RASC News Agency: Well-placed sources have disclosed to Afghanistan’s exile media that Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive leader of the Taliban, sought to ban the use of smartphones across Afghanistan even before ordering sweeping restrictions on internet access. The revelations shed new light on the regime’s deliberate campaign to isolate the country digitally, muzzle its citizens, and consolidate authoritarian control.
According to these insiders, Akhundzada convened a council of Taliban clerics in Kandahar nearly a year ago, demanding they provide a so-called “religious pathway” that would allow his regime to outlaw smartphones. Members of the council, however, reportedly rejected the proposal, warning that such a ban would paralyze daily life, annihilate commerce and education, and wipe out the millions of dollars Afghanistani citizens had invested in telecommunications infrastructure.
Despite these warnings, Akhundzada persisted. The strategy of curtailing and eventually severing internet access was later devised by a tight circle of his loyal advisers, who urged him to implement the measure as a means of suppressing dissent and severing Afghanistani society from the outside world. Sources now indicate that the Taliban’s clerical establishment is preparing edicts branding smartphones and digital technologies as “acts of polytheism,” providing an ersatz theological justification for what is, in reality, a political assault on civil liberties.
Tensions over the issue have surfaced even within the Taliban’s cabinet. Figures such as Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister, are said to have voiced opposition in cabinet meetings, warning that the blackout would further erode the already fragile trust between the public and the Taliban. Yet, Akhundzada has pressed forward. Just yesterday, he directed the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology to establish a new regime-controlled internet provider tasked exclusively with servicing government bodies and foreign diplomatic missions. Analysts argue this move not only advances the Taliban’s security agenda tightening surveillance and information control but also serves as a lucrative enterprise for the leader’s inner circle, entrenching cronyism and personal enrichment under the cloak of governance.
Experts warn that such measures will exact devastating costs on Afghanistani society. Cutting off millions from the digital sphere threatens to suffocate freedom of expression, cripple education systems increasingly reliant on connectivity, throttle small businesses dependent on online trade, disrupt healthcare services tied to digital infrastructure, and deepen the population’s isolation from the international community. For a nation already staggering under poverty, repression, and humanitarian catastrophe, the Taliban’s digital blackout risks pushing Afghanistani citizens into an even darker abyss.
In recent years, smartphones and the internet have become lifelines for millions enabling students to learn remotely, entrepreneurs to sustain fragile businesses, journalists to report atrocities, and families torn apart by war and displacement to remain connected. The Taliban’s determination to extinguish this lifeline is therefore seen by many as part of a broader strategy: to erase social autonomy, suffocate civic space, and enforce a blanket of ignorance across Afghanistani society.
Ultimately, this is not merely a story of technological restriction. It is an assault on modern life itself an authoritarian project designed to drag Afghanistan back into enforced silence and isolation. For Afghanistani citizens, the threat is clear: under Taliban rule, the tools of knowledge, progress, and connection are recast as crimes, while oppression and regression are sanctified as “virtue.”
