The Associated Press (AP) on Wednesday retracted a story that incorrectly quoted a Taliban official denying that Afghanistan’s Internet access has been deliberately shut down.
The false story was based on a WhatsApp chat message interpreted as an official statement from the Taliban regime without proper vetting.
Taliban officials were allegedly spotted severing fiber-optic cables in several provinces in mid-September. On Sunday, Internet connectivity dropped to near-zero across Afghanistan, causing severe operational problems for humanitarian aid groups and United Nations teams. Mobile phone access was also severely degraded.
Taliban sources said the blackout was imposed on the orders of Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, based on “recent studies” that found the Internet was eroding the “economic, cultural, and religious foundations of society.”
Afghanistan’s already fragile economy came to a halt, as it was heavily dependent on the Internet for commerce. The airport in Kabul virtually shut down. The U.N. demanded the immediate restoration of Internet and mobile services, warning that the shutdown “risks inflicting significant harm on the Afghan people, including by threatening economic stability and exacerbating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.”
When limited Internet access was restored on Wednesday, the AP quoted “what claimed to be a Taliban statement denying reports that the blackout was a deliberate move and saying old fiber optic cables are worn out and being replaced.”
The AP later retracted this report and explained it was based on a WhatsApp message posted in a chat group the Taliban uses to communicate with journalists in Pakistan.
“The false statement was forwarded as an individual message to some of the group’s members but was not posted in the group itself. It came from an Afghan user whose name resembled the official name of the media WhatsApp group,” the AP explained.
“The sender has disappeared and their identity cannot be verified. The same statement was posted on the social platform X, but it came from an account run by a Taliban sympathizer, rather than from the Taliban themselves,” the retraction added.
The AP ruefully noted that it could not contact the Taliban directly to verify the WhatsApp comment, due to the very same Internet outage the Taliban imposed on Afghanistan.
The Taliban eventually did release an official statement about the outage, claiming that “cellphone services are gradually being restored.”
Zabihullah Mujahid, official spokesman for the Taliban junta, was angry that foreign media would cite any statement not distributed through official Taliban channels.
“The Associated Press claim regarding the justification for blocking the internet is incorrect and fabricated, which they have attributed to me,” he grumbled.
“I hope the media will behave responsibly and professionally. If we have any message or statement worth announcing, we issue it from our own offices, not from foreign channels,” he said.
Residents of Kabul and other Afghan cities told foreign journalists that Internet and cell phone access had been largely restored by Wednesday evening.
“The absence of public communication from Taliban figures and the claims by government that they could explain neither the shutdown nor the service resumption sowed confusion and anger,” the left-wing newspaper New York Times (NYT) reported on Wednesday.
The BBC likewise reported gloom and anxiety among the populace while the Internet was shut down, followed by jubilant celebrations when it was restored.
“It’s like Eid al-Adha; it’s like preparing to go for prayer. We are very happy from the bottom of our hearts,” a delivery driver exclaimed.
The BBC noted that the Internet blackout was especially alarming for people who fled Afghanistan during the Taliban takeover, because they could not contact relatives left behind in the country, and for women who rely on the Internet as their only link to the outside world, since the Taliban banned them from receiving an education.
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