Taliban ban government employees from using smartphones and threaten dismissal for violations

Smartphones as the backbone of administration

The broadcaster RFE/RL published video footage showing members of the Taliban destroying smartphones. Using tools, they smash displays or snap the devices off against the edge of a table. The images show that the directive is being enforced with drastic means.

The directive from the Taliban leadership provides, among other things, for dismissal in the event of non-compliance with the rule. Violations of the ban can therefore mean the immediate loss of one's job. The sanction weighs particularly heavy in a country with high unemployment and without any notable social safety net.

Harsh crackdown with symbolic force

Observers see in the top Taliban leadership — which rules from the southern city of Kandahar — a hardliner position that views smartphones and access to the internet as vices. Just last autumn, the internet had been shut down across the entire country for about two days — on the orders of the supreme Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, in order to "prevent immorality".

The renewed smartphone ban for government officials follows a longer debate within the Islamist Taliban about how to deal with the devices. Within the movement, conservative hardliners and more pragmatic forces are wrangling over the right course regarding modern communication technology.

By contrast, there are pragmatists in Kabul for whom the internet represents an opportunity to do business. In the capital, the network is also viewed as an economic resource — a field of tension that partly explains the inconsistency in implementing the ban.

Differing interpretations within the authorities

In fact, however, government agencies are taking differing views on how strictly the new rule should be applied. A spokesperson for a local police authority has stopped publishing posts on Facebook. Another official has stated that he only posts on social media from his laptop after finishing work.

Various official accounts of the Taliban government, however, have remained active on social media since the directive was published. These contradictions between official government PR and the ban for ordinary civil servants illustrate how unevenly the directive is being handled in practice.

Human rights organizations see the ban as a further curtailment of freedom of expression and information under Taliban rule. International observers point out that in many authoritarian contexts, digital communication is viewed as destabilizing to the control of power.