harryjohnstone

The Aleppo souk, crucible of memory

Mohamed Aqad, 65, hands me a glass of cardamom-infused tea, lights another Marlboro Red and sits back in his plastic chair. Ensconced in his handicraft shop in Aleppo’s souk, he’s in no rush. ‘Time stopped 15 years ago,’ he says.

‘When I was a boy in this area, all the shops would sell spices – cumin, cinnamon, black pepper, white pepper – also pistachios, chestnuts, desiccated coconut,’ Aqad says. ‘It was full of life.’

The souk is Mohamed Aqad’s life. He has worked there since the 1960s. But in August 2012, Aleppo became a battleground between regime and opposition forces. Like everyone else, Mohamed had to avoid the medina. A month later, he tried to return to his shop. Reaching his destination, he found two dead bodies on the ground. They were shot by regime snipers installed at the citadel. He hurried home, counting 18 bodies on the way. ‘I felt so afraid,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t come back again. I didn’t want to lose my life for my shop.’

The war in Syria nearly destroyed Aleppo’s medina. The debris, blackened buildings and pock-marked walls reveal the physical damage this World Heritage Site has suffered. I can only imagine the conflict’s emotional scars. But life must go on. Restoration projects are underway. The sense of juxtaposition between the past and future is dizzying.

I visited Aleppo’s old city once before, in 2003. It was wonderful: a maze of covered streets and vaulted arcades hosting thousands of cavernous shops selling everything from pomegranates, fresh ricotta, mutton with entrails dangling on display, to gold jewellery, kilims, textiles and dresses. Donkeys would trot along paved alleys carrying sacks of fresh mint. There were mosques, madrassahs, hammams and cafés where old men played backgammon, nursing hookah pipes.

What was then a fluid circuit of labyrinthine passages is now broken. Today, a third of the medina lies in monochrome: a tableau of grey stones piled up against walls charred by the fire which funnelled through the souks in September 2012 – the result of shelling and gunfire between government forces and opposition rebels. The Khan al-Olabeyya, for example, an area of the medina containing medieval palaces (hosting the Italian merchant Marcopoli family), caravanserai and covered souks is now rubble and dust, the size of four football pitches, exposed to the sky.

While I stand there, surveying the scene, an Erk Sous vendor appears, tapping his metal cups, creating a loud percussive jingle. He offers me some liquorice juice. The brown liquid is bubbly from the long pour. It tastes cool, sweet and bitter. With his red, embroidered fez and waistcoat, replete with giant brass vessel, he brings colour, levity and a touch of the surreal to this desolate space.

Liquorice was likely imported from Egypt thousands of years ago. Trade was the making of Aleppo, whose origins stretch back to the Neolithic period. Situated on the western flank of the Fertile Crescent, between the mediterranean sea and the Euphrates River, it later became a hub along the Silk Road, connecting the Fertile Crescent with China and Europe.

The Madrassa al-Halawiyah, in the al-Jalloum souk, reflects Aleppo’s many layers of history. After Alexander the Great arrived, during the Hellenistic period, it was a temple. In the Byzantine era, it became the Cathedral of Saint Helena. Then in the 12^th century CE, during the crusader siege, Ibn al-Khashan converted the building into the Mosque of the Saddlemakers. Inside, the first thing I notice are its Corinthian columns. Then the cupola, darkened by smoke. Today, it survives the war, just. Major restoration work is needed.

Fortunately, the new Syrian government and international organisations are restoring elements of Aleppo’s old town. In 2025, the new government began installing water pipes as well as new lighting around the Citadel. The Municipality of Aleppo and the Directorate-General for Antiquities and Museums are also active in rehabilitating parts of the historic centre, including the Citadel and Grand Umayyad Mosque.

Ali Hamedi, 36, is hammering a steel chisel into a wall on the first floor of the Khan el-Sabun, a district in the medina where Aleppo’s famous soap was once manufactured and sold. He is remodelling some archways that look down onto a courtyard. Hamedi’s work is part of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s (AKTC) restoration programme, which supports the government’s broader efforts. As we speak, Ali shows me a shahuta, an ancient tool still deployed today. It renders stone flush, yet its steel incisors leave little striations across the surface.

‘Working here is fascinating,’ says Hamedi. ‘Everything in the old city has a soul. It is alive. I’m connecting with people from the past.’ Since 2018, AKTC has repaired eight key areas of the medieval souk, with more rehabilitation planned. Other international organisations such as UNESCO, UN-HABITAT and UNDP have also been involved in efforts to restore the city’s historic centre.

On my final evening, I meet a group of Aleppians in the Beit Achiqbash, an ornate former residence in the Christian al-Jdayde neighbourhood. Under the stewardship of trainers, 40 purposeful conservationists move around an extravagant 18^th-century Mamluki-Rococo courtyard, applying digital engineering tools like Total Station. Under this Junior Chamber International project, these young architects and engineers are using technology to re-imagine building designs and restore their city’s architectural heritage.

Beyond the construction work, though, I reflect on the traumas that Aleppo’s residents must repair. ‘The souk holds a lot of memories for Aleppian people,’ says Ammad Qaynouz. He had to vacate his father’s spice shop during the war. Coming back, he says, has helped him recall his happier memories before the conflict. The shop sells medicinal herbs and natural remedies. As such, it is healing not just the bodies of its customers, but also Qaynouz’s mind.

Another trader, Rahaf Houri, 33, describes the stress and anxiety she felt during the fighting. Her brother was killed by a sniper. She says she can barely remember anything before the war. But the vibrancy within the souk is helping her to recover. ‘There’s a lot of positive energy,’ she says. ‘Every day it feels better to be here.’

Rahaf’s shop is in the souk al-Hibal, one of the restored parts of the medina. These covered streets with new shops are immaculate. You can smell the paint and plaster. There is some dissonance, aesthetically, with the ancient walls elsewhere. This sense, I reflect, is also metaphysical: for merchants like Houri, as well as the returning customers, it will take time to fully ‘land’ within Aleppo’s post-war reality. But a feeling of cautious optimism is everywhere.

On my final morning in Aleppo, I walk into the souk for the last time. There are just a few shopkeepers opening their shutters. I can hear dovecotes warbling in the vaulted dome above me. There’s a voice reverberating. It sounds disembodied, ghostly. There are spirits in these streets. Lives, buildings, memories – they are formed and lost and revived in the old souks of Aleppo.

To Farm or Flee

The Climate Challenge Facing Syria’s Farmers

Rezak al Said pulls on a water pipe leading down to his well. Suddenly, there’s noise. A thrum of feathers flapping. Some birds burst out of the well, chirping as they pass. We smile. But Rezak’s situation is worrying. His well has been empty for months. “We never felt heat like this,” he says. “The area is becoming a desert. We are at a point of no return.”

This year, Syria has faced a historic water and food security crisis. The livelihoods of 14.5 million people – two thirds of the country’s population – were threatened by reportedly the worst drought in over 60 years. With international efforts supporting the new transitional government, there are signs of hope. But the challenge is immense.

