They started by closing doors to bright futures and ended up with their fingers at their throats. The latest Taliban meddling with the Afghan women’s right to choose whether they wish to don the burqa has finally managed to do what the supersonic technology could still dream about: turning back the hands of time. Crushed under the weight of mandatory dress code, treated as social pariahs (hello, travelling and access to healthcare restrictions) and forbidden to even dare dream of living out of this perpetual gloom and doom by shutting education and employment opportunities, the women of Afghanistan have landed back where their suffering had started–the first Taliban stint. Further demeaning have been the details of the haphazard religious rules wherein it would not be the “delinquent” women whose heads would be put on pikes but those of their male guardians. Just one swish of the penstroke and over 48 per cent of a massive country’s population has been reduced to minors; infantilised beings who need a constant Damoclean sword dangling above their heads. Round and round, we go in circles. Putting the humanitarian obligations aside and looking over all lofty promises made to the international community in support of the time-tested maxim that human nature never changes, the Taliban are in quite a prickly predicament as far as foreign funding is concerned. With climatic changes sounding the death knell of agricultural produce, a nonexistent economic system and American sleeves rolled up to play Robin Hood on the backs of the frozen Afghan central bank funds, there was a lot the Taliban could focus on to deliver an improved image. Restoring the public confidence in their ability to steer the ship out of troubled waters; coming up with plans to diversify the finances to finally bid farewell to its striking aid dependency or mending bridges with estranged allies, both near and far: the list of options can be as long as the will to bring change but pushing millions into shadows of obscurity, repression and loss of self-reliance would not, even in a million years, become a recipe for success. Muslim clerics pouring support to the education movement (including those sympathetic to the Taliban cause) are crystal-clear signs of a new day dawning. The religious bedrock has begun to walk away from the “detrimental” (borderline tyrannical) approach to statehood and henceforth, the ball is now in the Taliban’s court. *