Internet and cell phone services restored in Afghanistan

Cell phone and internet services were restored in Afghanistan on Wednesday, local residents said, 48 hours after diplomatic and industry sources reported that connectivity had been abruptly cut on the orders of the Taliban administration.

The cell phone services of Roshan and Etisalat companies, the foreign-owned biggest providers, came back to life in the late afternoon, residents in Kabul and other cities said. Internet access was restored, according to companies providing the service.

A Taliban official from the information department said there were technical reasons for the outage and that services would be quickly restored. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the Taliban had ordered the outage.

The United Nations had called for connectivity to be reinstated.

In the past, the Taliban have voiced concern about online pornography and authorities have cut fibre-optic links to some provinces in recent weeks, with officials citing morality concerns.

The outage on connectivity, which started on Monday, follows a series of hardline strictures this year, as the Taliban's conservative leadership, based in the southern city of Kandahar, enforces its views in a tussle against some relatively more open-minded ministers in the capital Kabul.

The outage had caused chaos, with financial remittances, trade with neighbouring countries and the operations of banks paralysed, while many Afghans were left stranded without flights.

Online learning by teenage girls and women, an education lifeline after they were banned by the Taliban from high schools and universities, was also brought to a stop.