“We used to have cows, sheep, turkey, duck, pigeon, vegetables, wheat and herbs,” says Rezak. “Then circumstances forced us to change.” He talks about the war, the extreme heatwave and the drought. Rezak has stopped trying to grow wheat himself, leasing out his land to others, and losing money in the process. Now he has sold off nearly all his poultry and livestock, including 230 sheep. With his grey hair and haggard face, Rezak seems older than his 47 years.

Rezak’s farm is in Jadoua village, a scattering of houses 20 km northeast of Salamieh, in Hama Governorate, central Syria. The landscape is flat and bone-dry; a patchwork of sand-coloured plots and occasional olive groves. It’s late afternoon when I visit, and the temperature has climbed above 40° Celsius.

Syria’s unbearably hot summers are being exacerbated by climate change. Since 1901, annual temperatures in Syria have increased by about 2°C, nearly 1 degree higher than the global average. By the end of this century, temperatures are projected to be as much as 6 °C higher compared with current levels.

Around the villages I visit, people remember greener times. Outside Lemsaraa, Hasan Yaghi recalled hyenas and deer roaming the land. Fadel Istanbuli described two streams near Bargan, as well as vineyards and abundant food. As a child, he would go for walks through natural forests of saf saf (willow) and zeuzafoon (linden). “It was like a heaven,” he said, raising his hands to the sky.

So much has changed. Under the Assad governments, intensive irrigation and thirsty cash crops like cotton were introduced, depleting the country’s groundwater. Today, Syria’s extreme heat means higher rates of water evaporation. With limited law enforcement, groundwater resources are being overexploited throughout the country. Illegal wells are everywhere. Annual average rainfall is expected to diminish by 11 percent over the next three decades. The outlook is desperate. Though some communities are trying to adapt to these challenges.

Aymen Qasem is wading waist-high through a sea of pepper plants. They grow voluminously in a 50-metre long polytunnel greenhouse. He starts picking the bright green fruits. Soon, there are too many to hold. Grinning, he offers me a handful.

Aymen is based in Taldara, located between Hama and Salamieh. Along with 7,000 other farmers in Syria, Aymen and his cooperative are being supported by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) with various assets and skills. In addition to the greenhouse, they now use solar power to pump water from a well, as well as drip irrigation and organic fertiliser. “Greenhouses are the future”, Aymen says, “they reduce heat and retain moisture”. I can see the benefits: the pepper plants inside the polytunnel are twice as tall as those in a field outside, yet they only require half the amount of water.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is working with the government to restore over 45,000 hectares of irrigation systems across Syria, helping nearly 70,000 households have access to water. Picture networks of canals once again channelling water into farming areas. “We have seen increases in cultivated land and improvements in food security,” says Jameson Zvizvai, the FAO project manager. His colleague, irrigation specialist Wael Al Derwish, adds that these measures have reduced tensions over water in areas such as Aleppo Governorate.

The FAO project, funded by the UK, is also providing trainings, cash vouchers for agro-processing activities and stronger early warning systems. These activities are supporting tens of thousands of farmers across Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Latakia and rural Damascus. “The project is really a beacon of hope,” says Jameson.

Syria’s government is being supported by other organisations, like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), on water and energy. President al-Sharaa’s nascent administration is also trying to tackle overexploitation of water reserves by amending legislation. But after the 14-year civil war, sanctions and a devastating recent earthquake, the Syrian state is at ground zero. To address the needs will take decades. There is little time.

Many are fleeing the countryside. “Migration is a hot topic,” says Ziad Ghaibor, from Al Qareb, east of Salamieh. “Our nightmare is that the situation continues like this year. If so, I think maybe a third of the village will leave in the next two years.”

Towards the end of my time with Rezak, we discuss the future and what hope there is for his children. I ask him a question: what helps him escape the stress. He falls silent. Then he pinches his nose. I realise he is crying.

To clear the air, we go out into Rezak’s back yard. His pigeon tower, with pipes splayed out from conical earthen walls, glows orange against the setting sun. Inside the tower, Rezak gathers up a slender white pigeon. Its breast bulges in his firm hand. He smiles.

I wonder now, if his pigeons, capable of flight and oblivious to the human condition, were the answer to my question.

Breaking the Cycle of Hunger in the Mountains of Northern Pakistan

Tackling intergenerational stunting and undernutrition requires targeted interventions

Hafiz Ur Rehman (right) next to his mother, is a beneficiary of the Central Asia Stunting Initiative (CASI) project run by Aga Khan Health Service Pakistan in Gilgit-Baltistan. He was born with severe acute malnutrition. Nasira, his mother, is busy preparing food for her family, lighting up the fire, at their home in Immit Valley, Ghizer District.

Nasira Wali is snapping pieces of Juniper wood in the dim light of her living room. She places the kindling on the open fire. Soon the flames lick. Her veiled face glows. She heats up some milk.

It is a heart-warming moment, but Nasira’s situation is pretty bleak. Her family is trapped in a cycle of hunger. In her village and throughout the far north of Pakistan, it requires an extraordinary effort to break it.

Nasira’s four-year-old son, Hafiz, sits beside his mother. He stares at the ground for several minutes. When he was about nine months old, Nasira says, he began crying every night, his skin turned “white” and his hands and feet began to swell.

“When he couldn’t sleep,” she says, “I couldn’t sleep. Seeing my baby like that…I was so anxious.”

Nasira and her family live in a village called Immit, which lies at the southern slopes of the great Pamir mountain range.

Outside Nasira’s house, there are a few green, terraced fields of wheat, potatoes and onions, lined with apricot and apple trees.

Shimmering willows and poplars offer shade. It could appear idyllic, but the reality is far from it: 136,000 children under five in Gilgit-Baltistan – 46 per cent of that age group – are stunted.

“We are a poor family,” says Jamjur Naroz, another mother I meet in Immit. Her house is half-constructed, with grey tarpaulin sheeting protecting the front door.

Jamur’s husband works as a labourer, earning £3 a day. This is the family’s total daily income.

“We cannot afford a balanced diet,” she says.

Their son Kaleem was too weak to breastfeed properly as a newborn. Today, aged two and a half, he is both stunted and underweight.

Serious undernutrition has life-changing consequences. When both mother and child don’t consume nearly enough macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates and fats) or micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) during the pregnancy and breastfeeding period, children like Hafiz and Kaleem are physically impaired for life.

Severe undernourishment hinders their physical development, which includes, of course, their brains. They are more likely to face poverty later in life. Their children could then easily suffer the same fate. This is why nutrition experts talk about an intergenerational cycle of hunger.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is trying to break this cycle by tackling poverty through bolstering farming in northern Pakistan.

IFAD’s Economic Transformation Initiative (ETI) is enlarging farmer smallholding sizes. It has established over 160 cooperatives for more than 40,000 farmers.

