{"id":53856,"date":"2025-10-03T18:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/53856\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T18:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:44:11","slug":"afghanistan-a-two-day-internet-blackout-shows-even-the-taliban-cant-turn-back-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/53856\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan: A two-day internet blackout shows even the Taliban can\u2019t turn back time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n For 48 hours, the Taliban appeared to turn back the clock in Afghanistan with a directive to cut off the internet and phone networks<\/a>, disconnecting millions of people from the world outside.\n <\/p>\n

\n Afghans lost the ability to contact anyone within or beyond their borders, sending waves of panic worldwide as families, colleagues and friends realized an entire nation had gone dark.\n <\/p>\n

\n Banking services froze, businesses ground to a halt, flights to and from major airports were canceled, money markets failed, and companies and aid groups lost contact with clients and staff.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe greatest despair was that people feared Afghanistan had once again been plunged into conflict,\u201d reported Hewad Watander, a journalist in the capital Kabul, who uses a pen name to avoid Taliban retribution.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cPeople appeared as if their spirits had left their bodies. Any sense of hope seemed to have completely vanished.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The unprecedented internet blackout came without public warning and was immediately attributed to an order from the Taliban, a repressive Islamist regime that has stifled personal freedoms, particularly those of women and girls, since taking power in 2021.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Just two weeks earlier, Taliban leaders in the north said they had cut the internet to several provinces \u201cto prevent immoral activities.\u201d An \u201calternative system will be established within the country for essential needs,\u201d said Haji Zaid, the spokesman of the governor of northern Balkh province.\n <\/p>\n

\n He said the order came from the Taliban\u2019s Supreme Leader Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, a powerful and reclusive figure who issues edicts from the southern city of Kandahar.\n <\/p>\n

\n No reason was given for the nationwide shutdown that started just after 5 p.m. on Monday. Nor for the sudden reconnection on Wednesday, leaving rumors on social media to fill the void.\n <\/p>\n

\n Afghans are starting to share the sinking grief they\u2019ve felt over the last few days, as they realized there was no way to legally or safely get a message in or out.\n <\/p>\n

\n For many, it has only now become clear how much power the regime has to isolate them in their own homes, particularly women, who are banned from work, school and even some public places.\n <\/p>\n

\n For the Taliban, the episode possibly carries the lesson that attempting to turn back time on a population that\u2019s grown up with the internet is much harder than just flicking a switch.\n <\/p>\n

\n On the US east coast on Monday morning, Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a network monitoring company, received a message from a contact that Afghanistan was about to go dark. Within an hour, he watched as data showed connectivity fall off a cliff.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was just a wholesale disconnection,\u201d he recalled.\n <\/p>\n

\n Internet watchdog NetBlocks reported a \u201ctotal internet blackout\u201d affecting some 43 million people.\n <\/p>\n

\n Afghans who were normally active on social media \u2013 Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok \u2013 fell silent. WhatsApp messages sent from abroad remained unread. Local and international phone calls failed to connect. Taliban leaders said nothing.\n <\/p>\n

\n Members of the Afghan diaspora spent hours, and sleepless nights, trying to call and text relatives, friends and colleagues back home.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Fatima Yousufi, a former player for the Afghanistan national soccer team who fled to Australia, said her family had been trying to reach her aunt, a single mom who relies on money sent from abroad to feed her four children.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe won\u2019t know how she\u2019s doing, how we can help her. Or how she can let us know if she needs money, or if she\u2019s out of food,\u201d said Yousufi on Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n For many girls and women, the internet has become the only way to connect and defy the Taliban\u2019s ban on education beyond sixth grade.\n <\/p>\n

\n Mati Amin, the co-founder of SOLAx, which educates Afghan girls and women via WhatsApp, said they\u2019d seen a \u201cprecipitous decline\u201d in lessons requested from users in Afghanistan.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got users in all 34 provinces,\u201d he said Tuesday. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely clear that there\u2019s not a single province unaffected.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Hamida Aman, founder of Radio Begum, which broadcasts in Afghanistan, said the station and all local radio had been cut off. Satellite service Begum TV, which operates from Paris, was still going to air.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSatellite TV remains the only window to the world now,\u201d she wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n Internet connectivity is one measure of a country\u2019s progress, and earlier this century things were looking up for Afghanistan. Money was flowing in, as the US and its allies attempted to rebuild civil society destroyed by the Taliban\u2019s brutal rule from 1996 to 2001, even as fighting and insecurity still plagued swathes of the nation.\n <\/p>\n

