The Youth are Fleeing the Farms: Aspiration and Conflict in Kurram, Pakistan
Hassan Turi explores the contradiction between agricultural labour shortages and youth unemployment in rural Pakistan.
Youth farmers from rural Punjab in Pakistan. Image: Great Mirror
Rural youth unemployment is a serious crisis facing countries of the global South. The majority of people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their main source of income. With a global land rush triggered by rising food prices, the consolidation of large-scale industrial agriculture is not only dispossessing people from their lands, but also bringing energy-intensive and climate-warming practices. Small-scale agriculture, which has long been the single biggest employer of the developing world, has the potential to be ecologically rational, socially just, and capable of absorbing unemployed youth. However, contemporary agrarian research has increasingly found that young people are not attracted to agricultural work.
This article explores the reasons behind youth’s waning interest in farming, based on a case study of a rural town in the Kurram district of Pakistan. According to a 2018 UNDP report, Pakistan currently has the largest young population in the world. Sixty-four percent of the population is less than 30 years of age and will soon require 4.5 million new jobs. At the same time, there is a severe shortage of labour in villages along with high levels of un- and under-employment. Unlike the rest of Pakistan, where rural labour is migrating to cities, rural youth from Kurram are increasingly migrating outside of Pakistan and becoming vulnerable to wider geopolitical conflicts. Understanding the causes behind youth flight and unemployment is a key priority for developing a long-term youth policy and strengthening the agricultural economy of the country.
Conflict on the Frontier
A map showing the location of Kurram Agency. Source: Al Jazeera
The village of Bilyamin, where I conducted my fieldwork, is located in the Kurram district of Khyber Pakthunkhwa. Until 2018, the district was known as Kurram Agency and was part of the now dissolved Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). This region has been afflicted with severe violence for decades. The continuous unrest has transformed the livelihoods of people living there.
When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, aided by the Pakistan military, most Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters took refuge in FATA. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) began establishing its recruiting networks, launching attacks inside Pakistan and on US forces in Afghanistan. But when the Taliban approached Kurram in 2007, Shia tribes there opposed their entry. In response, the Taliban recruited local Sunni tribesmen, exploited sectarian divisions and other conflicts over land and resources, and weaponized the Sunnis against the Shias.
This ugly proxy war in Kurram continued until 2011. More than 60 villages were torched, displacing over 10,400 families. During the siege, neither the Shia nor Sunni tribes could continue farming. The village of Bilyamin had been a mixed Sunni and Shia village. Now, it remains forever changed. The local conflict and wider regional war had a profound impact on people’s livelihoods and living patterns, especially on agriculture which has been the primary source of income for decades.
One of multiple protests in Parachinar in June 2017 after multiple bomb blasts by the TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakisan) killed dozens from the Shia community. Image: News Week Pakistan
Farming in unrest and instability
The Kurram Gazetteer of 1908 reported that most residents of Kurram were involved in farming while also joining the army. Most households employed family labour for agriculture, except during peak stages of farming. These patterns changed after the arrival of Afghan refugees in the ’80s (from the first Afghan war) to refugee camps in Kurram. Afghans began working as tenants, providing cheap wage labour. At the same time, many locals began migrating to Gulf countries responding to new markets created during the oil boom. During the ’80s and ’90s, each household had at least one person working in the Gulf.
With the launch of the War on Terror in 2001, and subsequent conflict in Kurram, farming practices took another hit. Land remained uncultivated during the war, and many people died, suffered injuries, or were displaced. Farmers could not bring their products to market or buy new farming inputs. The conflict also forced many people, especially the youth, to flee from the villages in search of safety and better livelihoods.
Following the conflict, land cultivation suffered even further when many Afghan refugees were repatriated, creating a huge shortage of agricultural labour in Kurram. On the one hand, Kurram was seeing rapid youth migration away from villages. A 2013 FATA Secretariat report showed that Kurram had the highest rate of migration among former FATA regions, at 25% of the population. On the other hand, the youth remaining behind were less interested in farming, and were seeking jobs related to their education but without much success. The same report found that the unemployment rate in Kurram was 7.8 percent. Despite the sharp need for agricultural labour, young people were massively un- or under-employed and preferring to leave the country as migrant workers abroad.
This labour shortage has pushed farmers to change cropping patterns. Many have stopped growing rice. More farmers are planting plums and apricot orchards or rearing livestock. There is an emerging trend of wage labor hired daily from villages with smaller landholdings, who are mostly Sunnis. Remittances have also acquired increasing importance. Households with income from remittances are successfully reproducing themselves, by spending on better farming inputs and hiring labour on time. Families without remittance income are either decreasing cultivation of labour-intensive crops or involving more household members to bring prices down.
Climate change has also shifted seasonal patterns, making farming less predictable and therefore less profitable. Kurram used to supply tomatoes earlier than other regions, but of late, unexpected rains in March have delayed tomato crop plantations which are reducing outputs and profits. Rice plantation before the summer has been similarly affected. After the repatriation of Afghan refugees, and displacement of the local Sunni people, Lower Kurram is facing a proliferation of wild boars destroying crops. Villagers have stopped growing groundnuts and crops like rice or beans near the river bank and mountains. Young farmers are now tasked by their families to guard their crops, often staying awake all night for the last two months of the harvest.
An internally displaced family flees military operations in Tora Warai, a town in Kurram Agency in July 2011. Image: Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
“Farming is our culture”
For a person growing up in the village, it is considered natural to farm. A young farmer I met in Kurram told me:
[Farming] is our culture. When your family members are working on the farm and you are not helping them, you are considered a loafer [lazy]. Most young boys, who are unemployed and are living in the village or visit home frequently, are under social pressure to lend a hand on the farm even if they are hunting for jobs. They feel they are judged by society for not helping their family in farming.
