The Taliban has imposed a nationwide shutdown of telecommunications in Afghanistan, a move that has largely cut off the country from the rest of the world.

The hard-line Islamist group severed access to fiber-optic Internet across Afghanistan on September 29. Mobile phone networks, which share the same system, were also mostly shut down. The move has sparked chaos in Afghanistan, disrupting flights and cutting people off from banking and e-commerce systems as well as online jobs and schools.

The blackout is likely to exacerbate the economic strife in Afghanistan, where poverty is rising, hunger is widespread, and unemployment is high.

Internet watchdog NetBlocks said late on September 29 that Afghanistan was “in the midst of a total Internet blackout.” “We had no warning that the Internet would be shut down,” said a female teacher living in Hairatan, a town in northern Afghanistan near the border with Uzbekistan. “It’s not just the Internet, but mobile phone signal.”

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