Cooperatives are crucial to farmers’ development. Sharing grain stores lowers costs, while greater collective output enables farmers to negotiate better prices.

Cooperatives help farmers access better information, finance and markets. These benefits can increase returns and production.

The ETI has also embarked on a massive infrastructure project. Across the mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan, IFAD has built over 430 km of irrigation channels and 380 km of farm to market roads. “It is a huge and herculean task,” says IFAD’s Khadim Saleem, who coordinates the ETI project.

Pakistan’s government is leading efforts to break the hunger cycle in the region and nationally.

Mohammad Abbas, project director at the department of health in Gilgit-Baltistan, refers to the government’s national cash transfer scheme, known as the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), among others.

Launched in 2008, the monthly cash vouchers of between $15 and $20 are sustaining some of Pakistan’s poorest.

The scheme is working: between 2011 and 2019, the percentage of BISP beneficiaries below the poverty line fell from 90 to 72 per cent, according to a World Bank evaluation published this year.

Yet while the BISP has succeeded in tackling poverty in this northern region, the programme is quite a blunt instrument; more targeted interventions are also required.

In a treatment room of the health clinic in Immit, Gulsherran Mohdsadik is slipping a measuring tape around Urwa Hussain’s left arm.

Gulsherran positions the four-year-old girl on some scales. She then measures her height and the data is recorded in a book.

Gulsherran is supporting Urwa as part of the Aga Khan Development Network’s (AKDN) Central Asia Stunting Initiative (Casi).

Three years ago, Urwa was stunted. Luckily, however, she was on the Casi books.

During a routine visit to the Aga Khan Health Centre in Immit, Ghizer District, Senior Lady Health Visitor Lal Begum and Lady Health Visitor (LHV) Gul Shereen measure the height of Syeda Urwa — Syeda Urwa is weighed and measured during a routine health check up Credit: Arsalan Haider/AKDN

The Casi team educated her parents on breastfeeding techniques, complementary feeding, dietary diversity and hygiene. They provided a nutritional supplement called Ronaq for a full year and monitored her growth each month.

Over the past three years, her height and weight reached the average centile for her age. Today, she is thriving.

Since 2019, Casi has been tackling undernutrition in nearly 450 of the most remote mountainous regions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Teams of nutritionists are sweeping through the valleys, speaking to villagers, assessing their health status, raising awareness of better feeding practices and, where necessary, donating high-nutrition supplementary feeding products.

The overall results are positive: where Casi operates in Gilgit-Baltistan, in just five years since the project began, the prevalence of stunting among children under five has dropped from 41 to 35 per cent or just over one in three, according to an Aga Khan University evaluation. The fall in stunting is happening faster than the global average, based on Unicef data.

But despite these programmes, so many families continue to fall through the cracks.

Nasira’s son, Hafiz, for example, suffers from anaemia so severe that he can’t concentrate, so he can’t go to school. He has gastric issues, so he can’t easily eat.

Nasira has to give her son medication like Trimetabol, to treat his lack of appetite and digestion problems. He wears a leather amulet containing verses from the Quran and his parents pray for him.

As I write this, after my time in Pakistan, I wonder what Hafiz’s future could have been.

If only he and his mother had been able to eat properly in those early years, when she was pregnant and for a year or two after his birth. Perhaps, I reflect, he could have gone on to study engineering, medicine, law. He could have supported his family and his community.

He could have pursued his dreams.

Our dream should be a world where no family has to survive on £3 a day; where all of us can thrive. It starts with the food we eat.

This article was supported by the Aga Khan Development Network and published by The Telegraph on 16 October, World Food Day.

From Hunger to Hope

Kenya’s transition to sustainable food production

Farmer PETER IRUNGU JOROGE, 52, adds his home-made compost into the soil on his crop-growing plot in Muranga County, central rural Kenya, June 28, 2023. © AKDN/Georgina Goodwin

Justus Ndemwa is sitting on an empty plastic water canister. He looks away. His voice is soft and faltering. “For five years the rains have failed,” he says. Some days, the 72-year-old, who suffers from anaemia, eats only rice or beans. He is not alone. Now because of the high cost of food and the impacts of climate change, millions of Kenyans face hunger every day. As the situation persists, something, surely, has to change.

Ndemwa and his three children live in a brick and mud hut no larger than a double bed in a field a few miles from Kauwi town in Kitui County. The landscape is sparse: the odd failed corn field, thorny scrub and patches of dry grass. The family lives largely off handouts from people in Kauwi. Ndemwa is waiting for cash transfers from the World Food Programme. Otherwise, he prays. “I pray so much,” he says, “more than five times a day.”

Increasing numbers of people in Kenya are experiencing hunger, partly because of food shortages and prices being far above their five-year average. In addition to the lack of supply, food price rises are also due to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused labour shortages and constrained supply chains. On top of this, the war between Russia and Ukraine thwarted fertiliser supplies. It also prompted countries to impose food export controls. Energy price volatility has also created problems for farmers globally.

In this choppy geopolitical context, some agribusinesses in Kenya are buffering farmers’ risks while maintaining food production. One of the largest exporters of green beans to Europe, Frigoken, for example, has for decades created contracts with each of the tens of thousands of smallholders growing the crops. Well before the harvest, the company agrees on a pre-set price with each farmer for their beans, thereby assuring them a reliable market. Frigoken helps the farmers access inputs like fertiliser on a credit basis. It also exposes the growers to technical knowledge through training programmes delivered by extension workers. As such, both the farmers and the company boost their yields and income.

In his lush plot in Muranga County, surrounded by banana and eucalyptus trees, Peter Joroge shares his success growing beans with Frigoken for the past decade: “In the beginning,” he says, “I would get 80 to 100 kg per unit annually. But it has gradually increased to 200 kg per unit. I wish my parents had farmed the way I do,” he adds, “because I would have gone to school for longer.”

As well as supporting them with growing cash crops, Frigoken also helps farmers produce staples such as maize for their own consumption. This strengthens smallholders’ household food security alongside their longer-term viability as food producers.

At the Frigoken processing factory in Nairobi, meanwhile, 85 percent of the workforce is women. Staff receive decent pay, health care and pension plans. There’s even a crèche. Contrary to perceptions of corporate agribusinesses exploiting workers to maximise profits, Frigoken supports them and incurs their risk while delivering a commercial return.

Yet beyond the fallout of the pandemic and the Ukraine war, there’s another factor causing hunger in Kenya: climate change. According to data shared by the Kenyan meteorological department, average annual temperatures in Kitui County have risen by 1.9°C over the past 40 years. That’s more than double the global average. Combine this heat with a prolonged lack of rainfall and no wonder crops are struggling to grow.

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis covering the period between March and June 2023, there were 5.4 million “acutely food insecure” people in Kenya. These people would often go a day or more without eating anything at all. The main cause was drought; in the worst areas, the rains had failed for at least four successive years. This is why the number of people facing such severe hunger had risen steadily since 2020.

