destabilize China and the global economy. Maintenance of existing infrastructure and industrial capacity already represents a major drain on public finances, and China is currently facing deflationary pressures at a time when the U.S. is contending with inflation.

This debt-fueled growth model has been sustained by high Chinese household savings, incentivized by low bank interest rates, and rapidly growing exports, which hit $1.2 trillion in 2025. But as household incomes stagnate, savings rates are falling, and global markets cannot absorb endless increases in Chinese production. While Xi initially sought to reform underperforming state-owned enterprises early in his tenure, entrenched interests blocked these efforts. Even with no organized opposition to Xi today, the question remains whether he can successfully tackle these debt and reform challenges after 2027.

The article draws a parallel between contemporary China’s geopolitical moment and the Warring States Period of 4th-3rd century BC China, when the collapse of the Zhou Dynasty’s centuries-old political order created a new system of competing sovereign kingdoms. It traces how political thinkers of the era reworked traditional ideas to fit new practical realities: Hui Shi, chief minister of the state of Wei, engineered the 334 BCE recognition of two rival rulers as kings, abandoning the centuries-old claim that only the Zhou Son of Heaven could hold the title of king. This overhaul created a new system of sovereign interstate relations, reshaping politics to fit practical needs rather than traditional norms. The parallel suggests the 2027 CPC Congress may need to articulate a bold new vision for China’s domestic and global role, rather than fitting into existing frameworks, much as Hui Shi did 2,300 years ago.

Turning to short-term risks ahead of the congress, the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East currently benefit China by diverting U.S. and global attention from Beijing. But the situation could shift against China in the next 18 months. If Russia or Iran collapse politically and either become a failed state or realign with the U.S., China could face increased international isolation just ahead of the congress. This dynamic gives Beijing an incentive to push for ceasefires or peace deals to avert a worst-case outcome. China’s support for Russia has already damaged relations with Europe, so resolving at least one of the conflicts could help improve Beijing’s diplomatic position at a time of political uncertainty in the West. If peace talks succeed, China can claim diplomatic credit; if its allies suffer major defeats, China could face significant domestic and international political damage.

Currently, the article notes, the political landscape in the West is deeply unsettled, which creates opportunities for China. In a recent high-profile interview, billionaire Elon Musk echoed far-right arguments that growing Muslim and immigrant populations threaten UK national security, a framing that many analysts argue exacerbates social divisions rather than solving them. The West is currently grappling with deep internal political and social tensions, and many of the proposed policy solutions are untested and risky. While this chaos creates openings for China, the article warns that the West has a long history of navigating turmoil and emerging with renewed strength. It remains possible that the U.S. will adapt and retain its global dominance into the future, even on a new multiethnic liberal foundation, and China must prepare for all possible outcomes. The article concludes that over the next year, China has a strategic interest in working to end the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to shore up its position ahead of the 2027 party congress.

Freshly revealed secret recordings have pulled back the curtain on a coordinated plot between late U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to weaponize unproven sexual misconduct allegations against then-International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, in a bid to block the court from issuing long-awaited arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his senior cabinet over alleged Gaza war crimes.

The explosive disclosure, first reported this week by The New York Times, draws from three years of audio recordings captured by British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who tracked Graham’s political ties to former U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu. The exchanges offer the clearest evidence to date of a sustained, high-level intimidation campaign targeting the ICC over its Palestine investigation — a campaign that Middle East Eye first documented in depth last year.

The plot came to light weeks after Graham’s passing earlier this month, and just days after ICC member states voted to remove Khan from his post as chief prosecutor last Friday at a secret ballot held at U.N. headquarters in New York. Eighty-two of the court’s 125 member states supported the dismissal, overriding a unanimous prior ruling from an independent judicial panel that cleared Khan of all wrongdoing in March. That panel, appointed by the ICC’s governing Assembly of State Parties (ASP) bureau, found the U.N. investigation’s findings failed to prove any misconduct or breach of professional duty on Khan’s part.

The first recorded conversation between Graham and Netanyahu took place on October 29, 2024 — five months after Khan submitted applications for arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas officials, and just weeks before ICC judges were set to announce their decision on the warrants. During the call, Netanyahu flagged the pending sexual allegations against Khan, arguing that the “great cloud” of the claims could be leveraged to delay the court’s ruling on the arrest warrants.

Netanyahu suggested that Graham lead a bipartisan group of U.S. senators in sending an official letter to the ICC, demanding a full review of the entire prosecution process before any warrants were issued, arguing the “stain” of the allegations had to be addressed first. Graham immediately agreed, saying he would work to secure signatures from Democratic senators as well to broaden the letter’s political weight.

In a follow-up call the same day, Graham told Netanyahu the effort had secured backing from two high-profile Democratic senators: Richard Blumenthal and Ben Cardin. “We got them both,” Graham said, asking Netanyahu to share the text he wanted included in the letter. The senator even joked that Netanyahu should “pay me for all this. I should get tons of shekels,” adding that “it would take more than dinner” and asking the prime minister to personally call the two Democrats to thank them for their support, while also tying the cooperation to ongoing efforts to advance Saudi-Israeli normalization. The letter, signed by Graham, Blumenthal, Cardin and other senators, was sent on November 1, 2024. Neither Blumenthal nor Cardin has responded to requests for comment from The New York Times on their involvement.

