HASANABAD, Pakistan: Planting cotton for the first time was shaping up as a shrewd investment for young Pakistani farmer Muhammad Awais — until the floods struck.
“I used good, expensive seed, fertilizers and pesticides ... The first picking made me enormously happy,” said Awais, 26.
“But the floods meant the reaping was my last,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as he walked among the shreds of his ruined crops on a small plot in Hasanabad, a village in the central cotton-growing district of Dera Ghazi Khan.
Devastating floods linked to climate change killed 1,700 people and submerged huge swathes of land in Pakistan during July and August, wrecking a third of its cotton crop and the livelihoods of millions of farmers, pickers and other workers.
Locally grown cotton is sold to the textile industry that accounts for 60 percent of Pakistan’s total export earnings, and the shortage of supplies has closed scores of mills, with hundreds of thousands of jobs feared at risk, industry sources said.
“A lot of mills are running at partial capacity or shutting down due to non-availability and shortage of quality raw material and tough economic conditions,” said Kamran Arshad, a senior official with the All Pakistan Textile Manufacturers Association.
“With zero state support or social security, I’m afraid, 20 percent to 25 percent of the labor force will lose jobs,” he said by phone from the eastern city of Lahore.
In the textiles hub of Multan, union representative Musawwir Husain Qureshi said about 200 mills had closed. Arshad gave a similar figure for the number of shutdowns and partial operations.
“Our mill has continued despite the odds,” said Qureshi, echoing the industry association’s calls for urgent government aid for the sector, which is also struggling with surging energy costs amid a wider economic malaise.
The government announced discounted electricity rates for millers earlier this month, but officials have played down the risk of mass factory closures and cotton shortages — noting a series of poor harvests in recent years.
“For the last four or five years, they have been meeting the shortfall through imports,” said Muhammad Ali Talpur, an economic consultant at the federal government.
“They will be importing as much as they have already been doing. So no need for layoffs,” he added.
SHATTERED DREAMS
In Pakistan’s cotton farming areas, growers are already counting their losses, which are also affecting a myriad of different workers in the sector.
Truck drivers have nothing to transport and many ginners — who are involved in the process of removing the seeds and debris from raw cotton — are sitting idle.
Like Awais, farmer Omar Daraz had hoped for a healthy yield and profit this year, especially since the price fixed by the government — 10,000 Pakistani rupees ($46) for 40 kg (88 pounds) of cotton — was promising.
“We were dreaming of earning well this time. But the rains and floods shattered all those dreams,” Daraz, 30, said as he surveyed scattered stems of cotton plants across his land, the craters left by the floods still visible.
Before the flooding, Pakistan’s cotton crop was forecast to reach 10.5 million bales, up from 8.3 million last year, and despite the losses, there is time for output to recover, said Cotton Commissioner Khalid Abdullah.
“The cotton crop not fully damaged can compensate. All buds open to flowers during September will translate into fibers,” he said.
Still, the amount of cotton received by members of Pakistan’s ginners’ association (PCGA) is down 24 percent from last year, according to a report published earlier this month.
Cotton picker Khanum Mai used to work at Daraz’s farm, but she and fellow day laborers said the crop losses meant they would miss out on months of earnings.
In the nearby town of Natkani, Commission agent Zahoor Ahmad, who helps farmers grade, weigh, pack and sell their harvests to buyers, told a similar story.
“I used to deal in 6,000-8,000 kg of raw cotton per day. Now I deal in 200-300 kg a day,” said Ahmad as he weighed a bag of cotton brought in by a farmer.
CLIMATE-PROOF CROPS?
Growers called on the government to help them recover by providing solar-powered tube-wells for irrigation, tractors with soft loans, and free seeds and fertilizers.
“You rehabilitate our farms and in six months we will be on our own,” Daraz said.
Abdullah, the cotton commissioner, said the government planned to give producers one bag of wheat seed and one bag of fertilizer to sow wheat for summer harvest.
Daraz, however, said he and other local farmers would not be able to plant due to the damage left by the floods.
As extreme weather fueled by climate change batters farmers across South Asia, Abdullah said Pakistan’s government had started research on cotton “varieties that are climate resilient, and with varying degrees of adaptability.”
Major cotton-producing countries such as Brazil and China offer an example of how technology can be harnessed, said Mushtaq Ahmad Gill, a Lahore-based agriculture expert.
“Brazil has achieved the highest productivity average in the world ... by investing in technology and training of growers, and innovating in research and growing techniques,” he said.
Such methods could include laser-guided land levelling to flatten croplands to an even plane, which helps reduce operational costs and boost yields, and conservation agriculture that safeguards natural resources, biodiversity and labor.
