Taliban shut down cell phones in Afghan province

All mobile phone services in a southern Afghan province whose capital will be among the first towns to be placed under local control have been shut down on Taliban orders, an operator said Thursday.
The move underscores the power still wielded by the insurgents in Helmand, Afghanistan's largest province and the heartland of the global opium trade, as Nato prepares to hand over control of its capital Lashkar Gar this summer.
MTN, one of Afghanistan's four mobile phone operators, said the Taliban had threatened to attack its operations if it did not switch off the signal in Helmand.
"The Taliban has again ordered all mobile phone companies to shut down operations and we have done so," Mohammad Naser Nasery, the head of MTN's legal department, told AFP. "We decided to obey the orders and we have been shut since yesterday (Wednesday). We cannot afford for our antennae and other facilities to be destroyed."