In this desperate situation, farmers, technocrats and politicians must respond to environmental as well as financial challenges. Fortunately, some initiatives offer hope.

Rosemary Waweru is hoisting a four-metre-high stick into the foliage of a colossal avocado tree. Soon they begin to fall. Thump. Thump. In less than a minute, eight oval fruits have thudded to the ground. She gathers them into a pile, smiling. As large as ostrich eggs, their skins gleam emerald green.

The buxom 62-year-old manages her own three-acre farm in Kiamuchwe, a village in Kirinyaga County. The countryside is dense with plots of maize, peas, barley and wheat as well as cash crops like avocados, mangoes and bananas.

Waweru is now crafting her own natural plant-based pesticide as well as a fertiliser made by fermenting chicken feathers in water. She has adopted these practices through the Maendeleo project, a pilot launched in 2022 as a collaboration between the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and Frigoken. In switching from chemical to organic, Waweru’s methods are improving her soil, plant and native species health.

“Regenerative agriculture is about giving back to the soil,” says Leigh Winowiecki, a soil scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF in Nairobi. “For far too long, we have been taking soil for granted. We need to think of soil as our bank account, we cannot continue to draw from it without giving back.”

In Kenya, the Maendeleo project is giving back. At a national scale, the practices adopted by farmers like Waweru could regenerate entire ecosystems and regulate the water cycle. They can also mitigate greenhouse gas emissions: by dropping chemical inputs, the Kenyan is also helping to reduce the emissions that occur from the manufacture and transport of these synthetic products.

Waweru’s new farming practices are not just greener; they’re also more productive. Her trees have gone from producing an average of 250 avocados each year to over 350 today. Better still, now that she produces them naturally, she sells them for up to double the amount she could before.

In less than two years, Maendeleo has had extraordinary results: average maize yields amongst the initial 2,500 farmers targeted in Kirinyaga and Embu counties have grown by 30 percent, while coffee production has jumped by 60 percent. Farming ecosystems are flourishing.

The farmers under the pilot have virtually no input costs anymore. This is the main reason why they’re saving around 20 percent on bills for each crop cycle. Another saving comes from fewer medical bills. Before going organic, many farmers were visiting clinics regularly to treat illnesses caused by exposure to synthetic pesticides.

Regenerative agriculture is healing bodies as well as the land. It is cheaper for farmers and potentially more productive. Maendeleo is now attracting “huge” interest from research institutions, donors and the private sector, says Didier Van Bignoot, the AKF global advisor in sustainable agriculture, food security and climate resilience. Over the coming years, it plans to reach three million smallholder farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Yet the road to end hunger is long. Millions of Kenyans are suffering every day. Tackling such widespread deprivation requires decades-long investments into the building blocks of society: education, health, infrastructure and social protection. But agriculture, too, matters. As Peter Joroge implied, good farming has always been central to development.

As I write this, some months after visiting Kenya, I remember my impressions from that final day visiting Kitui County. Herders leading bony cattle along dirt tracks. Threadbare fields of maize. Clouds overhead, but no rain. Most of all, that conversation with Justus Ndemwa. It was so muted. Words seemed pointless.

Though some extraordinary initiatives are changing things on the ground. Regenerating ecosystems and sustaining livelihoods, they are helping food systems to flourish. Donors, government and business need to get behind them. Not with more words, though; with action.

Published in the Telegraph and Aga Khan Development Network on World Food Day, 16 October 2023.

The Herbalists of the Souq El Blat

Tawfiq Ben Yacoub in his shop in the Souq El Blat

“The Souq El Blat is the heartbeat of the medina,” proclaims Mourad Boughanmi, a medicinal herb seller speaking from his shop in this historic quarter of Tunis. Indeed, for centuries, its herbs have sustained the bodies of people living here. Bundles of wild thyme, sage, poppy, garlic and eucalyptus have lined the walls of this shadowy Souq for at least 700 years.

Since Covid-19 entered Tunisia last year, some herbalists say demand for plant medicine has grown, with greater numbers wanting to strengthen their immune systems naturally. But customs are changing, and without any state support, this trade has become endangered.

Five thousand years ago the Sumerians of Mesopotamia documented the health-enhancing properties of wild plants. These early texts articulated the ancient practice of herbalism, where ecology, biology and chemistry meet. In the ensuing millennia, medicinal herbs have been picked and prepared to help with a number of different ailments. In the cavernous shops of the Souq El Blat, this profession lives on.

Down the Rue Bacha Hamba, Tawfiq Ben Yacoub, a herb dealer with a passion for art, history and music has a shop with the chaotic feel of an artist’s studio; it is filled with flasks, bottles, paintings, bags of old herbs and the sweet smell of incense. He tells his story over the quiet fuzz of a radio and bleating mopeds passing by.

As a boy, he would hike with his Libyan father in the green mountains near Benghazi, where he learnt about medicinal herbs. He describes the 10th century Tunisian physician, Ibn al Jazzar, advancing herbal medicine in Tunisia and across North Africa. After the Islamic Golden Age, Ben Yacoub believes medicine stagnated across the Muslim world compared with Europe due to weaker institutionalised scholarship. “We lost knowledge of this science when we lost the scripts,” he says. “Today our children learn about Ibn al Jazzar, but as history rather than for scientific training.”

Nearby, in his shop next to the Khilwiya Bilhassan mosque, Chowki El Foutt is another herb dealer who sees his vocation as a strand in Tunisia’s rich and complex history. El Foutt says it was the Ottoman Turks who really established herbal medicine here, from the 16th to the 18th centuries. He views his practice as part of Tunisia’s patrimoine. “Just as we have heritage in clothes and language, so we have herbal medicine. It is something we need to keep.”

Yet with the rise of pharmaceutical medicine, these herbalists can appear artisanal. They also lack outside support. When I ask Mourad Boughanmi whether he receives state aid, he creases with laughter. “We get zero help”, he said. Several others say the same thing.

Being marginalised in this way is frustrating for Samir Ben Youssef. A herbal doctor specialized in aiding women’s fertility, Ben Youssef has inherited his father’s profession and treated patients in the Souq El Blat for 20 years.

“People think herbalists are charlatans”, says Ben Youssef, shaking his head. He is trying to resist this labelling by ensuring his results are assessed at clinical laboratories through CBEU tests and other standard, scientific procedures. While using these modern practices, the basis of his learning reaches back as far as the great 11th century Persian polymath, Ibn Sena.

“100 years ago, this whole road as far as the mosque (Zaytuna) was lined with herboristes”, says Ben Youssef. “There was a whole chain of people who went to gather the herbs. But young people today don’t want to work in this trade anymore. And the elders don’t want to pass on their knowledge,” he says. “So it will disappear.”

Though there are some younger herbalists, like Yacine Ben Moussa, who believe that modernity offers advantages. “Before I only worked with herbs that grow in Tunisia,” he says. “Now, with the internet, I can google things and order foreign herbs online.” Among the shelves of plant medicines, which include cloves, anise and chia seeds, he shows me a framed certificate of phytotherapy from an academy of complementary medicine. Clearly there are institutions of learning.

