Afghanistan was hit by an internet blackout on Monday, with connectivity falling to near-total disruption as the Taliban enforced a crackdown that they say is aimed at preventing immorality.
The AP report, citing internet advocacy group Netblocks, says live metrics showed connectivity collapsing to 14% of ordinary levels. That is not a minor slowdown or a localized outage. It points to a national communications failure serious enough to cut off much of the country from the outside world.
The blackout follows earlier restrictions this month, when several provinces lost their fiber-optic connections after Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a decree banning the service to prevent immorality. Local media, including TOLO News, reported that fiber-optic internet could be cut across the country. The AP could not contact its Kabul bureau or journalists in eastern and southern provinces, which gives a practical sense of how severe the disruption was.
For ordinary Afghans, the impact goes far beyond inconvenience. Internet access now underpins banking, education, logistics, emergency coordination and family communication. A sudden nationwide disruption can isolate communities, interrupt media coverage and make it harder for humanitarian groups or businesses to function normally.
The Taliban government did not publicly confirm the blackout in the supplied AP report, but that silence does not reduce the significance of the event. If anything, it underscores how dependent the country’s external communications have become on systems the authorities can interrupt without much warning.
The report suggests the shutdown was tied to a moral campaign rather than a technical accident. That matters because it makes the disruption a policy choice, not just an infrastructure failure. Such choices are especially consequential in Afghanistan, where the state already exercises strong control over public life and information.
The immediate consequences are hard to overstate. AP says the blackout is the first of its kind since the Taliban seized power in August 2021. That puts the event in a category of its own, even for a country that has already seen repeated restrictions on media and digital access.
The episode also shows the Taliban relying on tools of modern control while speaking in the language of religious regulation. The result is a collision between a highly connected society and a government willing to sever that connectivity when it believes moral enforcement requires it.
For now, the evidence packet does not say how long the blackout will last or whether any regions are exempt. What it does show is that Afghanistan has entered a new phase of communications restriction, one measured not in isolated site blocks but in a collapse of national access.
