Internet in Afghanistan
Prior to that year, it was prohibited because the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan believed that it may be used to broadcast obscene, immoral and anti-Islamic material, and because the few internet users at the time could not be easily monitored as they obtained their telephone lines from neighboring Pakistan.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), charged a newly created independent company called Afghan Telecom with spinning off all telecommunications operations and services.
[5] Afghans have long recognized the internet as an important source of growth and development for the country, believing that information and communication technologies can create opportunities for disadvantaged groups and improve the access of the rural poor to markets.
[16] Freedom of expression is inviolable under the Constitution of Afghanistan, and every Afghan has the right to print or publish topics without prior submission to state authorities in accordance with the law.
A license may be revoked if the licensee has broken the law or has failed to fix repeated breaches in the agreement, has misleading/false information in their application, or does not pay the fee even after a warning.
Where an issue of national security or a criminal case is involved, operators and service providers must hand over the required information and give the authorities immediate access to their network.
In its Acceptable Use Policy, the AFGNIC prohibits the use of the “.af” domain to make any communications to commit a criminal offense; racially vilify others; violate intellectual property rights; and distribute, publish, or link to pornographic materials that a “reasonable person as a member of the community of Afghanistan would consider to be obscene or indecent”.
The list of proscribed press activities was quite extensive and attributed negative intention, causality, and morality to reporting on specific issues (primarily terrorism and the Taliban insurgency).
Restricted activities included the publication or broadcasting of exaggerated reports against national unity or peace; decrees, statements and interviews of armed organizations and terrorist groups; and even the proscription against news on terrorism serving as the lead story.
[5] Nearly all popular online services and over five million websites are available in Afghanistan, including Facebook, Google, Instagram, MSN, Netflix, Archive.org, PayPal, PlayStation Network, Skype, TikTok, Twitter, Discord, Google Play, Newgrounds, Tumblr, Wikipedia, Messenger, Hugging Face, Fandom, Viber, Signal, Threads, LinkedIn, ABC, ABC News, WhatsApp, SoundCloud, Flickr, Pinterest, Dictionary.com, The Free Dictionary, Yahoo!, Miniclip, Nitrome, ChatGPT, Bing AI, DeviantArt, BBC, Tenor, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Disney+, Hulu, Blogger, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Archive of Our Own, Nico Video, GitHub, TinEye, Scratch, IQIYI, Reddit, and Zoom.
