Politics
48 hours of confusion in Afghanistan during internet blackout
Paralysed banks, grounded planes and chaotic hospitals: for two days, life ground to a halt in Afghanistan after the Taliban unexpectedly cut off the internet and phone networks.
Authorities had for weeks been restricting broadband access in several provinces to prevent “vice” on the orders of the Taliban’s supreme leader.
But no one in Kabul was prepared for a nationwide shutdown.
Young Kabulis first travelled to high points in the mountainous capital, phones raised skyward, hoping to catch a signal. Then they tried buying SIM cards from different operators — before giving up.
For Afghanistan’s 48 million people, it became impossible to send news to their relatives or receive precious remittances from abroad to pay their bills.
Some residents of Herat and Kandahar travelled to border towns to pick up signal from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan.
But for the rest of the country, with no news from the outside world, rumours swelled to the rhythm of helicopters.
“The Americans are going to retake Bagram Air Base!” whispered the streets, after US president Donald Trump’s recent calls to have the US-built facility returned.
Others wondered, incorrectly, that the reclusive Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and loyalists had replaced Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who advocates a pragmatic approach to running the country.
As of Thursday, the Taliban authorities had still yet to comment on the shutdown.
‘A return to candlelight?’
Across the country, one of the poorest in the world, banking systems stopped functioning and the informal money exchange system used by much of the nation also broke down.
“Cash withdrawals, card payments, fund transfers — everything relies on the internet. We can’t do anything without it,” a private bank manager told AFP.
For Afghans, there was no choice but to survive on whatever cash they had on hand.
In the half-deserted streets, Taliban security personnel communicated via walkie-talkies.
“I’ve worked in security for 14 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“What next? Are we going to cut off the electricity and go back to candlelight?” added another civil servant, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Domestic and international flights were also grounded, but with no way to be warned, passengers continued to flock to airports.
Hospital emergency rooms lacked both staff and patients — as many Afghans were too frightened to travel.
Doctor Sultan Aamad Atef, Afghanistan’s only neurologist, saw a 30% drop in visits.
“Without online appointments, patients have to show up spontaneously and hope I can take them, or wait, sometimes for nothing,” he told AFP.
Wedding day drama
Overnight, two million Afghan women were deprived of online courses, according to the Malala Fund.
“I was so scared this would last and I wouldn’t be able to get my bachelor’s degree… studying remotely is all I have left,” a 20-year-old student told AFP on Wednesday.
Her parents refused to send her younger brother to school without a mobile phone.
Restaurants without delivery services, the post office, travel agencies and shops all told AFP they had suffered heavy economic losses.
Weddings — often involving a lifetime of savings and up to 2,000 guests — became an “unmanageable situation”, a wedding hall boss in the capital Kabul told AFP.
“We plan weddings well in advance, but we can’t get any confirmation that the bride and groom, and their guests will even show up,” he told AFP, hours before the blackout ended on Wednesday night and the wedding went ahead.
“Ten years wouldn’t be enough to compensate for the economic losses of the last two days,” laments Khanzada Afghan, a grocery store manager in eastern Jalalabad, who sent his employees home.
A man in India’s south brutally killed his estranged wife at a women’s hostel and took a selfie with her dead body, according to NDTV.
The victim, identified as Sripriya, employed at a private firm in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, had separated from her husband, Balamurugam, who was from Tirunelveli.
Police said the suspect arrived at the hostel on Sunday afternoon, concealing a sickle in his clothes, and was seeking to meet her.
They had an argument soon after the couple met, and the feud turned into a violent attack by Balamurugan, who drew the sickle and hacked the woman to death.
Furthermore, the police said he then took a selfie with her body and shared it on his WhatsApp status, accusing her of “betrayal”.
The incident spread panic and chaos in the hostel.
Following the brutal murder, the suspect did not escape from the spot but waited until the police arrived, and he was arrested at the crime scene. The murder weapon was recovered.
