On Monday evening, internet and phone lines went down, plunging Afghanistan into digital darkness. Millions of women and girls under Taliban rule were cut off from the world.
Like many Afghans abroad, I struggled for hours to reach family and colleagues. I messaged a Signal group of over twenty Afghan women journalists who’d completed our online training, asking if anyone was online. There were no responses.
One journalist in Herat was investigating a case of a 14-year-old girl at risk of forced marriage. A Taliban soldier, after getting her father’s number, had expressed his desire to marry the girl. When the father refused, he was attacked. The reporter had sent me pictures and recordings, promising a draft by Monday night. After the blackout, I heard nothing for two days.
On Wednesday, I received her voice message. “My mental health was very bad,” she said. “My situation was so bad that I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t been connected to the internet today.”
By Wednesday afternoon, internet access was restored across Afghanistan, but concerns remain. The Taliban haven’t commented on the outage. However, on Sept. 15, a Taliban governor spokesperson in Balkh province stated that internet access was blocked “for the prevention of vices,” and other regions have followed suit. The blackout aligns with the Taliban’s pattern of systematically removing women from public life.
Many on Afghan social media celebrated the return of connectivity, while others lamented the inability to contact loved ones. On Tuesday, I searched for a prepaid long-distance card in Edmonton, Alberta, as a backup. A young cashier had never heard of such a thing. I realized I hadn’t bought one since 2019, when interviewing sources in areas of central Afghanistan without internet. Since then, nearly everyone had internet access.
Like the rest of the world, Afghanistan relies on connectivity for essential services. However, my primary concern after the blackout was its impact on Afghan women and girls.
After the Taliban took control in August 2021, they quickly cracked down on women’s rights. The following month, girls were largely barred from secondary school, making online education a vital lifeline. Volunteers inside and outside Afghanistan created digital schools and universities for girls to continue their education. Women also found ways to support themselves by teaching and freelancing online, using social media to launch businesses, and creating online gatherings for support. They essentially built an online economy out of a need to survive.
This week, that all came crashing down. Online schools shut down. Businesses vanished. Women who had created these crucial support networks felt isolated. In a country already facing a humanitarian crisis, the blackout was devastating. “I felt like I was stuck in an invisible cell, I couldn’t reach anyone. I only stared at walls and didn’t talk,” the journalist in Herat said after internet was restored. “I was afraid what would happen if this [blackout] continued.”
For now, the internet is the only way for Afghan women to learn, work, speak freely, and be heard. But the Taliban want to stop that.
The question is whether the world will pay attention and see the blackout as a warning sign.
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