Tageszeitung, 18 October 2025
In his article for the Berlin-based German daily, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks back at the roller coaster ride Afghans went through after the first province-by-province, than total internet blackout in late September, the Taleban’s surprising about face, after protests from the business community and their own ranks, turning it on again, only to throttle it down to 2G and blocking certain apps. He reports that, this time, large-scale protests did not come up, as educated and tech-savvy Afghans are able to circumvent the Taleban filters.
He also explains that the Taleban’s internet and media policy in general, from banning almost everything during Taleban 1 (up to 2001) to embracing it, starting with the insurgency, reflects a classic Islamist approach:
The Taleban’s approach is Islamism par excellence. Even its founders, the legal scholar Jamaluddin al-Afghani, who contrary to his name probably came from Iran, and the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh, originally a journalist, had postulated that the Islamic world could only free itself from the clutches of colonialism if it adopted advanced Western technology, but did so within the framework of its own religious values.
Part of this approach is that they see one of the main tasks of their educational dictatorship as shielding and purifying the population from the influences of decades of Soviet and then American occupation – for the Taleban, both fall under the category of the ‘godless West’. This includes influences that come in via the internet.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 21 Oct 2025
