Neowin.net - Afghanistan to Launch Internet Domain

Afghanistan to Launch Internet Domain

Posted by harryleung on 09 March 2003 - 17:25 · 32 comments & 1672 views

KABUL, Afghanistan - "Planting its flag in cyberspace," Afghanistan will officially activate its .af Internet domain name on Monday for Afghan e-mail addresses and Web sites, officials and the United Nations said.

The effort, a joint collaboration between the U.N. Development Program and the Afghan Ministry of Communications, marks a giant technological leap for a country where the Internet was banned for years during the former Taliban regime. But it is likely to be a long time before the average, impoverished Afghan citizen will be able to afford to explore the new possibilities.

"Equivalent to a country code for telephone numbers, the .af Internet suffix has now been reserved exclusively for private and official e-mail and World Wide Web users in Afghanistan," UNDP said in a statement.

"Afghanistan is officially planting its flag in cyberspace, gaining full legal and technical control of the '.af' Internet domain," the organization said.

News source: Yahoo

The .af domain was first registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority in October 1997 by a private Afghan citizen named Abdul Razeeq, according to Aimal Marjan, an adviser to the minister of communications.

According the IANA Web site, however, Razeeq later disappeared and some services were halted to the .af domain.

Efforts to relaunch it began again after the Taliban were ousted in a U.S.-led war in late 2001.

"For Afghanistan, this is like reclaiming part of our sovereignty," Communications Minister Mohammad Moassom Stanakzai said in a statement on Sunday.

So far, just two Web sites have been registered under the .af domain, one belonging to the Ministry of Communications, the other to UNDP. As of Sunday, the ministry site was still "under construction."

Despite the Internet's spread around the world in the last decade, it remains a rarity in Afghanistan, which is still struggling to recover from more than two decades of near-continuous warfare.

A handful of Internet cafes have sprung up in the war-battered capital, Kabul, since last summer, but online time is too expensive for the average citizen, who typically earns less than a dollar a day.

On the Net:
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority: http://www.iana.org
Afghan Ministry of Communications: http://www.moc.gov.af
U.N. Development Program, Afghanistan: http://www.undp.org.af

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#1 Posted by Mr. Black on 09 Mar 2003 - 17:38: Good for them

#2 Posted by shockz on 09 Mar 2003 - 17:39: Very Good.

#3 Posted by mrogers1113 on 09 Mar 2003 - 17:44: good for them ...I'm glad the Taliban's gone

#4 Posted by kainashi on 09 Mar 2003 - 17:45: good for afghanistan.

#5 Posted by caerma on 09 Mar 2003 - 17:51: agree good for them

(1 reply) #6 Posted by cold on 09 Mar 2003 - 17:59: how many computers do Afghanistan have?

#7 Posted by kev64 on 09 Mar 2003 - 18:07: Now all three computer users in Afghanistan can have their own web site...

#8 Posted by Rev. Otto on 09 Mar 2003 - 18:08: I'm sure that the CIA won't have their mits in this from the get go.

#9 Posted by AshMan on 09 Mar 2003 - 18:14: So will ObL be easer to find when they launch www.taliban.org.af ?

#10 Posted by xGarrett on 09 Mar 2003 - 18:15: That's cool. Is it just me or is the news going kind of slow lately?

#11 Posted by tmaxxtigger on 09 Mar 2003 - 18:38: Cool, I bet it's not often a country comes online for the first time nowadays!

#12 Posted by nacs on 09 Mar 2003 - 19:17: Good to hear. The internet is too good to miss.

(3 replies) #13 Posted by Davidc2001 on 09 Mar 2003 - 19:19: www.taliban.af anyone?

#14 Posted by moua on 09 Mar 2003 - 19:54: Traceroute to www.af : it's hosted by sprint in New York

#15 Posted by Shad0wcat on 09 Mar 2003 - 19:57: .... any particular place where people can register .af domains that anyone knows of?

#16 Posted by Tobbe on 09 Mar 2003 - 19:58: Weee!

(2 replies) #17 Posted by Dessimat0r on 09 Mar 2003 - 20:15: Great, now you can send emails to people in caves! Oh.. wait

#18 Posted by iCe_2x™ on 09 Mar 2003 - 20:35: lol...

#19 Posted by jkuy9 on 09 Mar 2003 - 21:23: Good for them

#20 Posted by mugabe221 on 09 Mar 2003 - 22:32: .zb coming soon!

(4 replies) #21 Posted by Mercenary-X on 10 Mar 2003 - 00:30: That's awesome. Even though it won't be used very much right now, at least the nation has a domain. And like someone said above, it's not very often that you see a country come online for the first time.

#22 Posted by USFJoseph on 10 Mar 2003 - 02:16: Not a very secure box actually. A good example is: http://www.moc.gov.af:5800 But seeing as how I don't want the CIA/FBI/whatever on my back I'm just going to stop there. LOL

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