Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have cut telecommunications nationwide, paralysing services crucial to women’s education, information access, business and entertainment.
The blackout, which the Taliban government says will be in place “until further notice”, also threatens to cripple the country’s already fragile economy.
Taliban officials have justified the measure as a fight against “immorality”.
However, the UN human rights office said the move had “extremely serious” rights implications for people across the country, particularly women and girls.
Here are some of the key areas affected by the shutdown.
Social media inaccessible
At the beginning of 2025, 13.2 million people had access to the internet in Afghanistan — around 30.5 per cent of the population, according to the specialist website DataReportal.
Around 4.05 million people were using social media.
“Taliban policies aim to make the environment hostile to people sinning. That is their rationale,” said Kate Clark, co-director of the research group Afghan Analysts Network.
Digital rights activist Usama Khilji told AFP that conservative regimes saw the internet as a means of liberating women, “which, in their books, is a really bad thing”.
“They see it as people accessing all sorts of different information … which they would rather people not see,” Mr Khilji said.
The internet also enabled people to exchange ideas and form communities that may “violate the Taliban’s very strict version of what they see as lifestyle under Islam should be like,” he added.
“My mom, my sisters and my brothers, they are in Afghanistan. One day, I called them like 20 or 10 times, but I couldn’t reach them,” Mehdi, a 29-year-old Afghan restaurant worker in Pakistan, told AFP.
“I don’t know how they survive and how they live,” he said, explaining that on top of being cut off from basic communication with his family, he was no longer able to send money home to support them.
Online education platforms
Afghanistan is the only country that prohibits girls from studying beyond primary school.
The Taliban authorities also prohibit women from working in most sectors.
Since the Taliban’s takeover, women have been barred from work, leaving the home without a man and secondary education. (Supplied: ICARDA)
However, informal online courses and remote working arrangements have enabled some Afghan girls and women to circumvent these prohibitions.
“The Taliban’s objective is nothing less than the complete silencing of women and girls, no matter the cost,”
Macarena Sáez of Human Rights Watch said.
“When schools closed, the internet became a gateway to online learning for some girls. When women were barred from their jobs, online work and businesses offered a lifeline.
“The regime’s decision to shut down the internet under the pretext of ‘preventing immoral activities’ exposes their true aim: exerting absolute control over women and girls,” she said.
An internet blackout in several provinces in mid-September raised concerns about the impact on media.
“Banning broadband internet is an unprecedented escalation of censorship that will undermine journalists’ work and the public’s right to information,” said Beh Lih Yi, regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Digital payments and banking
While Afghanistan’s economy remains largely agricultural, the blackout could cripple the economy in cities.
“Without phones or the internet, we are blind. All our activities depend on mobile phones,” especially deliveries, Najibullah, a 42-year-old merchant in Kabul, told AFP.
Fibre optics is the most widespread communications technology in Afghanistan.
In 2024, Kabul said fibre optic connection, introduced to the country in the 2000s by previous governments and now covering 9,350 kilometres, was a “priority” for “lifting the country out of poverty”.
“A lot of young people are using the internet to offer their services as freelancers to different clients around the world,” rights activist Usama Khilji told AFP.
“Small businesses connect with customers through the internet, or if they’re offering services like ride hailing, or if they’re offering services like food delivery,” he said.
The banking system in Afghanistan, which previously saw the number of ATMs triple in 2024 to reach 274 machines, could also be impacted.
The outage also saw flights to Kabul airport cancelled on Tuesday, according to AFP journalists.
However, Greg Waldron, of the specialist magazine FlightGlobal, told AFP that aircraft could still operate because they would be able to converse with controllers via radio.
“In a country as underdeveloped as Afghanistan, this [blackout] wouldn’t be as much of an issue as it would be, say, in a more developed location.”
AFP/ABC
