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KABUL: Afghanistan faced a second day without Internet and mobile phone service on Tuesday, after Taliban authorities cut the fiber optic network.
Taliban authorities began shutting down high speed Internet connections to some provinces earlier in the month to prevent “vice.”
On Monday night, mobile phone signal and Internet service gradually weakened until connectivity was less than one percent of ordinary levels, according to Internet watchdog NetBlocks.
It is the first time since the Taliban government won their insurgency in 2021 and imposed a strict version of Islamic law that communications have been shut down in the country.
“We are blind without phones and Internet,” said 42-year-old shopkeeper Najibullah in Kabul.
“All our business relies on mobiles. The deliveries are with mobiles. It’s like a holiday, everyone is at home. The market is totally frozen.”
In the minutes before it happened, a government official warned AFP that fiber optic would be cut, affecting mobile phone services too.
“Eight to nine thousand telecommunications pillars” would be shut down, he said, adding that the blackout would last “until further notice.”
“There isn’t any other way or system to communicate... the banking sector, customs, everything across the country will be affected,” said the official who asked not to be named.
Netblocks, a watchdog organization that monitors cybersecurity and Internet governance, said the blackout “appears consistent with the intentional disconnection of service.”
AFP lost all contact with its bureau in the capital Kabul at around 5:45 p.m. (1315 GMT).
“Because of the shutdown, I’m totally disconnected with my family in Kabul,” a 40-year-old Afghan living in Oman said via text message, asking not to be named.
“I don’t know whats happening, Im really worried.”
Telephone services are often routed over the Internet, sharing the same fiber lines, especially in countries with limited telecoms infrastructure.
Over the past weeks, Internet connections have been extremely slow or intermittent.
On September 16, Balkh provincial spokesman Attaullah Zaid said fiber optic Internet was completely banned in the northern province on the Taliban leader’s orders.
“This measure was taken to prevent vice, and alternative options will be put in place across the country to meet connectivity needs,” he wrote on social media.
At the time, AFP correspondents reported the same restrictions in the northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, as well as in Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar and Uruzgan in the south.
In 2024, Kabul had touted the 9,350-kilometer fiber optic network – largely built by former US-backed governments – as a “priority” to bring the country closer to the rest of the world and lift it out of poverty.

LIVERPOOL, England: Prime Minister Keir Starmer will say Tuesday that Britain faces a stark choice between decency and division, in an attempt to reset his government and stem the rising popularity of the hard-right party Reform UK.
Starmer will tell his center-left Labour Party that Britain faces “a fight for the soul of our country” as he tries to overcome dire approval ratings, a sluggish economy and the challenge posed by divisive Reform leader Nigel Farage.
“Britain stands at a fork in the road. We can choose decency or we can choose division. Renewal or decline,” Starmer will say, according to his office.
Since Labour won a landslide election victory in July 2024, its popularity has plummeted. The party promised economic growth, but has struggled to deliver it. Inflation remains stubbornly high and the economic outlook subdued, frustrating efforts to repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living.
Treasury chief Rachel Reeves said Monday that wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have caused “harsh global headwinds,” and hard economic choices loom when she sets out her budget in November.
Against that gloomy backdrop, Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool – motto: “Renew Britain” – has been dominated by conversations about how to fight Reform. Farage’s party has topped opinion polls for months, ahead of both Labour and the main opposition Conservatives, despite holding just five of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.
Farage’s anti-establishment, anti-immigration message, with its echoes of Trump’s MAGA movement, has homed in on the issue of thousands of migrants in small boats arriving in Britain across the English Channel. More than 30,000 people have made the dangerous crossing from France so far this year despite efforts by authorities in Britain, France and other countries to crack down on people-smuggling gangs.
Farage has vowed to deport everyone arriving by small boat and go even farther, stripping the right to remain in the UK from many legal residents.
Starmer said on the weekend that such a policy would be “racist” and “immoral,” and he has accused Farage of nurturing a “politics of grievance” that turns people against one another. He has expressed alarm that a march organized by anti-immigration campaigner and convicted fraudster Tommy Robinson attracted more than 100,000 people in London this month.
Starmer will warn in his speech that the path to renewal is “long, it’s difficult, it requires decisions that are not cost-free or easy.
“It is a test,” he plans to say. “A fight for the soul of our country, every bit as big as rebuilding Britain after the war, and we must all rise to this challenge.”
The government doesn’t have to call an election until 2029, but already some Labour members are talking about replacing Starmer — especially if the party takes a hammering in local and regional elections in May.
A potential rival is Andy Burnham, the popular Labour mayor of Manchester, who has warned that the party is in “peril” and needs to change direction.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Starmer ally, said the party didn’t need a new leader, but had to “be better at telling the story of what we are trying to do.”
“I hope in Keir’s speech … he will tell a story about the country we are and the country we want to see,” Khan said.
Labour’s problems are not unique. Established parties around the globe are being challenged by anti-establishment populists. John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said voters have become “deeply pessimistic.”
Curtice said Starmer, who has won praise for his sober handling of the Ukraine war and Trump’s White House, is “very good with bad news” but “not very good at optimism.”
“If you are going turn the mood of the country around, you need to do more than change the reality. You also have to influence perception,” Curtice said. “And clearly the question being raised about the current Labour leadership is: Does it have the ability to change the mood?”