As Samir Ben Youssef intimated, however, the reputation of herb dealers may present a problem. They are associated with black magic. Many of the shops sell turtle carcasses as lucky charms. Some allegedly sell crushed iguana and hedgehog carcasses. One gave me a bag of cowrie shells and black nigella seeds to ward off the evil eye.

These customs might confirm suspicions that herbalism is hogwash, but it’s worth seeing them in context. Despite its secularism, spiritual belief still heavily influences Tunisian society. In medicine, while Tunisia has largely adopted western practices, the relationship between spirituality and healing lives on. This broader view of medicine – which herbalists span – has arguably helped to sustain a more holistic, intuitive approach to healing.

As I leave the medina, taking in the smells of leather and jasmine scent from a succession of cavernous shops, I pass the crumbling main entrance of 7th century Al Zaytuna mosque. My head is alive with thoughts of shamans, Ibn Sena and the madrassas, and the people once employed in gathering the plants and seeds to heal the sick.

I reflect on a part of herbalism that modern medicine – like many modern things – has lost, in being processed and abstracted: the relationship between things. In this Souq, a person suffering from diabetes can see and touch and smell the wormwood that they hope will heal their illness. Through the herbalist, they can learn about its anti-diabetic effects, and that it grows among the craggy rocks of the southern Jebel Oust mountains.

This is important: it reminds people that most medicine is essentially drawn from the living or organic world, a basic fact that may be lost to many consumers of western medication. This is not to discredit western medicine at all – its importance, for billions of people, is undeniable. But it is to remember that humbling, sacred aspect of medicine; that much of what heals us can be found in nature.

An edited version of this article was published in The Guardian

Feeding The Hungry

Advocacy and blame in the global fight against hunger

Michelle Jurkovich

Band Aid’s platinum-bestselling song of 1984–5, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, may have ignited a cosmopolitan sense of compassion, but its central plea to “Feed the World” is as vague as the problem of hunger is entrenched. Feed the world? Who is responsible? How should it be done? In Feeding the Hungry, a concise and insightful analysis of anti-hunger advocacy, Michelle Jurkovich explores this conceptual problem.

Most would agree that the existence of chronic hunger in the world is undesirable. But states and anti-hunger organizations diverge over how it should be tackled. Jurkovich conducts a survey of a dozen organizations, including Action Against Hunger, Care, FIAN International, Oxfam and the
Rockefeller Foundation, asking them who is “to blame” for chronic hunger? And what is the solution?

For the first question, answers include transnational corporations, national governments, outside governments, price speculators and “lack of capacity”. For the second, respondents proposed agricultural development, food aid, safety nets, gender equality, regulation and climate action. In other words, there is no consensus on either matter.

There is no “norm” when it comes to addressing hunger, Jurkovich emphasizes. When hunger exists, no single actor can be blamed and shamed, which helps to explain the global stasis. This problem is confirmed by the flimsiness of the “right to food”. Promulgated into international law in 1966, the right to food should help advocacy efforts: it gives governments responsibility for ensuring populations do not go hungry. But governments are rarely pursued or held to account on the point. In part this is because organizations fear being kicked out of countries by angry governments or becoming embroiled in lengthy and expensive legal processes. And so,
little changes, and most people continue to see hunger as a development shortcoming rather than a rights violation.

Policy makers, activists and academics must construct a shared understanding of hunger as a human rights issue if we are to get beyond this impasse, Jurkovich concludes. The extraordinary public reaction to Band Aid’s song showed the moral purchase of hunger. With a common framing of the problem, campaigns could pressure governments to tackle hunger more effectively. That way, we really might feed the world.

Times Literary Supplement

Can Libya’s Migrant Detention System Be Reformed?

Following the cessation of hostilities in Libya and the efforts of Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha to decriminalize the country’s security sector, there are grounds for considering whether there is now scope for reform of Libya’s migrant-detention system. But, given the involvement of militia groups in the detention centres and Libya’s post-conflict politics, what are the prospects for reform?

On the night of 2 July 2019, an airstrike hit the Tajoura detention centre outside Tripoli, killing 53 migrants. The outcry for the closure of such centres in Tripoli was immediate. Observers asked why hundreds of migrants were being held at such a site, with the conflict raging around the country’s capital. Governments called for immediate changes to Libya’s policies on holding migrants. Yet, over a year later, little has changed. Detention centres continue to operate adjacent to military sites, and these centres are secured by militias, some of whom fought in the 2019–2020 conflict to control Tripoli.

There are 34 detention centres holding an estimated 3 200 migrants in Libya, 20 of which – at least nominally – fall under the authority of the Department for Combating Illegal Immigration (DCIM). The fact that all detention centres in the country are secured by militias is problematic, not only because this enables abuse against detainees but also because the militias are active in armed conflict. In the Tariq al-Sikka centre, for example, many of the guards fought on the side of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord against the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) during the 2019–2020 conflict. Another militia, the Abu Salim Central Security (ASCS) force, guards the Abu Salim detention centre. That militia was heavily involved in the conflict, taking many casualties in the area around Tripoli International Airport.

Investigation and Deportation Units (IDUs) are another element in Libya’s detention system. Their emergence has coincided with increasing numbers of unauthorized migrant releases at disembarkation points. These migrants can end up in an IDU before being transferred to a detention centre. IDUs are also run by militias, despite their semi-formal status under the DCIM.

How Militias Benefit From Involvement In Detention

Militias benefit from detention centres through their involvement in human smuggling or trafficking networks, by using detainees for labour, by diverting goods intended for detainees, or posturing as state security services to boost their legitimacy.

In the Souq al-Khamis area near al-Khoms, where human smuggling has escalated, there are several armed groups, and the Souq al-Khamis detention centre lies within their web of operations. Militias bribe or extort migrants for money. The 2017 UN Panel of Experts report found that the al-Nasr Battalion and its commander, Mohammed Kushlav, were complicit in human-smuggling operations around the Zawiya littoral. The guards at the al-Nasr centre are likely to have profited from extortion or bribery, along with unauthorized releases of migrants for payments, a form of human trafficking.

Some militias exploit detained migrants for labour. The work migrants are forced to do often involves cleaning weapons and loading ammunition, which risks detention centres being regarded as viable military targets – as was the case with the airstrike on the Tajoura centre in 2019.

Militias in several detention centres also profit by diverting and reselling goods meant for use inside the centres. As militias are not subjected to any meaningful state supervision, they are free to act as ‘gatekeepers’, siphoning off goods in return for the security they provide.

Some armed groups meanwhile present themselves as an extension of the state’s law enforcement. The Subul al-Salam militia, for example, has promoted its credentials as an anti-smuggling actor (despite allegations that it is involved in people smuggling). These tactics are often driven by a desire to gain state backing and legitimacy. Such arrangements potentially offer a safer and more lasting form of job security and income, particularly if any national stabilization or security sector reform processes are realized.

