Taliban Claims It’s Upgrading Afghanistan to 4G Despite Ongoing Online Censorship

The Taliban needs to broaden high-speed web connectivity in Afghanistan regardless of a historical past of on-line censorship and web blackouts to thwart protests in opposition to the militant group.

It’s been a yr for the reason that withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and the Taliban reclaiming energy following 20 years of battle. The Taliban declare they wish to set up an unbiased authorities with “positive interaction with the world,” in keeping with a statement launched by the group on Wednesday. Despite earlier makes an attempt to chop off web connectivity in Afghanistan, the Taliban now appears to wish to get the nation extra plugged in. The Taliban not too long ago stated that it was upgrading Afghanistan’s web networks to 4G, and is reportedly working with a community supplier to broaden that connectivity to distant areas of the nation, according to Bloomberg.

Today, most individuals in Afghanistan depend on 2G community, however just a few areas within the capital Kabul are already linked to 4G with plans to broaden additional, Najibullah Haqqani, the Taliban’s performing minister of telecommunications and data expertise, informed Bloomberg.

It’s a weird transfer for the fundamentalist group with a protracted monitor file of actively preventing people from having on-line entry. In 2001, the Taliban banned the usage of the Internet in an effort to regulate issues which might be “wrong, obscene, immoral and against Islam,” Taliban Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil said on the time. In 2021, the Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA) reported that the Taliban destroyed 28 telecommunications towers throughout the nation simply months earlier than taking on the federal government. Taliban officers additionally lower off folks’s connectivity throughout Kabul to forestall them from organizing protests throughout their takeover of the capital.

As the group assumed energy final yr, there was an increasing concern that the Taliban would lower off web connectivity altogether. But the Taliban leaders appear to be embracing expertise. Some officers have even joined Twitter, and used WhatsApp to broadcast authorities orders. The militant group is probably making a determined try to improve its international picture in an effort to be formally acknowledged as a authorities. But offering 4G community doubtless received’t do the trick if the folks of Afghanistan don’t have freedom to entry the web with out authorities oversight.