Monday, October 7, 2002		Feature

BLASTED back into an almost medieval state by years of war and the repressive rule of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan this month takes a great leap forward, logging on at last to the Internet revolution.

Previously, the war-ravaged country’s only connections to the World Wide Web have been via prohibitively expensive satellite links or through one tiny, crowded internet cafe in the basement of Kabul’s largest hotel.

Now, thanks to the Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), which earlier this year established Afghanistan’s first mobile phone system, a fledgling Internet network is being set up across the capital.

AWCC engineers are currently working flat out across Kabul, installing equipment which will offer relatively cheap, unlimited access to high speed data exchange and finally establish Afghanistan’s presence on the virtual map.

"We have just started rolling it out. A few customers were installed at first for test purposes, the feedback was very good, so we’re going ahead," says AWCC marketing manager Eshan Bayat.

Widely available Internet access would have been unthinkable 12 months ago in Afghanistan, which was still in the grip of the fundamentalist Taliban regime eventually ousted late last year by a US-led campaign.

Under the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law, which banned music, television and many forms of social interaction, the dizzying access to all three offered by the Web would have incurred swift and brutal punishment. — AFP