The initial investigation suggested that he suspected his wife of being in a relationship with another man.
- Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand witness large scale devastation.
- At least 176 people perish in Thailand and three in Malaysia.
- Indonesia’s death toll reaches 502 with 508 more still missing.
PALEMBAYAN: Rescue teams in western Indonesia were battling on Monday to clear roads cut off by cyclone-induced landslides and floods, as improved weather revealed more of the scale of a disaster that has killed close to 700 people in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have seen large scale devastation after a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait, fuelling torrential rains and wind gusts for a week that hampered efforts to reach people stranded by mudslides and high floodwaters.
At least 176 have been killed in Thailand and three in Malaysia, while the death toll climbed to 502 in Indonesia on Monday with 508 missing, according to official figures.
Under sunshine and clear blue skies in the town of Palembayan in Indonesia’s West Sumatra, hundreds of people were clearing mud, trees and wreckage from roads as some residents tried to salvage valuable items like documents and motorcycles from their damaged homes.
Men in camouflage outfits sifted through piles of mangled poles, concrete and sheet metal roofing as pickup trucks packed with people drove around looking for missing family members and handing out water to people, some trudging through knee-deep mud.
Months of adverse, deadly weather
The government’s recovery efforts include restoring roads, bridges and telecommunication services.
More than 28,000 homes have been damaged in Indonesia and 1.4 million people affected, according to the disaster agency.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto visited the three affected provinces on Monday and praised residents for their spirit in the face of what he called a catastrophe.
“There are roads that are still cut off, but we’re doing everything we can to overcome difficulties,” he said in North Sumatra.
“We face this disaster with resilience and solidarity. Our nation is strong right now, able to overcome this.”
The devastation in the three countries follows months of adverse and deadly weather in Southeast Asia, including typhoons that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and caused frequent and prolonged flooding elsewhere.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather events will become more frequent as a result of global warming.
Marooned for days
In Thailand, the death toll rose slightly to 176 on Monday from flooding in eight southern provinces that affected about three million people and led to a major mobilisation of its military to evacuate critical patients from hospitals and reach people marooned for days by floodwaters.
In the hardest-hit province of Songkhla, where 138 people were killed, the government said 85% of water services had been restored and would be fully operational by Wednesday.
Much of Thailand’s recovery effort is focused on the worst-affected city Hat Yai, a southern trading hub which on November 21 received 335 mm (13 inches) of rain, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, followed by days of unrelenting downpours.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has set a timeline of seven days for residents to return to their homes, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
In neighbouring Malaysia, 11,600 people were still in evacuation centres, according to the country’s disaster agency, which said it was still on alert for a second and third wave of flooding.
- Ex-Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, sister Rehana also sentenced.
- Case relates to illegal allocation of a plot of land: local media.
- Prosecutors highlight political influence, collusion abuse of power.
DHAKA: A Bangladesh court sentenced British parliamentarian and former minister Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail in a corruption case involving the alleged illegal allocation of a plot of land, local media reported.
The verdict was delivered in absentia as Siddiq, her aunt and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Hasina’s sister Sheikh Rehana — all co-accused in the case — were not present in court.
Hasina was sentenced to five years in jail and Rehana to seven, the local media reports said.
Hasina, who fled to neighbouring India in August 2024 at the height of an uprising against her government, was sentenced to death last month over her government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators during the protests.
Last week, she was handed a combined 21-year prison sentence in other corruption cases.
Prosecutors said that the land was unlawfully allocated through political influence and collusion with senior officials, accusing the three powerful defendants of abusing their authority to secure the plot, measuring roughly 13,610 square feet, during Hasina’s tenure as prime minister.
Most of the 17 accused were absent when the judgement was pronounced.
Siddiq, who resigned in January as the UK’s minister responsible for financial services and anti-corruption efforts following scrutiny over her financial ties to Hasina, has previously dismissed the allegations as a “politically motivated smear”.
Britain does not currently have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.
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