His farming hopes dashed, Awais is now focusing on the master’s degree in mathematics he was pursuing.
But first, he said he planned to have his cotton spun and made into a quilt out of his first and only batch to remind him of this year’s disaster.
“This memory will live on with me,” he said. ($1 = 216.7500 Pakistani rupees)
Pakistan floods leave cotton workers’ dreams in tatters
https://arab.news/6ywcn
Pakistan floods leave cotton workers’ dreams in tatters
- Floods have wrecked a third of Pakistan's cotton crop and livelihoods of millions of farmers and other workers
- Locally grown cotton is sold to the textile industry that accounts for 60% of Pakistan's total export earnings
‘Look ahead or look up?’: Pakistan’s police face new challenge as militants take to drone warfare
- Officials say militants are using weapons and equipment left behind after allied forces withdrew from Afghanistan
- Police in northwest Pakistan say electronic jammers have helped repel more than 300 drone attacks since mid-2025
BANNU, Pakistan: On a quiet morning last July, Constable Hazrat Ali had just finished his prayers at the Miryan police station in Pakistan’s volatile northwest when the shouting began.
His colleagues in Bannu district spotted a small speck in the sky. Before Ali could take cover, an explosion tore through the compound behind him. It was not a mortar or a suicide vest, but an improvised explosive dropped from a drone.
“Now should we look ahead or look up [to sky]?” said Ali, who was wounded again in a second drone strike during an operation against militants last month. He still carries shrapnel scars on his back, hand and foot, physical reminders of how the battlefield has shifted upward.
For police in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, the fight against militancy has become a three-dimensional conflict. Pakistani officials say armed groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), are increasingly deploying commercial drones modified to drop explosives, alongside other weapons they say were acquired after the US military withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan.
Security analysts say the trend mirrors a wider global pattern, where low-cost, commercially available drones are being repurposed by non-state actors from the Middle East to Eastern Europe, challenging traditional policing and counterinsurgency tactics.
The escalation comes as militant violence has surged across Pakistan. Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) reported a 73 percent rise in combat-related deaths in 2025, with fatalities climbing to 3,387 from 1,950 a year earlier. Militants have increasingly shifted operations from northern tribal belts to southern KP districts such as Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan.
“Bannu is an important town of southern KP, and we are feeling the heat,” said Sajjad Khan, the region’s police chief. “There has been an enormous increase in the number of incidents of terrorism… It is a mix of local militants and Afghan militants.”
In 2025 alone, Bannu police recorded 134 attacks on stations, checkpoints and personnel. At least 27 police officers were killed, while authorities say 53 militants died in the clashes. Many assaults involved coordinated, multi-pronged attacks using heavy weapons.
Drones have also added a new layer of danger. What began as reconnaissance tools have been weaponized with improvised devices that rely on gravity rather than guidance systems.
“Earlier, they used to drop [explosives] in bottles. After that, they started cutting pipes for this purpose,” said Jamshed Khan, head of the regional bomb disposal unit. “Now we have encountered a new type: a pistol hand grenade.”
When dropped from above, he explained, a metal pin ignites the charge on impact.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Raza Khan, who narrowly survived a drone strike during construction at a checkpoint, described devices packed with nails, bullets and metal fragments.
“They attach a shuttlecock-like piece on top. When they drop it from a height, its direction remains straight toward the ground,” he said.
TARGETING CIVILIANS
Officials say militants’ rapid adoption of drone technology has been fueled by access to equipment on informal markets, while police procurement remains slower.
“It is easy for militants to get such things,” Sajjad Khan said. “And for us, I mean, we have to go through certain process and procedures as per rules.”
That imbalance began to shift in mid-2025, when authorities deployed electronic anti-drone systems in the region. Before that, officers relied on snipers or improvised nets strung over police compounds.
“Initially, when we did not have that anti-drone system, their strikes were effective,” the police chief said, adding that more than 300 attempted drone attacks have since been repelled or electronically disrupted. “That was a decisive moment.”
Police say militants have also targeted civilians, killing nine people in drone attacks this year, often in communities accused of cooperating with authorities. Several police stations suffered structural damage.
Bannu’s location as a gateway between Pakistan and Afghanistan has made it a security flashpoint since colonial times. But officials say the aerial dimension of the conflict has placed unprecedented strain on local forces.
For constables like Hazrat Ali, new technology offers some protection, but resolve remains central.
“Nowadays, they have ammunition and all kinds of the most modern weapons. They also have large drones,” he said. “When we fight them, we fight with our courage and determination.”
