- All flights cancelled at Kabul airport on Tuesday.
- Online businesses and banking systems frozen.
- UN operations fall back to radio communications.
KABUL: The United Nations called on Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities Monday to immediately restore internet and telecommunications in the country, 24 hours after a nationwide blackout was imposed.
The government began shutting down high-speed internet connections to some provinces earlier this month to prevent “vice”, on the orders of its leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Mobile phone signal and internet service were weakened on Monday night until connectivity was less than 1% of ordinary levels.
Afghans are unable to contact each other, online businesses and the banking systems have frozen, and the diaspora abroad cannot send crucial remittances to their families.
All flights were cancelled at Kabul airport on Tuesday, AFP journalists saw.
“The cut in access has left Afghanistan almost completely cut off from the outside world, and risks inflicting significant harm on the Afghan people, including by threatening economic stability and exacerbating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises,” the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.
“The current blackout also constitutes a further restriction on access to information and freedom of expression in Afghanistan,” it added.
It is the first time since the Taliban government won its insurgency in 2021 that communications have been shut down in the country.
“We are blind without phones and the 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.”
The telecommunications ministry refused to let journalists enter the building in Kabul on Tuesday.
Minutes before the shutdown on Monday evening, a government official warned AFP that the fibre optic network would be cut, and affect 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.
Radio communications
Diplomatic sources told AFP on Tuesday that mobile networks were mostly shut down.
A UN source, meanwhile, said “operations are severely impacted, falling back to radio communications and limited satellite links”.
Telephone services are often routed over the internet, sharing the same fibre optic 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 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, AFP correspondents reported the same restrictions in the northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, as well as in Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar, and Uruzgan in the south.
The Taliban leader reportedly ignored warnings from some officials this month about the economic fallout of cutting the internet and ordered authorities to press ahead with a nationwide ban.
Netblocks, a watchdog organisation that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said the blackout “appears consistent with the intentional disconnection of service”.
On Tuesday, it said connectivity had flatlined below 1%, with no restoration of service observed.
In 2024, Kabul had touted the 9,350-kilometre (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.
