Carpet Makers Cut Corners
The high price of dye and wool has driven down the quality of Afghan rugs – and demand is falling as a result.
Carpet Makers Cut Corners
The high price of dye and wool has driven down the quality of Afghan rugs – and demand is falling as a result.
Tucked away in the Turkmenabad quarter of the western city of Herat stands a building with tall columns that looks very old. In the hall inside there are six wooden carpet weaving looms in the corridor, with 15 women aged 20 to 35 working away to create the carpets for which Afghanistan is famed.
Some have brought their children with them, because there is nowhere else they can leave them.
Gulsum, 45, is busily weaving a rug with her skinny hands. She says that she has been weaving carpets since she was child, and now has to wear glasses as her eyesight has deteriorated over the years
"The most difficult work in the world is carpet weaving. We accept that, but it seems we may now lose this work,” said Gulsum.
“The owners of carpet-making centres have dismissed many of the weavers because of the high price of dyes and wools."
Looking around the workshop, the decline in production is obvious – the women are only using three of the six looms.
Abdul Samad, the centre’s owner, says the business is close to bankruptcy, and he has had to lose most of his workers.
"There used to be nearly 60 women working at this centre, but the number has now fallen to just 15 because of the high price of the materials using in making carpets. I don’t make enough income from the carpets to pay all the workers – and even the ones who remain are being paid less than before.
"I used to pay each weaver 5,000 afghanis [100 US dollars] a month. But now this has gone down to 3,000 afghanis [60 dollars] a month because of the high price of the materials and the downturn in the market. So a large number of the weavers have quit their jobs."
Nur Ahmad Ahmadi, who imports and sells dyes, wools and other inputs for rug making, says the prices have shot up compared with two years ago.
In 2004, a 90-kilogram pack of wool cost 90 dollars, but now it sells for 280 dollars. A pack of wool produced in Herat province, which is used for some parts of a carpet, has doubled to 24 dollars, and a kilo of dye has increased from two to three dollars.
The rug industry in Herat is caught in a vicious circle – the spiralling cost of raw materials has driven producers to use cheaper alternatives, but the resulting lower-grade carpets are then less in demand on the foreign market. Afghan rugs have traditionally been high on the list of the country’s export earners so the effects will be felt by the national economy.
Abdul Ahad Nafai, head of the exports branch at Herat’s commerce department, was upbeat, telling IWPR, "The Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce has embarked on huge plans for Afghan handicrafts, in particular marketing carpets abroad."
But industry insiders like Mohammad Rasul Fayeq, who heads the Carpet Weavers’ Union in western Afghanistan, say that the business is in bad shape.
"Both foreign and domestic buyers of Afghan carpets have fallen away because of the low-quality materials the weavers are using. The government needs to take steps to address this,” he said
Fayeq said another problem was that good-quality Afghan carpets were being sold on the world market as “Pakistani” because they were exported through that country.
Abdul Salam Karimi, a carpet merchant in Herat, explained how this happened: "The quality of Afghan carpets has declined, so customers are not interested in buying them any more. So we export those carpets that are of decent quality to Pakistan, and then they are sold on to other countries labelled as Pakistani."
Fayeq believes the answer to the quality issue lies in creating local factories to process wool and make dyes, as a way of keeping prices down. He noted that the region has no shortage of raw wool, but the problem was that there was no infrastructure to turn it into material suitable for rug-making.
Western Afghanistan, with Herat as the main trading centre is the source of around ten types of carpets known in the local rug trade as Turkmen, Baluch, Zahkani, Shindandi, Taimani, Saryq, Mushkwani, Latifi, Kawdani, and Mauri Chaq. The best o them are the Mauri and Saryq, woven by ethnic Turkmen in the north-western province of Badghis. Generally a deep red in colour with geometric medallions, these carpets go for 100 US dollars a square metre. The cheapest are the Shindand type which sell at just 10 dollars a square metre.
It is hardly surprising the rug-making industry is going through difficult times. For the last two decades it has been buffeted by near constant warfare in Afghanistan, both disrupting trade periodically and forcing carpet weavers – like millions of other Afghans – to live as refugees in Pakistan or Iran. Now the weavers and traders are enjoying more settled times, but negotiating a path through supply and demand issues presents them with one of the most serious challenges yet.
