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Agence France-Presse

Afghanistan faced a second day without internet and mobile phone service on Tuesday, after Taliban authorities cut the fibre optic network.
Taliban authorities began shutting down high-speed internet connections to some provinces earlier in the month to prevent “vice”.
On Monday night, mobile phone signal and internet service gradually weakened until connectivity was less than 1 per cent of ordinary levels, according to internet watchdog NetBlocks.
It is the first time since the Taliban government won its insurgency in 2021 and imposed a strict version of Islamic law that communications have been shut down in the country.
“We are blind without phones and internet,” said 42-year-old shopkeeper Najibullah in Kabul. “All our business relies on mobiles. The deliveries are with mobiles. It’s like a holiday, everyone is at home. The market is totally frozen.”
In the minutes before it happened, a government official warned that fibre optic would be cut, affecting mobile phone services too. “Eight to nine thousand telecommunications pillars” would be shut down, he said, adding that the blackout would last “until further notice”.
“There isn’t any other way or system to communicate … the banking sector, customs, everything across the country will be affected,” said the official who asked not to be named.

Netblocks, a watchdog organisation that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said the blackout “appears consistent with the intentional disconnection of service”.
Private channel Tolo News, which warned viewers of a disruption to its services, said authorities had set a one-week deadline for the shutdown of 3G and 4G internet services for mobile phones, leaving only the older 2G standard active.
Cloudflare Radar, a global internet traffic monitor, said that Kabul, the capital, suffered the sharpest drop in internet connectivity, followed by the western city of Herat and Kandahar in the south.
“Because of the shutdown, I’m totally disconnected from my family in Kabul,” a 40-year-old Afghan living in Oman said via text message, asking not to be named. “I don’t know what’s happening; I’m really worried.”
Telephone services are often routed over the internet, sharing the same fibre lines, especially in countries with limited telecoms infrastructure.
Over the past weeks, internet connections have been extremely slow or intermittent.


On September 16, Balkh provincial spokesman Attaullah Zaid said fibre optic internet was completely banned in the northern province on the Taliban leader’s orders. “This measure was taken to prevent vice, and alternative options will be put in place across the country to meet connectivity needs,” he wrote on social media.
At the time, the same restrictions were imposed in the northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, as well as in Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar and Uruzgan in the south.
Strictures ordered by the Taliban leadership, based in Kandahar, have grown increasingly hardline. This month, authorities stopped women working for the United Nations from entering its offices. Earlier, women were banned from many lines of employment and girls from attending high school.
The Taliban have said they respect women’s rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic law. Women’s rights activist Sanam Kabiri said the Taliban had already closed schools, universities, recreation and sports facilities for women.
“The Taliban are using every tool at their disposal to suppress the people,” said Kabiri, who is based outside Afghanistan, told journalists in a video posting. “What else do these ignorant men of another century want from our oppressed people?”
Women faced with curbs on leaving their homes to work had turned to the internet for an economic lifeline that allowed some to work from home.
Last year, Kabul had touted the 9,350km (5,800 mile) fibre optic network – largely built by former US-backed governments – as a “priority” to bring the country closer to the rest of the world and lift it out of poverty.
Additional reporting by Reuters


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Mobile phone and internet signals are less than 1 per cent of ordinary levels, in line with an ‘intentional disconnection’, watchdog says


Mobile phone and internet signals are less than 1 per cent of ordinary levels, in line with an ‘intentional disconnection’, watchdog says.


Afghanistan faces digital blackout as Taliban cuts internet access to prevent ‘vice’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Mobile phone and internet signals are less than 1 per cent of ordinary levels, in line with an ‘intentional disconnection’, watchdog says

Mobile phone and internet signals are less than 1 per cent of ordinary levels, in line with an ‘intentional disconnection’, watchdog says