The Effects of the Conflict

In June 2020, the LAAF were pushed back from Tripoli – a victory for the GNA and its aligned armed groups. Winning the battle for Tripoli has thrown the balance of power in Tripolitania into renewed flux as politicians and militia leaders vie with one another and between themselves for the upper hand in the post-conflict context.

Bashagha is faced with a division of authority between the DCIM’s head, Mabrouk Abd al-Hafiz, and the undersecretary for migration, Mohammed al-Shibani, who has close links to Usama al-Juweili, the commander of the Western Military Region. This division is more than administrative and points towards the interdependence of militia leaders and public officials in the distribution of power.

In July 2020, for example, al-Hafiz removed Mohammed al-Khoja, the leader of the Tripoli militia running the Tariq al-Sikka detention centre. By September, however, it was clear al-Khoja had ignored this instruction and was still in Tripoli. One source said that al-Khoja’s influence had increased within the DCIM because of his role during the Battle for Tripoli. Removing al-Khoja would have increased Bashagha’s authority over the detention system, an effort that has failed.

In another example following the end of the fighting, one of the leaders of the armed group that runs the Mabani IDU was appointed in July by Libya’s prime minister to a senior position in the government’s intelligence service – despite the fact that his militia is known to extort detainees.

Prospects for Security Sector Reform

These developments hint at the contest at play between politicians vying for militia loyalty, and indicate the powerful influence militias exert over state officials and resources. They point to the fact that power in western Libya is still measured by military strength. Even though the conflict has subsided, armed groups continue to retain the power to shape national politics.

This has two worrying consequences. The first is that government officials are forced to formalize ad hoc power arrangements based on whichever armed group happens to hold martial advantage in a given area. The part-formalization of IDUs, where militia-run holding sites are given a veneer of legitimacy through the presence of DCIM officials, suggests as much. This effectively creates a path for individuals involved in armed organized crime, such as al-Khoja and others, to become part of the official state apparatus, whether military, intelligence or government.

Secondly, the fact that competing militia groups control the detention centres and their surrounding areas helps create resistance to a unified central authority. For example, the Abu Salim area of Tripoli, and its detention centre, is controlled as if it were a quasi mini-state by the ASCS.

This is an immensely challenging context in which to pursue security sector reform. Bashagha, the interior minister, has had limited success in pursuing this and he has faced opposition from politically connected militia elites.

In Bashagha’s favour, there have been protests around the country of late demanding better governance. Moreover, some of Libya’s key international partners maintain a particular interest in strengthening the country’s migration governance. Reforming the detention system is an area where several parties’ interests overlap. Delivering such a programme would heed those calls that followed the Tajoura airstrike, avert criminality and do a service to the thousands of migrants currently at risk of abuse. The question remains whether the GNA, faced with these internal divisions, can forge such a path.

Published for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime

‘The Dates Are Drying’: Climate Change and Water Scarcity in Tunisia

Mansour Rajeb is wrapping a plastic protective sheet around a branch of dates in his oasis near the village of Bchelli, in southern Tunisia. Tying it up, he lingers.

“I’m worried,” he says. “The quality is getting worse. The dates are getting drier.”

Like thousands of farmers across the region, the effects of the climate crisis and water scarcity are threatening his livelihood. “When the quality is poor, we receive lower prices. I’m earning less. This year, I’ll earn a third of last year, which was an average year.”

On the road out of Bchelli, a gust of wind makes the sand rise like steam. Beyond the palm trees lies desert; a flat, barren terrain of scrub, rock and sand. Communities have survived here for thousands of years, but their changing environment and practices may soon make it uninhabitable.

Overall temperatures here have risen by about 1C since 1988, according to data collected by the meteorological office in Tozeur, the capital of the region’s western district. This far exceeds average global warming levels.

“Temperatures used to peak in August and then fall, but now the heat persists until October,” says Taieb Foudhaili, of South Organic, a date exporting company based in Kebili. Given this pattern of warming, humidity levels are falling. The plants adapt by releasing water. The result, says Taieb is a drier, poorer product. His company must now do more sorting to maintain quality standards.

Global heating has also created shorter periods where date palms can flower and pollinate, according to Nabila el Kabri, an agronomist based in Kebili. As a consequence, Nabila has observed a decline in the productivity of dates per hectare.

But it’s not just rising temperatures causing anxiety. Over the past few decades, and particularly after Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, unlawful plantations have spread like blots across the white landscape. The state has failed to exert proper controls. There are now 38,000 declared hectares of palm tree across the Kebili region, though the real figure is probably as high as 50,000 hectares. Two thirds of the entire country’s dates are produced here.

Tunisia’s population has trebled since 1960, while gross national income per capita has fallen since 2010. In a region where almost half of young people are underemployed, agriculture offers a lifeline for many. After olive production, dates are Tunisia’s second most valuable agricultural export. The sector is worth more than US$ 200m. This revenue is vital, sustaining more than 600,000 people.

But a consequence of ever more palm plantations is water scarcity. Date palms are thirsty. On each hectare there are between 100 to 140 palm trees. Each tree requires the equivalent of 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water each year. Neither the old natural springs nor base groundwater can meet this demand.

Farmers are resorting to drilling and pumping water from aquifers. There are now about 30,000 wells, hundreds of metres deep, across the country. Half of these were drilled illegally, according to a 2017 report by Tunisia’s Ministry of Agriculture. Water levels are being increasingly overexploited across southern Tunisia. Half of this water is not renewable.

“If we keep creating these new oases, with thousands of hectares of new trees, then over 10 to 15 years we won’t have any water left. It’s a question of sustainability,” says Nabila El Kabri.

From the 13th century, water systems and inter-cropping practices meant Tunisians were masters in managing their scarce resources. However, modern palm plantations are essentially monocultures, producing the valuable Deglet Noor variety of date and little else. When this crop fails, farmers have little to fall back on.

Some are already suffering. Mansour said he has farmer friends who have already sold their trees from the new, poorly irrigated oases, because their crop was “so feeble”. Nabila says it is only a matter of time before date production as a whole will have to migrate north to Gafsa.

Ultimately, both problems Tunisia’s date farmers face – climate change and water scarcity – arise from a similar myopia; a common failure to see things holistically. “We are only thinking about the product,” said Taieb, “when we should be thinking about the air, the tree and the soil. We need to change the way we think.”

Lying in the shade of a palm tree in Chebika, 71-year-old Younes Belgasim is an unlikely figure of hope. His oasis is thriving. Younes is one of 18,000 people benefitting from a US$ 5.7m World Bank project that launched in 2014. The project provided Younes with seeds for vegetables and fruit trees, it improved his land’s soil and irrigation, and he got better fencing (protecting his plot from local wild boars).

The World Bank initiative supported Younes in restoring the traditional ‘three levels’ inter-cropping system. On his oasis, the date palms give shade to vines, banana, pomegranate and fig trees, while vegetables and wild grasses grow beneath.

