Kashmir’s famed carpets ruined in $5 billion flood losses

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/kashmirs-famed-carpets-ruined-in-5-billion-flood-losses/



Kashimir carpet dealer

Kashmir’s famed carpets ruined in $5 billion flood losses
Agence France-Presse
21 Sep 2014

Caked with mud and soaked in putrid water, Qazi Mohammad Yahya’s ruined handmade carpets and Pashmina shawls reflect Indian Kashmir’s economic devastation from the region’s worst floods in a century.

More than 450 people were killed when the floods, triggered by heavy monsoon rains, swept this month through the Himalayan region and into neighbouring Pakistan, leaving hundreds of villages submerged and tens of thousands of residents homeless.

As the waters recede and the clean up finally begins, business owners, including those selling Indian Kashmir’s most famous exports, are beginning to count their losses — at least $5 billion by conservative estimates.

“My 35 years of earning is gone,” Yahya said outside his home in the picturesque region’s main city of Srinagar as water-logged carpets collected from one of his showrooms were unloaded from a truck.