\n Twenty years later, after the Taliban again seized control following the chaotic withdrawal of Western forces in 2021, many wondered how long the internet, and its vast well of vice, would be allowed to remain.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the last few days have shown that Afghanistan needs the internet.\n <\/p>\n

\n The blackout severely disrupted daily life, according to news agency TOLO News, which filed updates on social media. Images broadcast online show queues outside banks as customers tried to withdraw cash. Online payments failed; businesses couldn\u2019t contact suppliers or staff.\n <\/p>\n

\"Afghan<\/p>\n

\n Abdul Hamid, a 37-year-old money exchanger in Kabul, said he wasn\u2019t able to buy or sell currency because he didn\u2019t know the rates. He told CNN he spent four hours in a taxi to get to the main market to check the figure. The next day he didn\u2019t bother opening the shop, and instead sat and contemplated life with no income.\n <\/p>\n

\n Afghans desperate for a signal drove to the border with Pakistan, where it was possible to connect at the Torkham crossing. Afghan SIM cards and mobile networks seemed to be working normally, according to two Pakistani administrative officers posted there.\n <\/p>\n

\n Sabir Shah, an Afghan fruit dealer based in Peshawar, Pakistan, said he\u2019d been unable to reach any suppliers in Afghanistan through phone or WhatsApp.\n <\/p>\n

\n Normally, large quantities of grapes, pomegranates, and apples are sent from Afghanistan to Pakistan, but payment systems had been disrupted, as well as communication.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s become very difficult for me to know how many trucks are coming from there and where I\u2019m supposed to supply them,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Afghan government needs to understand that the internet and telephone are no longer luxuries \u2014 they are necessities of life.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Urgent calls for a reversal to the shutdown came from the United Nations, as well as rights groups Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.\n <\/p>\n

\n Richard Bennett, the UN\u2019s special rapporteur for Afghanistan, warned that disruption \u201cmay sink the fragile economy with massive human rights implications.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Sanctions, drought and the forced return of millions of refugees<\/a> from Iran and Pakistan had worsened food shortages<\/a> in the already impoverished country, from which international aid has been withdrawn in recent years.\n <\/p>\n

\n Still, in the cities, generations of young Afghans \u2013 including Taliban loyalists \u2013 have grown up with the internet. In 2025, the idea that people can walk around without any means to phone anyone seems completely foreign.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s a strange feeling to be without your phone,\u201d said Maimoona Durani, a 33-year-old primary school teacher in Kabul, using an alias for safety reasons.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe phone network was also shut, not just internet. No one has landlines anymore but even those weren\u2019t working. The inability to just pick up the phone and ask someone how they are or let people know that you are okay \u2013 that\u2019s difficult,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

Relief and anger<\/p>\n

\n Samira, a 19-year-old student from Kabul, was in a religious education class on Wednesday when a cleaner entered the room and whispered something to her teacher, who ran out, and then came back minutes later, beaming with her phone.\n <\/p>\n

\n After almost 48 hours of darkness, the internet was back.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSome of the girls who had their phones in their bags began turning them on and they were all so happy,\u201d said Samira, who uses one name for safety reasons.\n <\/p>\n