This system demands more from farmers, and it may deliver less immediate commercial pay-off than exclusive Deglet Noor date production.

Both factors deter those farmers looking to work less and earn their revenue in one date harvest season. Inter-cropping can use more water, though it preserves water by maintaining humidity levels within the oasis ecosystem. Crucially, it improves the soil quality and strengthens biodiversity. And it diversifies farmers’ assets. This ecosystem-based farming can be a win-win: it protects farmers from climate, economic or disease-related shocks, while also preserving the natural environment.

“It is getting hotter,” says Younes, “but I’m not worried about climate change”. In a situation that’s becoming seriously worrying, perhaps his sense of security, as well as year-round earnings, will persuade others to farm in this way.

The Guardian

Ghosts of the Thar Desert: On the frontline of climate change in Pakistan

Ebu squints and her face creases into a dozen lines. She is peering down into her well but the act is pointless. She knows there is nothing down there. In moments of despair, life in Mal Nor, her drought-stricken village in the Thar Desert, seems equally senseless. With the climatic changes under way here, her ancestral lands in this part of south-eastern Pakistan are becoming almost uninhabitable.

“It used to rain a lot before,” she says, speaking in the Marwari language that is specific to this region. “It doesn’t now. It has drastically stopped.”

We stand by her well, near a couple of thatched huts and six sleepy goats that are tethered to a post. Her son and two young women look on; her small grandson, chapatti in mouth, stares, then breaks into tears. The surrounding landscape is sparse: sand, shrubs, the odd teak tree.

Ebu and her family are from an indigenous tribe called the Meghvars, who have lived in the Thar Desert for thousands of years. The land is full of such tribes; pastoral people whose livelihoods have mostly depended on goats and cattle.

Camels, peacocks, snakes and blackbucks share the arid 200,000 sq km expanse, most of which lies across the border in Rajasthan, India’s north-western state.

Scarce rainfall is not new here. Many of the elders describe their age in relation to a chapano (drought). Ebu says she has survived several chapano, at times eating merely grass and ants. These people are born survivors but their days in Tharparkar, as the district is called, might be numbered.

Farmers are losing their crops, cattle and goats because of the drought. Children are starving to death. Villagers are taking their own lives. Near Mithi, Tharparkar’s main town, several locals tell me that rainfall has halved in this region over the past two decades.

And it’s getting hotter. Across a range of indices, the Nasa Earth Exchange (NEX) has found that, over the past 50 years, temperatures in Sindh province, south-eastern Pakistan, have risen by more than 1.5C, around double the global average. Something has changed.

For a decade, I worked as a policy analyst for the UN and other organisations around the world. Reading countless reports at my desk in Rome, I became familiar with Pakistan’s particular vulnerability to natural disasters.

Over a 20-year period between 1998 and 2017, it experienced more than 140 climate-related events, such as hurricanes, flooding and heatwaves, causing more than 10,000 deaths and $3.8bn in losses each year through damage.

When I left the UN a few years ago, it was to write independently about hunger, climate change and other development challenges. In January, I decided to visit Pakistan to try to learn more about the lives of some of those most vulnerable to global warming.

The road that I take from Digri to Mithi shimmers in the heat. It was improved recently, with coal money, though the funds mostly went into constructing an open-cast coal mine and power station, located 70km away. The complex, known as Thar Coal Block II, was developed as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $60bn energy and infrastructure scheme that is under way across Pakistan. It began supplying electricity to Pakistan’s national grid in June.

Despite the asphalt-softening heat, which is now killing animals and people in southern Pakistan, the country’s efforts to extract fossil fuels from the ground are accelerating, generating ever higher carbon emissions.

For years, Pakistan’s population and manufacturing industries have suffered blackouts. CPEC offers a means to resolve the country’s energy crisis and, like all developed countries have done in the past, it helps both Pakistan and China pursue their fossil-fuelled industrial growth.

Banaras Khan, who is supporting climate-smart agriculture in Pakistan for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Islamabad, tells me the recurrent drought phenomenon in Tharparkar “gained momentum after 2013 and is becoming more frequent”. He says that a recent climate analysis the FAO conducted for Sindh province shows this can be attributed to climate change.

On the ground in Tharparkar, the land is so barren that even pasture cannot grow. Along the roadside, there are carcasses of animals, abandoned and atrophying, their skin caved-in between their bones. Locals here say “your livestock are like your diamonds” — a coping strategy when all else fails. When their animals starve, the owners are crushed.

A local historian called Bharomal Bheel tells me he visited a village called Jorvu, and saw a man who had just lost 300 sheep. Starving and dehydrated, they were killed by diseases. He was “completely broken”, crying in despair, says Bheel.

Alexander More, a climate historian at Harvard University, says Pakistan exemplifies how climate change can drive existing weather patterns to new extremes. “When we think of climate change, we usually think of global warming. But the reality is that, while temperatures are going upwards, with it also comes a pattern of increasing climate extremes. Southern Pakistan is an example of a place that is experiencing increasing droughts.”

Across the whole country, the risks are growing. The Himalaya, Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges in the north of the country hold 5,000 glaciers. Temperature rises or earthquakes can trigger what are called glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOF, which threaten populations living in the valleys and plains below.

In 2010, the Booni Gol outburst killed almost 2,000 people and destroyed 1.6 million homes. Thousands of acres of farmland were damaged. Today, analysts say seven million people in Pakistan are vulnerable to such floods.

The effects of rising temperatures are equally ominous for Pakistan’s lowland populations. The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report described how a global rise of 2C would have appalling consequences for South Asia’s megacities. By 2050, Karachi will have an estimated population of 24 million, and be likely to experience “deadly heatwaves” of 49C on an annual basis.

Sindh province was once at the heart of the great Indus Valley civilisation, which emerged more than 6,000 years ago, and thrived by channelling water via canals and dykes.

Today, high population levels and poor water management mean that Pakistan is running out of fresh water. The Indus River Basin Authority believes the country will suffer a shortage of 37 billion litres by 2025. These concerns will be intensified by potential “water wars” between India and Pakistan, should current tensions between the neighbouring countries escalate.

In the Thar Desert, communities already face an existential threat: there is nowhere near enough food to go round. Hundreds of thousands of people in Tharparkar, more than half the district’s population, face acute food insecurity, meaning they experience hunger but can go entire days without eating anything. Some 400,000 children under five are acutely malnourished, according to the FAO. More than 500 children died from hunger-related causes last year.

As crops fail, and livestock wither and die, the communal nature of life that has bound people in the Thar Desert together for so long is breaking apart. Villagers can no longer afford to stay on their lands. Ebu says that “most healthy men” have had to migrate to cities or towns where they hope to find work as day-labourers. “When they return,” she says, “they only bring things for their own family.”
Others complain in similar terms. Bheel calls it a “drought in community”. Perhaps it is this — the sense of togetherness evaporating — that causes most unease. “We are constantly worried,” says Ebu. “We’re in a constant state of anxiety. It’s as if we are drowning.”

