Financial Risk Manager

Growing extremist violence has crippled the economy in northwest Pakistan, made tens of thousands of people unemployed and exacerbated the poverty that breeds fundamentalism, business leaders say.

North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, is rich in agriculture, minerals, stunning mountain scenery once popular with tourists and multiple local industries.

But the 21st century has brought decline owing to extremist violence in the adjacent federally administered tribal areas (Fata) and the NWFP district of Swat, where the Taliban launched an uprising two years ago.

‘Around three-quarters of our industries have closed since the war in Afghanistan started but most have closed in the last two to three years,’ Sharafat Mubarak, president of the local chamber of commerce and industry, told AFP.

Before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States which precipitated the invasion of Afghanistan and ensuing Taliban insurgency, 2,254 industries were functional in NWFP, of which just 594 operate today, he said.

Read at Dawn