This report has been published in partnership with the Guardian.
The Taliban have ordered a sweeping ban on the use of smartphones by government officials – in what some analysts say could foreshadow broader, population-level restrictions.
In a directive issued by the Taliban’s military courts and reviewed by Zan Times and the Guardian, the ban was to take effect this week and prohibits “high rank, low rank, general mujahideen, or service staff” from using mobile phones.
In a video published online, a Taliban official appears to be shown reading the banning order from his phone while the other person is shown breaking phones.
The order itself states: ‘If anyone uses one, their mobile phone will be smashed and legal and sharia punishment will be imposed on the violator.’ It adds that any exemptions require a written decree from the Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada. Zan Times and the Guardian were unable to reach a Taliban spokesperson.
Reports and sources inside of Afghanistan say that the bans are being implemented in an “ad-hoc” way – in some areas targeting only government officials, in some cities and provinces extending to women, civilians, medical workers, schoolteachers and students.
“A lot of things happen at the local level, because of what someone local has decided. But also, it could be a prelude to a blanket ban and they are just testing the waters,” said an analyst who works on Afghanistan.
The bans come after escalating efforts by the Taliban to completely cut Afghanistan off from the global internet. In September, authorities ordered an internet blackout which lasted two days and was vaguely justified by concerns over pornography; the order said the cutoff was to “prevent immorality.”
The analyst on Afghanistan said that cutoff was done hastily and with a lack of foresight – and has even been rumoured to be the work of rogue Talibs hacking fibre optic cables with a shovel. It froze commerce across the country and affected emergency services and aviation.
“The private sector was freaking out, the banking sector was freaking out, even their own people – the security sector and the Supreme Leader’s Office – and they realised ‘okay guys we didn’t really think this through’, so they put it back on,” said the analyst.
There are likely several factors driving the current ban. First are the street demonstrations which broke out in the western city of Herat after the Taliban arrested women and girls for “improper hijab”. In the course of these, Taliban forces appeared to fire into a crowd and killed at least two people.
This event may have provided some impetus for the restrictions, said the analyst. “The videos that came out of the protests in Herat raised a lot of alarms. The Emirate was trying to contain it. In the beginning, they denied it. They said, no, no, this didn’t happen. Then the video started coming out.”
However, the Taliban were pushing smartphone bans before the protests – for reasons including fear of internal leaks, and worries that they were eroding productivity among officials.
In the province of Herat, in Western Afghanistan, two government employees told Zan Times and the Guardian that bans against smartphones have been in place for months.
“About two months ago they said not to bring your mobile phones to the office,” said one. “Me and a few colleagues didn’t take it seriously. They confiscated them, and after we made a fuss about it, they smashed our phones” – a loss he estimated at around 8,000 afghani.
The Taliban worry that “people are just on their phones all the time and they’re not working. And, you know, smartphones shouldn’t belong at work,” said the analyst.This had been a growing issue, they said, since the Taliban took over and found themselves saddled with the responsibilities of governing, as opposed to the uncertainties of war. A report last year from the Afghan Analysts Network interviewed newly-bureaucratised Taliban fighters who were fed up with traffic in Kabul and finding themselves – to their dismay – wasting hours scrolling on Twitter (now X).“They hate office culture. They complain about it. Like everybody you talk to, they were just complaining about it incessantly. You know, they miss the battlefield. They don’t like going to the office.”
Then there is the problem of leaks: there are a lot of them, said the analyst, because government officials are using their smartphones to photograph documents – and record the occasional meeting – and then allowing these, one way or another, to make it out into the public before the Supreme Leader signs off on it.
Employees wasting time on the internet and leaking information may be part of the usual challenges of governance. The difference, said the analyst, is the Taliban’s approach to it.
“Smartphones and being online impacting productivity to a certain extent is universal. The difference here is that, you know, I haven’t seen any other countries legislating against it.”