As with most slow-motion humanitarian crises, the issue is not that there are no solutions — but that they require political will, finance and attention. For dry-land communities like those of the Thar Desert, technologies such as land terracing, drip irrigation and mulching can save water and preserve soil quality, sustaining the livestock and crops on which people depend. Such steps would mean major financing as well as government and international support.

The broader need to meet Pakistan’s energy requirements is also not unattainable; billions of dollars of investment are pledged at climate conferences every year. Some of this money could and should be invested in developing countries like Pakistan, enabling them to shift their fossil fuel-powered growth models towards renewable energy alternatives. Overall, it is a massive project and, in relative terms, there is very little time. It’s hard to feel optimistic.

One evening, Bheel tells me several tales, from legend and personal experience, recalling djinns (ghosts) and deos (spirits) and the alarming feats of the goddess Aver Devi. “My grandmother’s ghost stories were the worst,” he says, “because they seemed so true.”

Reality is beginning to attain something of these stories.
Late one night, with a guide, I visit a village in the desert. The moon and stars are bright enough to reveal our shadows on the sand. In the monochrome light, the landscape resembles a blackish sea. In silence, we come across some abandoned thatched huts; black shapes in the darkness.

We find other huts. Two figures emerge. A man says his eight brothers and their families have left this village. His is the last family left. It is a ghost village. Soon, because of climate change, places like these will be uninhabited, and the desert wind will be the only sound; a long, drawn-out gasp of what once was.

Financial Times Magazine

The Jewellers of Jaipur

Sir, want precious stones?” a man asks me, quietly. I am on the Johari Bazaar, one of Jaipur’s most notable thoroughfares, a straight colonnade screened above by the facades of adjoining houses. Everything is painted orange, terracotta and burnt pink. The man wears white shalwar kameez, and an air of indifference. He unfolds white paper, revealing colourful stones. “Emeralds, sapphires, rubies …” he says. He is among one of several groups of men gathered in this area; they’re local dealers, discussing prices. The avenue, whose name means gem shop road, is lined with dozens of shops displaying magnificent necklaces, bracelets and rings.

My encounter reveals something of why the “Pink City”, in northern India, has just been named a Unesco world heritage site. Jaipur was selected partly on the basis of its urban plan, featuring colonnaded streets and public squares called chaupurs. The city also contains architectural wonders: the City Palace, Amber Fort, and Water Palace among them. Walking past the pink sandstone Hawa Mahal (Palace of the Winds), Jaipur’s five-storey honeycomb-like wall of 50-odd protruding windows with latticework frames, miniature cupolas and painted motifs, is a breathtaking experience.

Along with these ceremonial court buildings, Jaipur was constructed for commerce. As Unesco states, the city was “designed to be a commercial capital”. Today, dealers and vendors animate the streets. And in back alleys and second-storey workshops, curious visitors will find artisans working on ornamental crafts. Unesco recognises how Jaipur “has maintained its local commercial, artisanal and cooperative traditions to this day”.

Jaipur is famous for its wood-block printing, tailoring, carpets, wood and metalwork. There are many contemporary boutiques, such as Teatro Dhora, selling elegant clothes, men’s handkerchiefs, notepads, leather handbags and more at (relatively) affordable prices. But it is in jewellery, in particular, where the city has historically excelled.

After founding Jaipur in 1727, Jai Singh II is said to have organised a procession through the city where local crowds threw precious stones over him and his entourage. He was infatuated with jewels. Under his patronage, Jaipur started to become a centre for jewellery, attracting artisans and traders from afar. Today, the city is home to hundreds of thousands of jewellers and dealers.

“People here are obsessed with jewellery,” says Akshat Ghiya, owner and creative head of Tallin Jewels, a boutiquebrand whose workshop is on the Johari Bazaar. “It’s almost a compulsion here for people to buy jewellery every few months. Ever since the Raja [Jai Singh II], jewellery has flourished here. Jaipur has become the largest stone-cutting centre in the world.”

By talking to dealers, visitors can find opportunities to meet jewellers, like Narenda, who I chat with in his second-floor workshop off the Chand Pol Bazaar. He examines a jewel on his workspace, while sitting cross-legged on the floor. “When I go to temples, I get a lot of ideas,” he says. On the wall is a framed picture of three Hindu gods, draped with a garland of orange marigolds. Below, at street level, as ever, there’s the din of motorbikes and rickshaws. Through the window, the Nahargarh Fort is faintly visible on the hills beyond the city.

Narenda works in the traditional Kundan Meena style. Kundan jewellery is unusual in using wax within the gold or silver frame, as well as incorporating glass and painted illustrations, of white, green, red or blue floral motifs. The results have an ethnic feel but when used in an ensemble of necklace, tiara, earrings and rings, Kundan can look bling. Which can be the point: the style is popular among wealthy brides from Mumbai and Delhi.

Kundan Meena jewellery is intricate and inlaid with enamel in a variety of colours

While rich Indians visit Jaipur for its gems, the city offers jewellery for anyone. Backpackers and tourists can find inexpensive, quality pieces in dozens of shops around the city. It requires patience and a discerning eye.

Visitors can develop their knowledge of Indian jewellery at the Amrapali museum on Ashok Marg Road. It is an extraordinary collection of jewellery, displayed over two small floors. A mesmerising foot-long, 19th-century gold braid, from Tamil Nadu, engraved with Hindu gods and goddesses, is just one of hundreds of spectacular pieces.

Amrapali also manufactures jewellery at scale. Its 1,500 “factory -floor” jewellers produce pieces that are mostly sold to other companies at a range of price points. The goldsmiths tend to come from Bengal, while stone-cutters have historically come from local Muslim communities, whereas gem-traders are Marwaris, a Rajasthani caste. Most of Jaipur’s jewellers are men, though efforts are being made to employ more women. Tarang Arora, the son of one of the founders of Amrapali, stresses that the company is committed to ensuring its workers’ welfare.

To some extent, the Amrapali factory and several others in Jaipur are trying to compete with Chinese industry. When it comes to economies of scale, though, Jaipur would probably lose out. Plus, it may make more sense for the city’s jewellery producers to associate themselves with Jaipur’s “brand” as a hub for handicrafts.

This is where Tallin, Akshat Ghiya’s workshop-boutique, is well positioned. The company employs around 20 artisans. The jewellers work in an upper-floor space along the Johari Bazaar. Tallin makes traditional Rajasthani and art deco-inspired pieces. Anyone can visit to see the craftsmen in action and pour over their glittering pieces in Akshat’s office-showroom.

Such an intimate environment must be conducive to good craftsmanship. One of Tallin’s jewellers, Srikant, talks about how his trade has allowed him to connect to his artistry, his gift, even. He adds that for him and his fellow Bengalis, crafting jewellery offers something else: “It brings us honour.” No doubt this is something the people at Unesco would like to see preserved.

This article was published in the Guardian

All photography by Christopher Wilton-Steer