Afghanistan internet and mobile services restored after 2-day outage

Internet and mobile services across Afghanistan were cut late on Monday and restored on Wednesday afternoon, plunging the country into near-total digital darkness for roughly two days and disrupting banking, aviation and humanitarian operations, residents and monitoring groups said. The shutdown affected fibre optic links and mobile data nationwide, leaving airports idle, banks unable to process transactions and millions of people unable to contact relatives or access online services.

Monitoring group NetBlocks reported that connectivity collapsed to well below normal levels, with traffic falling close to one percent of ordinary volumes. NetBlocks said the pattern of outages appeared consistent with an intentional disconnection of service. Telecommunications companies and users in Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and other provinces reported a phased loss of high-speed connections, followed by telephone services that rely on the same fibre infrastructure.

Taliban authorities had earlier restricted fibre optic links in several provinces, citing a decree from the movement's supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, that sought to block what officials described as immoral content. Provincial...