Time moves in a straight line according to Western notions. But on the sun-baked edges of the Near East, time can get seriously warped. In Afghanistan, it turned full circle the other day—and so, in a year not untouched by epochal tragedy, we now have one more to contemplate. The Taliban are back. They took Kabul without firing a shot. This stunning collapse was the story in city after provincial Afghan city—minimal fighting, except in Herat and a few other places—as the Taliban spread like a pandemic, its takeover near-total. Their second coming imparts a tectonic shock to a whole trans-Asian region— those affected by this born-again Kalashnikov caliphate include India, China, Pakistan, Russia, Iran and the Central Asian republics. The old theatre of the Great Game, to be precise, with a new 21st century edition promised now—complete with untold humanitarian tragedies as footnotes.