Afghanistan yesterday faced a second day without Internet and mobile phone service, after Taliban authorities cut the fiber-optic network.
Taliban authorities began shutting down high-speed Internet connections to some provinces last month to prevent “vice.”
On Monday night, the mobile phone signal and Internet service gradually weakened until connectivity was less than 1 percent of ordinary levels, according to Internet watchdog NetBlocks.
Photo: AFP
It is the first time since the Taliban government won the insurgency in 2021 and imposed a strict version of Islamic law that communications have been shut down in the nation.
“We are blind without phones and Internet,” 42-year-old shopkeeper Najibullah said 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 said that the fiber-optic network 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 that monitors cybersecurity and Internet governance, said that the blackout in Afghanistan “appears consistent with the intentional disconnection of service.”
“Because of the shutdown, I’m totally disconnected with 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 whats happening, I’m really worried.”
Telephone services are often routed over the Internet, sharing the same fiber-optic network, especially in nations with limited telecoms infrastructure. Over the past weeks, Internet connections have been extremely slow or intermittent.
On Sept. 16, Balkh provincial spokesman Attaullah Zaid said the 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,” Zaid wrote on social media.
Kabul last year had touted the 9,350km fiber-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.
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