Taliban orders nationwide smartphone ban for Afghan civil servants

The Taliban ordered Afghan civil servants to stop using smartphones, threatening to confiscate and destroy the devices and punish violators under the law. The order took effect on June 16 and covered military and civilian institutions, including judges.

The directive tightened a system of internal discipline already shaped by Hibatullah Akhundzada’s direct control. Local reporting said the order was sent to Taliban military courts across Afghanistan’s eight zones after a meeting with military court heads, police chiefs and intelligence chiefs, and violators were to be treated as criminals and referred to military courts. Enforcement was also tied to zone-level court officials, giving the ban a clear chain of command inside the state.

The practical effect reaches far beyond personal phone use. In Afghan offices, smartphones are tools for messaging, document sharing, photography and access to online services, so removing them from the workplace can slow paperwork and cut off rapid communication. That matters in a government already operating under economic crisis and international isolation, where basic administrative speed has become harder to sustain.

The restriction has also widened beyond one part of the country. Local reporting said it had already been expanded to the eastern provinces of Khost and Paktia, and some government offices in Kandahar were shifting from smartphones to feature phones or ordinary calls after the order took hold. That shift shows how quickly a device ban can change the day-to-day mechanics of government work, especially where formal systems are thin and personal phones fill the gaps.

The Taliban administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology denied measures aimed at curtailing smartphone use. That tension leaves open questions about how uniformly the ban will be enforced, but the direction of travel is clear: the state is narrowing access to digital tools even as those tools have become basic infrastructure for administration.

On June 22, the Afghanistan Journalists Center said the ban threatened press freedom and access to information. Its warning reflects the broader political logic of the policy, which is not just about devices but about control over what officials can see, what they can share and how much visibility citizens have into the machinery of the Taliban state.