On a Friday in early October 2025, United Nations human rights experts issued a stern condemnation of the Taliban’s sweeping internet and social media restrictions in Afghanistan, calling them outright violations of fundamental human rights. Their statement, reported by multiple international news outlets including The New York Times, came on the heels of a turbulent fortnight in Afghanistan—a period marked by a nationwide internet blackout, abrupt social media bans, and a ripple of disruption that reached every corner of Afghan daily life.
The digital clampdown began on September 17, 2025, when Taliban leader Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada ordered a fiber-optic internet shutdown across five northern provinces. But the true shockwave hit on September 29, when the Taliban government cut off internet and cellphone services across the entire country. For two days, Afghanistan was digitally dark. As reported by The New York Times, airports and banks shuttered their doors, government employees wandered the halls of their ministries with nothing to do, and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, teenage girls—already banned from school after sixth grade—lost their last tenuous connection to the outside world.
When connectivity returned on October 1, hope flickered briefly. But within days, the Taliban imposed a new set of restrictions, this time targeting the most popular social media platforms. Beginning October 7, Afghans found themselves blocked from accessing Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat—platforms that had served as lifelines for millions, especially women and girls living under the Taliban’s gender apartheid regime. As one 19-year-old student, Mahsa, told The New York Times, “We are always at home, so the internet was our only way to tell other people that we are alive.”
The Taliban’s rationale for the blackout, according to officials and analysts cited by The New York Times, was to prevent “immoral acts.” Yet the move was widely seen as a throwback to the group’s first era in power from 1996 to 2001, when Afghanistan was largely cut off from the modern world. The consequences of the shutdown were immediate and severe. Nazir Hussaini, a travel business owner in Herat, recalled, “It felt like we were thrown back 30 years, trapped in the dark and unable to breathe.” His businesses, which depended on internet access for currency exchange and visa applications, were nearly ruined in the span of those two days.
Government operations ground to a halt. Police officers, like Muhammad in Kabul, could not coordinate or respond to crimes because their internal WhatsApp groups were inaccessible and local elders could not reach them by phone. Humanitarian operations suffered as well—the blackout imperiled the work of United Nations agencies and other groups providing relief to victims of a deadly earthquake that killed over 2,200 people in September, as well as to the nearly three million Afghans forcibly returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran this year.
Perhaps most devastating, however, was the impact on Afghan women and girls. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, they have been systematically excluded from education and public life. For many, the internet had become “the only light,” as described by UN experts, providing access to online education, remote work, business opportunities, and virtual social spaces. Mahsa, the student, had been in the middle of a math lesson with a U.S.-sponsored online education program when the blackout began. “With a shutdown or restricted access to internet, you’re in a gray zone,” she said. “And if something happens to me, nobody will know.”
The UN experts highlighted this disproportionate impact on women, warning that the restrictions not only violate the rights to freedom of expression and access to information, but also threaten the mental health and economic survival of Afghan women. “Many [women] are heavily dependent on online platforms for education, remote work, business opportunities, and virtual social spaces,” they stated. Human rights defenders and journalists, already under intense repression, now face even greater obstacles in documenting Afghanistan’s unfolding human rights crisis.
The Taliban’s actions, the UN experts emphasized, fail to meet the standards set by Article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires that any restrictions on freedom of expression and access to information be lawful, necessary, and proportionate to protect specific interests such as national security or public order. The experts called on the Taliban to comply with their international obligations, stating, “In line with Afghanistan’s human rights obligations, the Taliban must ensure that any restrictions to the rights to freedom of expression and access to information are provided by law and are a necessary and proportionate response to a specific concern.”
Behind the scenes, the blackout exposed rifts within the Taliban’s own ranks. According to interviews conducted by The New York Times with officials outside the country and an aide to an Afghan government official, some members of the Taliban government may have recognized that the shutdown was unsustainable and took steps to restore internet access—even, perhaps, without Akhundzada’s approval. If true, this would mark a rare instance of internal pushback against the ultraconservative leader, who rules from Kandahar, far from the more pragmatic ministers based in Kabul. As Graeme Smith, a longtime Afghanistan analyst, put it, “Defiance of the Emir is anathema to Taliban ideology, which is based on allegiance to him. But this looks like a rare example of internal pushback against the leader.”
Yet public signs of dissension were notably absent. At a gathering in Kandahar shortly after the blackout ended, Akhundzada urged hundreds of provincial and district governors to show unity and respect their superiors, according to two participants who spoke anonymously to The New York Times. The internet shutdown was not addressed at the meeting, and the regime’s official silence on the matter has persisted.
The broader impact of the restrictions has been to deepen Afghanistan’s humanitarian and economic crises. The blackout worsened poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity, and, as the UN experts stressed, it hindered the delivery of critical humanitarian aid to vulnerable communities. Remittance flows from relatives abroad—often a lifeline for families—were cut off. For many Afghans, the sense of isolation was profound. “It’s not just about the internet,” Hussaini, the business owner, reflected. “It’s about hope, about being connected to the world, about not feeling forgotten.”
As Afghanistan heads deeper into uncertainty, the fate of its digital freedoms remains in question. The Taliban’s tightening grip on information and communication channels has left millions in limbo, their voices and stories muffled by silence. For women like Mahsa, and for an entire nation teetering between the past and an uncertain future, the struggle for connection—and for the basic right to be heard—continues.