By Akhtar Makoii
Copyright yahoo
The Taliban has imposed a communications shutdown across Afghanistan, cutting the country off from the world.
The blackout has left more than 40 million people unable to access internet or phone services, and raised fears of a major crackdown by the Islamist regime.
The shutdown began on Monday evening and escalated through Tuesday, when all telephone services failed.
Residents of Afghanistan who spoke to The Telegraph before the blackout said “something strange” was happening with their phones.
Shahram, from western Herat, said: “The internet and mobile networks have been cutting in and out since this morning. We don’t know what else they plan to do to us.”
Messages sent by The Telegraph to more than two dozen Afghans and Taliban officials were not delivered.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan demanded the immediate restoration of services, warning that the shutdown threatened to inflict significant harm on the Afghan people and worsen one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Taliban authorities have not explained the shutdown. Local television and radio stations went offline.
Earlier this month, Taliban officials cited concerns about “immoral activities” and online pornography when cutting fibre-optic internet to several provinces.
Netblocks, an internet monitoring organisation, confirmed a total internet blackout affecting multiple networks nationwide on Tuesday. The group said the incident would severely limit the public’s ability to contact the outside world.
It said on Tuesday: “It has now been 24 hours since Afghanistan imposed a national internet blackout, cutting off residents from the rest of the world. The ongoing measure marks the Taliban’s return to conservative values it espoused a quarter of a century ago limiting basic freedoms.”
This is the first time Afghanistan has faced a complete internet blackout under Taliban rule.
Commercial traffic halted
The shutdown has disrupted critical services across multiple sectors. At least 10 flights scheduled for Kabul’s international airport were cancelled on Tuesday, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking service.
Banking systems stopped functioning, cutting off services on which millions depend for basic transactions and remittances from relatives abroad.
Commercial traffic halted at the Iranian border crossing at Dogharoun, with at least 800 trucks sitting idle in parking areas unable to cross into Afghanistan, terminal manager Ismail Pourabad said.
The shutdown has cut off one of the few remaining avenues for Afghan women and girls to access education and earn income.
The Taliban banned girls from high school in 2021 and later prohibited women from universities. Many women turned to online classes provided by educators abroad and charitable organisations.
“When they closed schools, I started learning and taking classes online to improve, but now since they cut the internet, it makes it very concerning for me,” one young woman told TOLOnews, a local television station broadcasting via satellite on Facebook.
Afghans living abroad reported being unable to contact family members for more than 24 hours.
“These 24 hours were the hardest day of my life,” one person wrote. “I couldn’t even hear my mother and father’s voices.”
Some Afghans travelled to border towns to access telecommunications services from Iran, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, but most remained isolated.
Earlier this month, the Taliban began restricting internet services in several provinces. Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban has imposed increasingly strict restrictions based on its interpretation of Islamic law.