Despite the pressure campaign, ICC judges moved forward with issuing the arrest warrants on November 21, 2024. Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials subsequently responded by claiming Khan had pushed for the warrants specifically to distract from the misconduct allegations against him — a claim contradicted by a 2023 Middle East Eye investigation that confirmed Khan notified U.S. officials of his plan to apply for the warrants weeks before he was even made aware of the sexual allegations.

This was not the first time Graham leveraged his position to pressure Khan over the ICC’s Palestine investigation. In a May 2024 conference call with Khan, senior ICC officials, and a bipartisan group of senators, Graham openly threatened the prosecutor, saying “if you proceed with the warrants you may as well shoot the hostages yourself” and that the U.S. would impose sanctions on him. He also infamously argued the ICC was “made for Africa and thugs like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, not democracies like Israel,” a remark that was later confirmed by British barrister Andrew Cayley, who led the ICC’s Palestine investigation, who told The Observer Graham was “screaming at us” during the exchange. Graham later defended the pressure campaign in a public statement, claiming the public misconduct allegations against Khan had cast a “moral cloud” over the warrant application, and argued the senators only urged Khan to respect the principle of complementarity and negotiate in good faith with Israeli officials before issuing any rulings against Israel.

The vote to remove Khan last Friday capped an 18-month disciplinary process that Palestinian rights advocates, former ICC judges, and Khan’s own legal team have universally condemned as overtly politicized. After the independent judicial panel cleared Khan, a bloc of largely Western and European ASP bureau members pushed forward with dismissal, ignoring the panel’s findings and relying instead on the original U.N. investigation report. The bureau concluded Khan had engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship with the complainant, arguing the power imbalance between his position as chief prosecutor and the complainant made any such relationship inherently improper. Khan has repeatedly denied all allegations, including that any sexual relationship occurred; the complainant’s original account centered on claims of non-consensual misconduct.

Many independent observers have drawn a direct line between Khan’s removal and the long-running campaign to kill the Netanyahu arrest warrant. “Khan’s removal lines up neatly with the fight to neutralise Netanyahu’s arrest warrant. Coincidence is a luxury intl law can no longer afford,” Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, wrote on X shortly after the vote.

Netanyahu himself openly celebrated the decision, revealing in a social media post that he had spoken with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio about delivering “the coup de grace” to the ICC. He reaffirmed U.S. and Israeli commitment to confronting the court, claiming it “undermines justice, attacks democratic and sovereign nations, and seeks to subordinate their security to the decisions of unaccountable and corrupt officials in The Hague.”

Israeli media, citing anonymous senior government officials, has also confirmed that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar established a dedicated interagency task force to lobby ICC member states directly to vote for Khan’s removal. This campaign fits into a broader pattern of pressure: last year, the U.S. imposed harsh sanctions on Khan, his two deputy prosecutors, and multiple ICC judges over the Palestine investigation. Rubio reiterated Washington’s hardline stance earlier this month, saying the U.S. would “dismantle the ICC – brick by brick, if necessary.”

Tensions across the Middle East have spiked once again, with influential Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stepping forward to issue a urgent public call for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its affiliated armed factions to halt cross-border attacks launched from Iraqi territory.

In a post shared on the social platform X, Sadr warned that these unauthorized operations risk dragging Iraq, a country already grappling with decades of unresolved instability, into a devastating new regional conflict. He stressed that rogue militias operating outside state control must not give neighboring Gulf nations any justification to launch military strikes on Iraqi soil, which he described as a sacred homeland for the Iraqi people.

Sadr also urged all regional factions to avoid falling prey to what he framed as “the schemes of the Zionist-American enemy,” which he accused of inciting inter-Arab and inter-Muslim conflict to advance foreign interests. Echoing his long-standing nationalist stance, he emphasized that the Iraqi public has an overwhelming need for peace, and repeated his call for a region fully free of foreign military bases and external colonial domination.

Sadr’s comments come in immediate response to a recent joint air strike operation carried out by the United States and Saudi Arabia targeting pro-Iranian armed groups inside Iraq. Two unnamed members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) told AFP that at least 10 PMF fighters were killed in the coordinated strikes that hit multiple locations across the country. Following the strikes, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaydi called an emergency high-level security meeting to address the escalating security crisis.

Separately, Iranian state media reported that an anonymous Iranian military source has denied all accusations that Iran was involved in recent projectile attacks launched from third countries against targets inside Saudi Arabia.

A key contextual note for Sadr’s intervention is the cleric’s complex political standing: while he has collaborated closely with Iran in the past, he has long maintained a fiercely independent political streak, prioritizing Iraqi national interests over Iran’s broader regional geopolitical agenda.

Today, Iraq finds itself once again caught in the middle of escalating tensions between the US, Israel and Iran, a standoff that has plunged the entire Gulf region into renewed chaos. Though Iraq shares a common Shia religious identity with Iran, the country has still not fully recovered from the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, leaving behind a decades-long legacy of sectarian division and political fragility. Iraq is home to a wide network of Shia armed factions, most of which maintain close ties to Iran and work within the framework of the Iraqi central government — but not all factions align completely with Tehran’s foreign policy priorities, creating a tense internal political balancing act for Baghdad.