Afghans are living under a near-complete communications blackout after Taliban authorities cut internet and mobile phone services for a second day as part of an unprecedented country-wide crackdown.
The former insurgents, who retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, began gradual restrictions on internet access earlier this month. The measures also affect telephone lines, as they are often routed over the internet.
High-speed connections to some provinces were cut in mid-September to “prevent immorality”, on the orders of the supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada.
On Monday night, mobile phone signal and internet service gradually weakened nationwide until connectivity was less than 1% of ordinary levels, according to the internet watchdog NetBlocks. On Tuesday, internet and telephone services continued to be down.
“We are blind without phones and internet,” said Najibullah, a 42-year-old shopkeeper 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.”
While officials have previously blocked access to social media or restricted access to the internet, it was the first time the Taliban government had cut communications across the whole country.
The administration offered no immediate explanation for the blackout, although in recent weeks it has voiced concern about pornography online. Rights groups say the regime is instead trying to disconnect Afghans from the world to suppress the population.
Fereshta Abbasi, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who focuses on Afghanistan, said cutting off access to the internet deprived millions of Afghans of their livelihoods and fundamental rights to education, healthcare and access to information. “The Taliban,” she said, “should drop its excuses about morality and instead focus on how these shutdowns are causing irreversible harm.”
The UN mission to Afghanistan, Unama, warned the disconnection “risks inflicting significant harm on the Afghan people, including by threatening economic stability and exacerbating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises”.
The Taliban regime has enforced strict restrictions on women and freedom of expression, including purging books written by women from the country’s universities, blocking girls from studying and women from working, and even banning chess, which it said encouraged gambling.
In the minutes before Monday’s blackout happened, a government official warned the Agence France-Presse news agency that the fibre-optic network would be cut, also affecting mobile phone services.
“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.
The Taliban leader reportedly ignored warnings from some officials earlier this month about the economic fallout of cutting the internet, and ordered authorities to press ahead with a nationwide ban.
A UN source said: “Operations are severely impacted, falling back to radio communications and limited satellite links.”
On 16 September, the Balkh provincial spokesperson Attaullah Zaid said the ban had come from 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 applied in the northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, as well as in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, Nangarhar in the east and the central province of Uruzgan.
NetBlocks, which monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said the blackout appeared “consistent with the intentional disconnection of service”.
Telephone services are often routed over the internet, sharing the same fibre-optic lines, especially in countries with limited telecoms infrastructure.In 2024, Kabul had touted the 9,350km (5,800-mile) national 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.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
