Taliban Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil was quoted by news sources as telling the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) of the Taliban's desire to control "those things that are wrong, obscene, immoral and against Islam."

Confronting over 20 years of destruction caused by civil war and Soviet occupation, the Taliban have been in power in Afghanistan since 1996. As nearly three years of drought have left more than a million Afghans facing starvation or death as refugees in the cold, most citizens do not have access to a computer or the Internet. Still, the ban reportedly targets all citizens, barring academic, professional and governmental use of the Net.

Ban Not Surprising

Some observers said they were not surprised by the Internet ban, given the Taliban's generally repressive stand on cultural issues.

"They ban just about everything. I think in the minds of the Taliban and people like them, they are concerned about the impact of Western pop culture," Thomas E. Gouttierre, director for the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, told NewsFactor Network.

"They see the Internet as a Western wolf dressed in a sheep's clothing."

Gouttierre said the timing of the ban is due to the fact that Internet access is fast becoming widely available via satellites, rather than just over phone lines.

Muttawakil was reported as acknowledging to AIP that the Taliban cannot fully control Internet use, since neighboring Pakistan's telephone lines are borrowed by the Afghans for access.

"It's almost impossible to enforce except through intimidation," Gouttierre said.

The Taliban Online

Arash Raheen, a 26-year-old Afghan who has lived in the U.S. for 15 years, told NewsFactor that he believed that besides the non-governmental organizations within Afghanistan that would be under the Internet ban, the only other group to use the Internet would be the Taliban.

"Who else is going to use it?" Raheen asked.

Raheen added that he thought the Taliban initiated the ban now because "action is directed against them through the Internet." Raheen cited groups like the Association for Peace and Democracy for Afghanistan, with which he is affiliated, as among those holding views contrary to the Taliban.

Raheen also noted that at one time the Taliban had its own Web site, which has since been removed.

Closing Things Off

Gouttierre said it is difficult to tell how many people are affected by the ban, and noted that while television is also banned in the country, citizens will continue to rely on getting information via broadcasts by Voice of America and the BBC.

"They are not looking to see Afghanistan be among the developed elite in the region, but instead the prototypical Islamic style of country, more like at the time of the prophets," said Gouttierre of the Taliban.

Not the First Ban

Saying it was in accord with "Islamic beliefs," Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar earlier this year issued orders to destroy all statues in Afghanistan.

Statues from Greek, Buddhist and other eras of the country's history were destroyed, along with two massive second-century statues of the Buddha that were considered among the world's great cultural treasures.