Good morning. The Taliban severed internet and cellphone connections across Afghanistan, then abruptly flipped them back on – more on that below, along with five provinces hiking their minimum wage and Jane Goodall’s remarkable life. But first:

• Alberta will draw up a proposal for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast by May
• The White House readies mass layoffs and cuts over the government shutdown standoff
• Israeli forces intercept a Gaza-bound aid flotilla and board several boats

For weeks, the Taliban have been shutting down internet access across Afghanistan: first in the northern provinces, followed by parts of the east, before moving south into Kandahar. Then, on Monday, cellphone signals and internet service weakened in Kabul. Businesses quickly closed, health care services sputtered and the airport cancelled its flights. Around 5 p.m. local time, nationwide connectivity dropped below 1 per cent of typical levels. More than 43 million people plunged into a total communications blackout.

Humanitarian workers lost contact with teams delivering aid to villages hit by the devastating earthquakes last month. International news agencies like The Associated Press weren’t able to call their bureaus in Kabul. Families abroad couldn’t reach their loved ones at home, and with banks closed, they couldn’t send money – a financial lifeline for a country where the average income is roughly US$300 a year. By Tuesday, the UN had seen enough. Its mission to Afghanistan demanded authorities “immediately and fully restore nationwide internet and telecommunications access.”

The Taliban made them wait another 24 hours before bringing the country back online yesterday – not everywhere, and not all at once, but across major cities like Kandahar and Kabul. In the capital, where the streets had been almost entirely empty, bike couriers raced outside to pick up delivery orders from restaurants. Drivers honked their horns and children were handed balloons. “We were hopeful that internet would return,” one shop owner told the French news agency AFP. “It was a loss for everyone – including the government.”

Control group

Internet censorship is not new under the Taliban. The regime banned access during their first rule, between 1995 and 2001, though the technology was still relatively new then and Afghanistan’s infrastructure limited. But with the spread of 4G networks, smartphone use has surged around the country; even in rural areas, Afghans regularly rely on their phones to conduct business. After returning to power in 2021, the Taliban adopted more targeted internet restrictions: blocking news sites they considered oppositional, deleting YouTube content, banning TikTok. This wholesale nationwide blackout is the first they’ve tried in 24 years.

When service started shuttering in mid-September, the Taliban announced it was on the orders of their supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, in a bid to “prevent immoral activities.” But plenty of experts found that explanation suspect. “If pornography is really the concern, as in many Islamic countries, it can easily be filtered,” former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad posted on social media. Women’s rights advocates said the crackdown served to further isolate Afghan women who’ve already seen restrictions on their freedom of movement and access to public spaces. “The ban is yet another way for the Taliban to control women and girls,” Human Rights Watch researcher Sahar Fetrat wrote.

In the dark

Over the past four years, according to UNESCO, the Taliban have imposed more than 70 decrees violating the rights of women, especially when it comes to their education. Nearly 2.2 million girls are forbidden from attending school after Grade 6, and books written by female authors were just purged from Afghanistan’s universities. In July, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Akhundzada over his persecution of women and girls.

But tens of thousands of girls and young women have found refuge in online classrooms, where they’ve been able to continue their education and study everything from coding to journalism to law. Reliable internet access is crucial for those lessons and research – and it’s also, for so many young women, an essential tether to the outside world. “It wasn’t just about classes,” one 25-year-old student told The Guardian, which kept her identity protected. “Every night we met on Google Meet and hearing each other’s voices gave us hope. When the internet went, it felt like the roof had fallen on us.”

Jane Goodall – who turned her childhood love of chimpanzees into a lifelong quest to protect the environment – died in Los Angeles yesterday at the age of 91. Read more here about the conservationist’s trailblazing life and career.

At home: Five provinces boosted their minimum wage yesterday to help with rising costs of living, leaving Alberta with the lowest rate in the country at $15 an hour.

Abroad: U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook