From the BBC,
Afghanistan telecom blackout as Taliban shuts off internet.
No, really.
The Taliban in Afghanistan have imposed a nationwide shut down of telecommunications, weeks after they began severing fibre-optic internet connections to prevent what they call immorality.
The country is currently experiencing a total connectivity blackout, internet watchdog, Netblocks reports.
That report was from yesterday, apparently the Taliban is now claiming that they turned the internet back on. CBS News reports,
Internet services in Afghanistan came back online Wednesday, restoring vital communication and web connectivity for residents two days after the Taliban government blocked web access nationally without any explanation.
But those two days produced a lot of chaos. Commercial air travel and banking activity all but ceased. I’m no expert on the subject, but from what I can recall, the Taliban has been at war with modernity since the group’s founding more than 30 years ago.
CBS reports,
The Taliban has yet to provide any official explanation for the internet shutdown that lasted over 48 hours, nearly paralyzing the country as digital communications were disabled, flights halted as air traffic control systems went offline and banking services were left inaccessible.
The Taliban, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, apparently has its reasons,
The shutdown came weeks after the Taliban government started shutting down high-speed internet access in some provinces, saying it was taking the measure “to prevent immoral activities” on the orders of the group’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
No doubt that the internet hosts more than its share of immorality. But one wonders whether the impacts of the shutdown surprised the government.
In Arthur C. Clarke’s formulation, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Did the Taliban believe that rebooting the internet would purge the evil from the system?
Commentator Richard Fernandez posed this very question earlier this week,
We only cut the cables! Why did the Great Satan stop other things too? When everything is magic all misfortune is understood as evil sorcery.
Fernandez goes on to muse,
Maybe only the Taliban will be dumb enough to survive. They’re wondering why the cellphone and Internet stopped when they cut the cables. That stupidity may save them.
Time will tell.
