Taliban Ban Smartphones for Government Officials, Sparking Wider Concerns

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 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 one 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 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. The Guardian was unable to reach a Taliban spokesperson.

Reports and sources inside 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 Afghanistan analyst said that cutoff was done hastily and with a lack of foresight. 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 ‘OK guys, we didn’t really think this through’, so they put it back on,” the analyst said.

There are probably several factors driving the latest ban. First, the street demonstrations that broke out in the western city of Herat after the Taliban arrested women and girls for “improper hijab”. In the course of the protests, 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 videos 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 said that bans on smartphones had 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 about 8,000 afghanis (£95).

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.

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 it off.

Employees wasting time online 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 affecting productivity to a certain extent is universal. The difference here is that I haven’t seen any other countries legislating against it.”