'Everything's gone': Kashmir's famed carpets ruined in $5 bn flood losses

More than 450 people were killed when the floods, triggered by heavy monsoon rains, swept this month through the Himalayan region and into neighbouring Pakistan, leaving hundreds of villages submerged and tens of thousands of residents homeless. As the waters recede and the clean up finally begins, business owners, including those selling Indian Kashmir’s most famous exports, are beginning to count their losses – at least $5 billion by conservative estimates.

My 35 years of earning is gone. The loss is incalculable. Most of my finest carpets are lying elsewhere in the flooded city.

Business owner Qazi Mohammad Yahya

Kashmir carpets have traditionally been a major earner for the region, whose generations of weavers toil for months on wooden looms to produce single intricate pieces that sell for thousands of dollars in the West. Carpets and other handicraft businesses have long thrived even as the troubled Muslim-majority region has endured an insurgency against Indian rule in favour of independence or merger with Pakistan. But scores of carpet showrooms now lie under water after Srinagar’s Dal Lake burst its banks, sending residents fleeing for higher ground. Many of the handlooms have also been destroyed and hundreds of people are out of work.

It may take one year to recover, it may take 50. It depends on Allah.

Qazi Mohammad Yahya

Asia-Pacific KashmirFloods