Taliban internet blackout paralyses Afghanistan, cutting it off from the world

Afghanistan’s internet shutdown has disrupted nearly all digital and phone links with the outside world, grounded planes and prompted the closure of businesses in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

NetBlocks, a watchdog group that monitors internet outages, said the country faced a “total internet blackout”.

Networks were disconnected “in a stepwise manner” on Monday, the group said – two weeks after the Taliban regime first signalled that it was determined to ban fibre-optic internet under its strict interpretation of Islamic religious law.

A Taliban official who is based outside Afghanistan told The Washington Post that the shutdown had been under internal discussion for at least a week and that the final call was made by the regime’s leadership in Kandahar.

But the official, who spoke on