RASC News Agency: Reports from multiple provinces across Afghanistan reveal that access to major social media platforms has been increasingly restricted in recent days, with many users experiencing complete disconnection. Residents in Kabul, Balkh, Faryab, Kunduz, Baghlan, and several other regions told RASC News that disruptions began late last night and have persisted, leaving large segments of the population unable to connect to online platforms that serve as their primary means of communication and information exchange.
Just a day earlier, users reported widespread outages on Instagram, one of the country’s most popular social networks. Both Facebook and Instagram alongside TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) represent the lifelines of digital communication for millions of Afghanistani citizens who depend on these platforms to share information, sustain livelihoods, and remain connected with the outside world.
Although the Taliban authorities have remained publicly silent, credible sources inside the group’s Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology have confirmed to RASC News that an extensive program to filter and eventually block Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok is being prepared for nationwide implementation.
According to an official familiar with the matter, the proposal for the social media blackout was formally approved during a recent cabinet meeting of the Taliban. Technical teams within the ministry have since been tasked with finalizing the operational framework of the ban, signaling the regime’s intent to impose full digital isolation on the country.
This decision follows the Taliban’s unprecedented move last week to cut off internet access across Afghanistan for nearly 48 hours a measure that provoked strong condemnation from journalists, civil society activists, and international organizations defending press freedom. Observers described the blackout as a deliberate attempt to silence public outrage, obscure ongoing human rights violations, and conceal the deepening humanitarian crisis from global visibility.
Media professionals and human rights defenders have warned that restricting access to social networks constitutes a direct assault on freedom of expression and a calculated effort to suppress dissent. Many see this as part of a broader campaign by the Taliban to extinguish every form of independent communication that challenges their narrative of control. “Social media is one of the last remaining spaces where citizens can speak without fear,” said a Kabul-based journalist in an interview with RASC News. “By closing this space, the Taliban are cutting off the country’s voice from the world.”
Analysts argue that the regime’s move to impose digital censorship is not merely a reaction to online criticism but a premeditated strategy to establish absolute information monopoly. By silencing online dialogue, the Taliban seek to rewrite the story of Afghanistan under their rule replacing the realities of repression, poverty, and exclusion with a hollow image of stability.
Critics have compared this escalating digital repression to the tactics used by other authoritarian regimes such as Iran and North Korea, where the internet is weaponized as a tool of state surveillance rather than a medium of free expression. If fully implemented, the Taliban’s plan would mark a decisive step toward transforming Afghanistan into a closed, digitally suffocated society one in which isolation is enforced not only by physical borders but also by the walls of digital silence.
In a country already crippled by censorship, economic collapse, and gender apartheid, the planned shutdown of social media may extinguish one of the last remaining avenues through which Afghanistanis can share their stories, document abuses, and demand accountability. Observers warn that if the international community remains silent, the Taliban will succeed not only in silencing the voices of Afghanistan’s people but in erasing them from the world’s conscience.
