KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Afghans tend to be stoic in the face of poverty, hardship and seemingly endless warfare. But mess with their cellphones, and the response is one of undiluted outrage.
For the last two months, Taliban fighters have been blowing up telecommunications towers, with the aim of preventing NATO-led forces from hunting them down via cellphone signals. It could hardly have been a worse public-relations move for the insurgency.
Fuming Afghans call the tactic nonsensical.
"I'm so, so furious about this," sputtered businessman Rahim Agha. "Why do they have to do this to us? Why can't they just turn off their phones?"
To Afghans, the country's rapidly expanding cellphone network is a symbol of pride and hoped-for prosperity. Cellphones are a lifeline to Afghanistan's vast rural hinterlands, an engine of commerce, and a vital link with millions of Afghan refugees around the world.
There is intense competition among the country's cellphone providers -- four private companies and a state-run one. Spurred by the scramble for revenue, they provide service in 70% of Afghanistan's territory, from trackless deserts to jagged mountains.
The customer base has essentially doubled every year for three years. About 5.4 million people, about one in six Afghans, have a cellphone, an extraordinary rate of market penetration in a country so poor.
"Just look around in any bazaar," said Amirzai Sangin, the minister of communications. "Everyone in sight has a cellphone."
That includes Taliban fighters -- and therein lies the problem.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces recently have had unusual success in tracking and targeting mid-level Taliban field commanders, killing scores of them in pinpoint airstrikes. Military officials, without giving details, say they have a variety of means of conducting such manhunts, but the fighters blame cellphone signals for giving away their location.
The reach and availability of cellphones apparently have been seductive even to some fugitive commanders, who use numbers only for a short time before discarding them.
In addition to attacking about a dozen towers, the insurgents have threatened the telecom companies, forcing them to cut off service at night in southern Afghanistan. More than a quarter of a million people have been affected by disrupted service across the south, where fighting between insurgents and coalition troops is the most intense.
