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Afghanistan gets connected
14th January, 2003
The Islamic Transitional Government of Afghanistan has successfully applied to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to have the .af country code redelegated to the Ministry of Communications. This is one of the first moves in allowing for the development of Internet use in Afghanistan with current restrictions on web use likely to be lifted.
Every country code top level domain (ccTLD) like .af is administered by a body in each country who look after technical and registration matters - for example, in the UK this is handled by Nominet.uk. In the early days of the Internet many ccTLDs were operated by an individual on a very informal basis. This was the case in Afghanistan with Kabul-based Abdul Razeeq working to keep the registry running. As the infrastructure in Afghanistan was unable to cope with running a country code the technical aspects were run from London on a temporary basis.
However by the late 1990's, Internet use in the .af space had almost completely stagnated due to the ongoing civil war. Poor communications made contacting Razeeq about new domains or updates to the domain name system almost impossible. Internet use completely stopped in August 2001, when the ruling Taliban regime formally prohibited all non-governmental Internet use inside the country.
More details at: http://www.demys.net/news/2003/01/14_af.htm
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