Afghanistan struck by internet blackout while the Taliban cut fiber optic cables

The Taliban in Afghanistan imposed a national closure of telecommunications, weeks after starting to break the fiber optic internet connections to prevent what they call immorality.

The country is currently experiencing total connectivity, an internet guard dog, reports Netblocks.

The AFP international news agency said it had lost contact with its office in the capital Kabul, including the mobile telephone service. Mobile Internet and satellite television have also been seriously disrupted through Afghanistan.

Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.

Kabul airport flights were also disrupted, according to reports.

Several people in Kabul told the BBC that their optical fiber internet had stopped working towards the end of the working day, around 17:00 local time (12:30 GMT)

For this reason, it is understood that many people will not notice the impact before Tuesday morning, when services such as banking services and border services should resume.

Optical fiber cables transfer very fast data and is used for a large part of the world’s internet.

In an article on the Mastodon.social social network, Netblocks said:

“Afghanistan is now in the middle of a total internet engineering failure while the Taliban authorities move to implement morality measures, with several networks disconnected throughout the morning in a step by step; telephone services are currently also affected”.

For weeks, Internet users in several Afghan provinces complain about either slow internet access or without connectivity.

The Taliban declared earlier than another route for Internet access would be created, without giving details.

Business managers at the time warned that if the internet ban continued their activities would be seriously affected.

The power failure is the last in a series of restrictions that the Taliban have applied since their return to power.

Earlier this month, they suppressed books written by women from the country’s university education system as part of a new ban which also prohibited the teaching of human rights and sexual harassment.

Women and girls have also been particularly affected: they are prohibited from access to education beyond the age of 12, with one of their last routes for additional training at the end of 2024, when the midwife lessons were quietly closed.

The Taliban, a hard Islamist group, made control of Afghanistan in 2021 in a lightning lead which only lasted 10 days.