Youth living in the village who fail to assist their families in farming are berated and considered disobedient by family members and neighbours. Families who don’t cultivate their lands become a joke for the rest of the village for being lazy and unsuccessful, or for becoming too “modern”. A farmer told me that most of his land is fallow because of water shortage, but he still ploughs frequently to remove weeds as the rest of the village makes fun of him, saying, “Your land has turned into a jungle.”
Similarly, farmers don’t share their vegetables with neighbours who don’t grow their own; the act of sharing food is reciprocal. Even households that are not totally dependent on farming thus grow rice, wheat, and soya bean to preserve their honour and self-respect (izzat). Pashtun tribal structure built on kinship relationship thus plays a vital role in maintaining farming activities. However, such social pressures and lack of freedom to pursue their own goals is contributing to youth flight and declining interest in farming.
Farming as familial responsibility
In my interviews I tried to understand the motivations of Kurram youth who are still engaged in farming. Many young people pursue farming from an early age. Accompanying the adults to farms, the children fetch water, tea, food, and farming tools when the elders are busy. They graze cattle and cut firewood, or complete tasks reserved for children, such as weeding onions. Research suggests that exposure from an early age is crucial to engage interest in farming. Rural children who go to school are prepared neither for farming nor for any other sector and begin to lose interest in farming.
“...they see farming not as a lifelong pursuit but a transitory phase, a “timepass” or “waiting period”, before they secure a future in the cities.”
After the conflict in Kurram, households foisted more farming responsibilities onto youth to compensate for labour shortages due to the war. For instance, before the conflict, children were not involved in difficult labor like the desiltation of canals. However, when I conducted fieldwork, I regularly saw young children doing this kind of work. As a result, young people are becoming increasingly disinterested in farming. Though they possess basic farming skills, they don’t enjoy their job and feel overworked.
Many of them had career goals before the war. Some were educated. But most of them have now been farming for more than eight years. Even so, they see farming not as a lifelong pursuit but a transitory phase, a “timepass” or “waiting period”, before they secure a future in the cities. These rising aspirations further feed into the aversion of youth.
Education and aspiration
Since the 1980s, families in District Kurram have been sending at least one member to Gulf countries. Today, that number has increased to three to five. Although most youth prefer looking for jobs inside Pakistan, they are now even willing to migrate abroad due to severe unemployment.
One can notice two major trends of aspiration driving the migration of youth from Kurram: jobs in cities within Pakistan, and the promise of opportunities abroad. Youth in Kurram are relatively more educated than their parents, and they are more dissatisfied than the older generation. Those belonging to better-off households are even less interested in farming as compared to less educated youth. Most young people want to pursue careers based on their studies or are trying to complete secondary school to become eligible for migration to Gulf countries. Unemployed youth are frustrated at failing to secure jobs in their desired fields and prefer to migrate away.
Job-seekers line up outside the Overseas Employment Corporation office in Islamabad after jobs are advertised by the organization. Image: Ishaque Chaudhry via Dawn
“Unemployed youth radicalized after the War on Terror have been recruited by the Iranian government, which leverages Shia Muslim beliefs and offers good salaries.”
Australia and Europe gained popularity as migration destinations after the beginning of conflict in Kurram. The mass of unemployed youth, with no alternative sources of income, began moving to urban areas, especially Rawalpindi and Islamabad and enrolling in short diploma courses. Here, they were exposed to new patterns of migration, especially through the Shia Hazaras of Quetta who have migrated in huge numbers to Australia. They are familiar with these routes and provided guidance and opportunities to the youth of Kurram, who they felt a strong affinity for, given their common Shia identity.
And then there is the wave of migratory fighters. Unemployed youth radicalized after the War on Terror have been recruited by the Iranian government, which leverages Shia Muslim beliefs and offers good salaries. They were sent to Syria to fight alongside Assad forces against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) and pro-independence groups. The local conflict in Kurram, and its place in the larger external conflict, such as the War on Terror and the occupation of Afghanistan, has affected labour mobilization patterns and created migratory fighters, who fight either for money or ideology in the Middle East. Often in popular media, the radicalization of these young militants is seen as an issue of identity or international politics. But the agrarian roots of this conflict are crucial to account for — most youth in Kurram are unemployed and don’t foresee a viable future for themselves.
It is believed that many Pakistani Shias recruited by Iran in Damascus were stationed to protect the shrine of Prophet Mohammad’s (pbuh) granddaughter, Zainab. Image: REUTERS via Tribune
Conclusions
Aspiration, unemployment, and violent conflict are together producing a toxic mix in the rural areas of Kurram. Despite some farmers picking up the agricultural slack of other disinterested youth, even the income from small-scale farming is not what it used to be. The government also recently imposed a ban on selling urea due to its potential use in making bombs. As a result, agricultural productivity has declined drastically, further reducing the motivation of people to farm.
The prevailing insecurity and conflict are contributing to a very poor quality of life for people in Kurram. Many have post-traumatic stress disorder and scarce resources to make themselves better. Financial insecurity and power outages leave little room for entertainment or internet access, and many youth spend their days in boredom. Lack of access to these basic necessities, or avenues for sports or entertainment is a huge contributor to youth flight. Similarly, internalized colonial tropes of the warrior Pashtuns puts an extra burden on youth in Kurram. Young boys are also valourized as brave guardians of their families. After a decade of brutal conflict and war, these young people are traumatized, burned out, and looking for ways to escape. Understanding their needs and their concerns is imperative to protect them from becoming the grist of geopolitical conflict.
Sibth ul Hassan Turi belongs to Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is a member of the Awami Workers Party Islamabad/Rawalpindi.