Afghanistan’s internet shutdown has disrupted nearly all digital and phone links with the outside world, grounded planes and prompted the closure of businesses in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

NetBlocks, a watchdog group that monitors internet outages, said the country faced a “total internet blackout”.

Networks were disconnected “in a stepwise manner” on Monday, the group said – two weeks after the Taliban regime first signalled that it was determined to ban fibre-optic internet under its strict interpretation of Islamic religious law.

A Taliban official who is based outside Afghanistan told The Washington Post that the shutdown had been under internal discussion for at least a week and that the final call was made by the regime’s leadership in Kandahar.

But the official, who spoke on

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