Taliban destroys Afghanistan’s power, IT sector
When 30-year-old Ali Atayee enrolled for his first computer lessons as an Afghan refugee child growing up in Iran, he knew then this is what he would like to pursue as a career in his adult life.
When he returned to Afghanistan in the years that followed, with that one goal in mind, Atayee directed all his energy, time and resources to learning computer science, particularly web development.
A graduate of Kabul’s prestigious American University of Afghanistan, Atayee has worked with many growing Information Technology (IT) businesses and development projects in the small, yet thriving IT sector in the country.
Over the last couple of years, Atayee has moved to working as a freelance web developer for local companies.
“I had a passion for computer programming but also seeing how the situation was improving in Afghanistan back then, I speculated there would be a lot more development and opportunities in the sector by the time I had graduated,” he told Al Jazeera.
As more and more Afghans came online – 12.8 million Afghan internet users as of 2021 – the industry flourished over the last 20 years.
A USAID report in 2012 noted that the telecommunications field had become one of the largest revenue-generating sectors in Afghanistan with an annual average revenue of $139.6m, accounting for more than 12 percent of the total government revenues.
The IT sector in Afghanistan was deemed one of the few success stories of the war-ravaged nation by many experts.
“It was one industry where the public and private sector have been able to build a partnership to provide services to Afghans, while generating revenues for the government and private companies,” Mohammad Najeeb Azizi, the former director of Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority (ATRA), told Al Jazeera.
However, this potential is quickly ebbing away as the conflict in Afghanistan worsens, with the United States-led forces leaving the country and Taliban regaining a foothold in a nation it once ruled with an iron fist.
As the Taliban makes sweeping gains across the country in the last two months, Afghanistan’s IT and other basic infrastructure have come under frequent attack.
On July 5, Taliban fighters blew up fibre optic devices and system equipment in Herat province’s Islam Qala, a border city with Iran and an important trading port.
Source: Aljazeera