Sadeq Behnam and Sudabah Afzali are IWPR contributors in Herat.
Some have brought their children with them, because there is nowhere else they can leave them.
Gulsum, 45, is busily weaving a rug with her skinny hands. She says that she has been weaving carpets since she was child, and now has to wear glasses as her eyesight has deteriorated over the years
"The most difficult work in the world is carpet weaving. We accept that, but it seems we may now lose this work,” said Gulsum.
“The owners of carpet-making centres have dismissed many of the weavers because of the high price of dyes and wools."
Looking around the workshop, the decline in production is obvious – the women are only using three of the six looms.
Abdul Samad, the centre’s owner, says the business is close to bankruptcy, and he has had to lose most of his workers.
"There used to be nearly 60 women working at this centre, but the number has now fallen to just 15 because of the high price of the materials using in making carpets. I don’t make enough income from the carpets to pay all the workers – and even the ones who remain are being paid less than before.
"I used to pay each weaver 5,000 afghanis [100 US dollars] a month. But now this has gone down to 3,000 afghanis [60 dollars] a month because of the high price of the materials and the downturn in the market. So a large number of the weavers have quit their jobs."
Nur Ahmad Ahmadi, who imports and sells dyes, wools and other inputs for rug making, says the prices have shot up compared with two years ago.
In 2004, a 90-kilogram pack of wool cost 90 dollars, but now it sells for 280 dollars. A pack of wool produced in Herat province, which is used for some parts of a carpet, has doubled to 24 dollars, and a kilo of dye has increased from two to three dollars.
The rug industry in Herat is caught in a vicious circle – the spiralling cost of raw materials has driven producers to use cheaper alternatives, but the resulting lower-grade carpets are then less in demand on the foreign market. Afghan rugs have traditionally been high on the list of the country’s export earners so the effects will be felt by the national economy.
Abdul Ahad Nafai, head of the exports branch at Herat’s commerce department, was upbeat, telling IWPR, "The Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce has embarked on huge plans for Afghan handicrafts, in particular marketing carpets abroad."
But industry insiders like Mohammad Rasul Fayeq, who heads the Carpet Weavers’ Union in western Afghanistan, say that the business is in bad shape.
"Both foreign and domestic buyers of Afghan carpets have fallen away because of the low-quality materials the weavers are using. The government needs to take steps to address this,” he said
Fayeq said another problem was that good-quality Afghan carpets were being sold on the world market as “Pakistani” because they were exported through that country.
Abdul Salam Karimi, a carpet merchant in Herat, explained how this happened: "The quality of Afghan carpets has declined, so customers are not interested in buying them any more. So we export those carpets that are of decent quality to Pakistan, and then they are sold on to other countries labelled as Pakistani."
Fayeq believes the answer to the quality issue lies in creating local factories to process wool and make dyes, as a way of keeping prices down. He noted that the region has no shortage of raw wool, but the problem was that there was no infrastructure to turn it into material suitable for rug-making.
Western Afghanistan, with Herat as the main trading centre is the source of around ten types of carpets known in the local rug trade as Turkmen, Baluch, Zahkani, Shindandi, Taimani, Saryq, Mushkwani, Latifi, Kawdani, and Mauri Chaq. The best o them are the Mauri and Saryq, woven by ethnic Turkmen in the north-western province of Badghis. Generally a deep red in colour with geometric medallions, these carpets go for 100 US dollars a square metre. The cheapest are the Shindand type which sell at just 10 dollars a square metre.
It is hardly surprising the rug-making industry is going through difficult times. For the last two decades it has been buffeted by near constant warfare in Afghanistan, both disrupting trade periodically and forcing carpet weavers – like millions of other Afghans – to live as refugees in Pakistan or Iran. Now the weavers and traders are enjoying more settled times, but negotiating a path through supply and demand issues presents them with one of the most serious challenges yet.
Sadeq Behnam and Sudabah Afzali are IWPR contributors in Herat.
