21 August 2021|The Interregnum|Mohamed Elmaazi
What if it was London which had ‘fallen’ to a UK insurgency following the withdrawal of Taliban forces that had occupied the country for 20 years? The following thought experiment, conceived of by a former UK Army intelligence analyst who served in Afghanistan, offers a somewhat satirical counter-factual example which may assist those seeking to understand the current situation amid the flurry of shock and outrage expressed in much of the Western media.
[Editor’s Note: The following is a thought experiment designed to challenge certain media and political narratives surrounding the ‘fall’ of Kabul to the Taliban 15 August 2021, by a former UK army intelligence analyst who served two tours in Afghanistan. It is constructed in a slightly tongue-in-cheek manner and should not be interpreted as engaging in moral relativism or positing a moral equivalence between the Taliban and Western powers.]
Featured image via trailer of London Has Fallen
If the roles were reversed….
After 20 years of Taliban occupation of the UK, the fundamentalist Islamic world was shocked at the speed by which secular liberal democratic forces sized control of Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and finally the capital, London and re-instated Westminster and the House of Windsor.
Furthermore, commentators were shocked at how the corrupt military and armed forces trained by the Taliban crumbled rapidly in the face of advances by British Army units who have waged an insurgency across the UK countryside for the last two decades funded by the EU and US.
Furthermore, Taliban intelligence specialists were shocked at how British government forces in exile were welcomed by large swathes of the indigenous population welcoming a return of secular, liberal democratic values. Said one distraught member of the Quetta Shura “it is a tragedy that western women will now be exposed to the male gaze and forced to wear mini skirts, whilst those Brits who embraced a fundamentalist medieval interpretation of Islam will no longer be able to keep multiple wives and now be exposed to the corrupting influences of capitalism, free market economics and godless secularism”.
The Taliban is no longer able to offer free passage to British collaborators out of Heathrow. Islamic scholars now believe they never really understood the complex regional and cultural aspects of various English counties nor the subtleties of the British class structure or its multi-cultural values of diversity and inclusivity and are concerned that the re-constructed British state has already been recognised by the EU and US, both of whom are poised to make massive investment in rebuilding UK infrastructure and embark on a massive re- building programne. Most Taliban are seriously concerned at the future of the hundreds of madrassas that have been built over the last 20 years and the fate of the fundamentalist students that attend them.
The new UK government has promised to maintain the status quo and not roll back the principles of the Islamic Emirate of Britain, but Taliban commentators do not believe these guarantees and expect that very shortly the UK will revert to a wholly secular state, undoing two decades of progress.