When the Signal Went Dark: Life and Loss in an Internet-Blackened Afghanistan
There is a particular hush that falls over a city when its lifelines are torn out. In Kabul on a cool evening, the marketplaces—usually a kaleidoscope of voices, beeping phones, and the scent of simmering kebabs—felt oddly abandoned. Vendors stood beneath tarps, their hands empty between them and the glowing screens that usually counted their sales. Delivery drivers waited in a line with no orders. For many, the silence was more than an inconvenience: it was a rupture, a sudden severing of ties to work, family, and the wider world.
“We are blind without the phones,” said Najib, a shopkeeper on Chicken Street, his voice flat with disbelief. “Everything moves on those little screens—orders, payments, messages. Overnight, our market turned into a ghost town.” His eyes tracked the empty pavement as if expecting a notification to bring life back.
What Happened
On the order of Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, authorities initiated a sweeping shutdown of high-speed internet and mobile services across the country. Telecom watchdogs monitoring connectivity registered a near-complete blackout: less than one percent of normal traffic remained. For the first time since the Taliban regained control in 2021, the digital arteries that had been painstakingly extended across Afghanistan were effectively clamped.
The move—officially described by provincial authorities as a measure to curb “vice”—was executed with the precision of a planned operation. Government technicians took fiber-optic hubs and transmission pillars offline, and mobile networks that route calls and banking traffic through those same lines went silent. Journalists and diplomats reported that airports could not process flights, with services at Kabul airport halted as staff could not access essential systems.
Immediate Consequences
The blackout’s impact was swift and granular, touching lives in ways statistics can only partly capture.
- Economic paralysis: Small businesses that rely on mobile payments and messaging apps saw commerce freeze.
- Banking disruptions: With core systems offline, transfers and remittances—often the only financial lifeline for families—stalled.
- Humanitarian interruptions: Aid coordination and reporting by international agencies, as well as local NGOs, were forced to fallback on radios and intermittent satellite links.
- Information blackout: Access to news and free expression were sharply curtailed, compounding an already fragile media environment.
“We rely on the internet to coordinate clinics, to confirm medicine stocks, to tell families where to come for help,” said Alia, a midwife working for a Kabul-based NGO. “When the signal disappears, the risk is not only economic—it’s life-threatening.”
A ripple that reaches abroad
Afghan communities outside the country felt the cut too. Remittances from the diaspora—money that flows through mobile-led payment systems and bank transfers—are a lifeline for many households. Without connectivity, families watching the shadows of their savings saw months of careful planning evaporate into uncertainty.
Authorities’ Justifications and International Alarm
Taliban spokespeople framed the shutdown as a moral safeguard. “This measure was taken to prevent vice,” wrote a provincial spokesman on social media in mid-September, arguing that alternative means of connectivity would be established. But for many Afghans, the explanation provided little comfort when livelihoods hang in the balance.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) issued a stark call for the restoration of services, warning that an almost complete disconnect from the global information grid risks aggravating an already acute humanitarian crisis and undermining economic stability.
“The blackout is not merely an inconvenience,” said a UN official speaking on the record. “It threatens food security, medical logistics, and the most basic rights to information and expression. We urge immediate restoration.”
Experts Warn of a Growing Trend
Observers of digital rights point out that this is part of a broader pattern where governments use connectivity restrictions as tools of control. NetBlocks, an internet observatory that tracks outages and censorship, described the outage as consistent with an intentional disconnection of services. In their data, the sudden drop to below one percent connectivity was unmistakable.
“Internet shutdowns have become a favored lever for authorities who want to manage unrest or impose social controls,” said Dr. Priya Nair, a researcher on digital governance. “But in countries with fragile economies, cutting the internet is akin to turning off electricity in a hospital. The collateral damage is enormous.”
Local Voices: Resilience Amid Frustration
In neighborhoods across Kabul and beyond, people found improvised ways to cope. Some congregated at a single cafe where a patched satellite link provided a sliver of connection. Others passed information by word of mouth or resorted to handwritten notices. A baker in Herat told me how he began keeping a ledger the old-fashioned way—pencil and paper—to track orders until services returned.
“We’re resourceful; that’s what keeps us going,” said Laila, who runs a makeshift IT class for girls. “But resourcefulness isn’t a replacement for basic rights. Girls are being denied education when the internet, which allowed many to study safely from home, disappears.”
Why This Matters Globally
Think for a moment about how integrated our lives have become with digital systems. A shutdown in Kabul is not isolated; it reverberates through regional markets, humanitarian networks, and global human rights discourse. The situation forces us to ask uncomfortable questions: Who gets to control the flow of information? What happens when critical infrastructure is leveraged to enforce moral or political ends? How do societies rebuild trust when the same technologies that facilitated connection are turned into instruments of exclusion?
For many Afghans, the answer to these questions centers on survival. For the rest of the world, the closure is a reminder that digital liberties are fragile—and that their loss can quickly cascade into human suffering.
Looking Ahead
Restoration of services would not instantly erase the damage. Businesses will have to chase payments, schools will need to catch up, and trust—once broken—cannot be rebuilt overnight. Yet the return of connectivity would be the first sign of regrowth: targeted aid could again reach clinics; remittances could resume; journalists could report with more depth and reach a broader audience.
“We need the phones back not because we want to tweet or scroll,” Najib said as he folded his stall tarpaulin. “We need them because they are how we live.” His hands were steady, but his words carried the exhaustion of too many nights spent waiting for a message that never arrived.
Questions to carry with you
As you read this, consider how the internet shapes not just economies but dignity. If a nation can be unplugged at will, what protections should be in place for citizens who depend on connectivity for their very survival? And what responsibility does the international community bear when digital blackouts risk turning crises into catastrophes?
The people of Afghanistan are living answers to those questions right now. Their stories—of quiet invention, persistent hope, and sudden loss—are worth listening to. They are, after all, not just headlines. They are neighbors, parents, shopkeepers, students. They are asking, with a simple urgency: can someone turn the lights back on?
