The Taliban government in Afghanistan has imposed a national closure of telecommunications, weeks after starting to break the fiber optic internet connections.
The country is currently experiencing a “total internet power outage”, reports Internet Watchdog Netblocks.
International press agencies say they have lost contact with the Kabul capital offices. Mobile Internet and satellite television have also been seriously disrupted through Afghanistan.
The Taliban has not yet given an official reason for the closure. Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
A Taliban official said that telecommunications are closed until further notice.
Tolo News, a private Afghan information channel, told people to follow her social media pages for updates, because she expected disturbances in her television and radio networks.
Kabul airport flights were also disrupted, local media reported.
According to the Flightradar24 flight tracking service, at least eight flights planned by or arriving at Kabul International Airport were canceled on Tuesday.
Diplomatic officials told BBC that Internet cuts could affect banking and electronic commerce systems nationally.
Several people in Kabul told the BBC that their optical fiber internet had stopped working towards the end of the working day, around 5:00 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. GMT)
For this reason, it is understood that many people will not notice the impact before Tuesday morning, when banking services and other companies 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.
Several residents, who asked for anonymity, previously told the BBC that their businesses and lives had been seriously affected by internet cuts.
A man who works like a money changer in Takhar province told the BBC that his daughters’ online English courses had been disrupted. “Their last opportunity to study and stay engaged has now disappeared,” he said.
Another woman previously declared to the BBC that she could not take online lessons since her internet at home had been cut. “I had hoped to finish my studies and find an online job, but this dream was also destroyed,” she said. “Without internet access, I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Hamid Haidari, former editor -in -chief of Afghan News Channel 1TV, said on Monday that “loneliness had wrapped the whole country” after closing.
“Afghanistan has now officially taken first place in competition with North Korea during [internet] Disconnect, “he said on X.
“The Afghanistan online online speechless silence of Afghanistan is deafening,” wrote Mariam Solaimankhil, a former member of the Afghan Parliament based in the United States.
The Taliban declared earlier than another route for Internet access would be created, without giving details.
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.
A university student told the BBC that she had “no choice but online studies” after the ban on her midwifery. “When I heard that the Internet had been cut, the world seemed dark to me,” she said.
The Taliban made control of Afghanistan in 2021 in a lightning advance, weeks after the withdrawal of the United States and other international forces.
