Comment by walrus01
4 years ago
I know someone who recently bought a new .af domain in cash from the Taliban, in person in Kabul. The ministry of communications which controls it accepts payment by depositing cash and getting a bank draft receipt in downtown Kabul.
The previous government has definitely stopped existing, but this is the same process as before the August 2021 ghani government collapse.
Once you have your bank draft you walk it over to a clerk at the ministry of communications and within a few days somebody will hand edit the .af root zonefile.
That's interesting. Why won't the Taliban just license it, like other places do? I don't need to go to Tuvalu to buy a .tv domain. I'm guessing embargoes may play a minor role, but China still trades with them.
Maybe they don't want people using it as an abbreviation for As Fuck. high.af
Didn't the Taliban finance their holy war by selling opium? Seems like they probably aren't the scrupulous type.
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I don't think that is a real concern for the Taliban.
I would rather ask: why would they? Are we expecting Taliban to consider giving out registrations? To foreigners?! What would be their motivation to streamline this in any way at all?
Do we assume that they even care?
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That domain is currently being used
Even before the government collapse the ministry of comms showed little interest in licensing it to a third party operator for widespread use. They get more revenue from a small customer prepaid credit loading tax on the four LTE/gsm/3gpp band mobile phone operators.
it doesn't (or didn't) seem necessary to actually go over there for registrations? https://tld-list.com/tld/af
I just tried on a few:
- Gandi : I get "Temporary error" - Regery : Seems to allow it but I don't know how much we can trust that. - OVH : I get "Unavailable" - Netim : "Registrations are currently not possible."
I think it's fair to say that it's not that easy...