\n She didn\u2019t have her phone on her, so asked to be excused early.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI walked so fast that I reached home at least 5 minutes faster than other days. On the way I saw almost everyone busy with their phones. Some people were talking on their phones and some others were scrolling,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Fawzia Rahimi, 52, a housewife from Kabul, whose daughters live in the US, said she was sitting near the window with a headache from lack of sleep when suddenly her phone beeped with missed messages.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI picked up my phone and called my daughter on WhatsApp. It was midnight in the US; she was still awake, crying, because she hadn\u2019t heard from us for three days. I can\u2019t tell you how happy I felt when I heard her voice.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Rahimi told CNN that speaking to her family is the \u201conly way to keep my days happy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But beneath the joy and relief of reconnecting with family runs a deep undercurrent of anger that a basic human right of connection could be easily \u2013 and abruptly \u2013 taken away.\n <\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n Before the nationwide shutdown, Nigin, an Afghan artist, educator and activist, lost her internet connection in the north. She raced to buy a router so she could stay in touch with her students \u2013 and filed an essay for a special edition of the online magazine Usawa, warning that worse was to come.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe situation is beyond urgent,\u201d she wrote in the article<\/a>, published last week. \u201cWe are on the edge of being buried alive.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n When the internet dropped out nationwide, her editor Shikha Sawhney Lamba tried to reach her and other contributors. \u201cThey must have panicked,\u201d Lamba told CNN from her home in Hong Kong.\n <\/p>\n

\n Nigin told her later that, yes, she had been alarmed by the cut but had resolved to check on her students.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI began walking, on foot, from house to house, crossing long distances\u2026 Wherever I went, I left a message: We continue,\u201d she said in an Instagram message shared with CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSeeing the pale, frightened faces of my friends and students filled me with rage. I made a promise to myself: Either death or hope.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Mariam Solaimankhil, an exiled former member of Afghanistan\u2019s parliament, said the shutdown caused a lot of mental anguish. People had become agitated. Some had slid into depression.\n <\/p>\n

\n She said it was clear the Taliban was trying to remove outside influences so it could return to its brutal rule of the 1990s.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe more that they cut off the people, and the world, from Afghanistan, the more that they can do,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, if a public flogging happens or someone gets killed, where\u2019s the proof? It\u2019s not going to be there anymore.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Some people inside Afghanistan managed to get messages out via Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink satellite internet network \u2013 and as the days wore on, desperate families had talked about trying to smuggle in more Starlink units, Solaimankhil said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Starlink isn\u2019t officially available inside Afghanistan, according to its website. CNN\u2019s request for comment wasn\u2019t answered.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tom Worthington, from the Australian National University\u2019s School of Computing, said circumventing a shutdown that appeared to have been ordered by the country\u2019s Taliban leader would be risky for ordinary Afghans.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf you\u2019re engaged in a war against the Taliban, (Starlink) would be useful, but in terms of human rights, helping educate the local population, it wouldn\u2019t be, because giving them the unit would place them in so much danger,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Worthington said filtering \u201cimmoral\u201d content from the internet \u2013 if that was the motivation \u2013 would be difficult for any government, given the volume circulating online.\n <\/p>\n

\"Afghan<\/p>\n

\n The popular use of virtual private networks also shows it\u2019s relatively easy to reach beyond a government\u2019s control \u2013 if the internet is working.\n <\/p>\n

\n On Wednesday, when the order came to reconnect, traffic surged beyond normal levels. Madory from Kentik, the internet monitoring company, said reconnecting would have been a manual process completed by fewer than 10 service providers.\n <\/p>\n

\n He has seen this kind of shutdown before, as far back 2011, when the Egyptian government pulled the plug on the internet during the pro-democracy \u201cArab Spring\u201d protests.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat outage kind of ushered in this era that we\u2019re in now where there\u2019s all this government manipulation of communications,\u201d said Madory. \u201cThe problem with that is that it\u2019s very harmful to the government\u2019s operations, the businesses. It really kills the economy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad seemed to suggest on X that not all Taliban ministers were behind the outage.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cEven their own ministers are dumbfounded,\u201d he wrote on Wednesday, before the reconnection. \u201cI am not sure the leadership understood the consequences of its decision before taking it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n If the intent was to frighten the population, the move succeeded.\n <\/p>\n

\n Sahar Fetrat from Human Rights Watch said friends had told her the two days offline felt like living in Afghanistan 30 years ago.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYoung girls have written to me that we should be their voice. (The) internet is the last thing that slightly changes their situation than those of prisoners,\u201d she wrote in a text message to CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey are worried this may happen again.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Haji Zaid\u2019s title. He is the spokesman for the Balkh governor.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 48 hours, the Taliban appeared to turn back the clock in Afghanistan with a directive to cut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[85,123,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-53856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}