Taliban Complains About Poor Formatting in MoD Excel Leak
“At least send it as a CSV,” says commander.
KABUL: Senior Taliban officials have criticised the UK Ministry of Defence after receiving a leaked spreadsheet containing the personal details of thousands of Afghans who assisted British forces.
“Frankly, it’s insulting,” said Mullah Farooq bin Spreadsheetullah, who leads the Taliban’s Civilian Reprisals and Data Hygiene Department.
“There were merged cells, inconsistent date formats, and the entire thing was password protected with ‘password123’. This is not how you run an empire.”
The UK government has admitted the data was accidentally sent to “unintended recipients” but insists the impact was minimal, citing the fact that most of the people on the list had already given up hope in 2021.
A follow-up email was reportedly sent urging the recipients to delete the file, which analysts say may have created “some confusion, but also a paper trail.”
The Taliban, for their part, have returned the compliment by launching their own relocation scheme for Western intelligence assets — known internally as Operation LinkedOut.
Meanwhile, Downing Street has announced a new initiative to prevent future leaks, involving:
switching to Google Docs,
disabling “Reply All,” and
hiring someone under 80 to manage IT security.
When pressed on accountability, a government spokesperson said:
“This is a complex issue involving legacy systems, human error, and a deeply held British tradition of hoping no one notices.”