00:00Afghanistan's Taliban governments imposed a nationwide communications shutdown just weeks after introducing fibre optic internet.
00:08The country is currently experiencing a total telecoms blackout.
00:13The Taliban hasn't given a reason for the shutdown, but it said it will last until further notice.
00:19Well, let's speak to our correspondent Caroline Davis, who is monitoring events from Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan.
00:26So firstly, Carrie, what exactly has happened?
00:30Well, we know from various internet monitors that this started to appear to have cutdowns from about Monday afternoon.
00:39Sites like netblocks that monitor internet usage and internet access so that they saw things gradually weaken,
00:46then shut down pretty much entirely in Afghanistan.
00:50Now, this has been building up over the course of this month.
00:53Earlier from about the middle of September, there had been bans and then subsequent cuts
00:57in different provinces around Afghanistan.
01:00But this one in particular is also affecting mobile phone networks as well as the internet too.
01:07And why has this all happened? Do we know?
01:09Well, at the moment, we don't have an official response from the Taliban about exactly why they're doing this.
01:16What we do know, though, is that there was a spokesperson that earlier in this month,
01:19one of the first provinces to have their fibre networks cut off.
01:23And they talked about the fact that this had come from the supreme leader and that this was about, in their words, curbing evils.
01:30Now, in terms of the impact that this is having, of course, in Afghanistan,
01:33it's sometimes difficult for us to know exactly what's going on because of this internet cutdown.
01:37This is obviously happening inside the country, but also an ability to be able to communicate to the outside world as well.
01:44Now, what we do know is that even when some of these cuts were happening in other provinces,
01:47there were already concerns about the impact that this would have on things like businesses, on banking, on aviation,
01:54on people sending money into the country as well, as well as internal communications too.
01:58And we can see things like the flight monitoring site Flightradar has shown that there are flight cancellations.
02:04We've also heard through our BBC team of other people experiencing flight cancellations coming into the country.
02:09But one other big thing, Rajini, to remember is that, of course, in Afghanistan,
02:13girls and women over the age of 12 cannot study at school.
02:17We have spoken to at least one woman, but women who are using the internet to try to get some form of further education beyond that age as well.
02:25And one woman that our team spoke to talked about the fact that since this cutdown has happened,
02:31she feels that that dream of being able to continue to get an education, potentially even an online job, has been stopped altogether too.
02:38So lots of ramifications and a huge impact on this.
02:42What comes next?
02:43The big question, of course, is how long this internet outage might last for,
02:51whether we would see some form of mobile signals return as well.
02:53There's a real, I think, desperation from people outside the country trying to contact loved ones inside the country.
02:58And, of course, a worry too.
02:59A lot of Afghan families that are outside of the country are sending money and remittances in to Afghanistan as well.
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