Governing the Ungovernable? Reflections on Informal Gemstone Mining in High-Altitude Borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan

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Governing the ungovernable? Reflections on informal gemstone mining in high-altitude borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Hugh Brown

To cite this article: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Hugh Brown (2017) Governing the ungovernable? Reflections on informal gemstone mining in high-altitude borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, Local Environment, 22:11, 1428-1443, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2017.1357688 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1357688

Published online: 30 Aug 2017.

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Governing the ungovernable? Reflections on informal gemstone mining in high-altitude borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt a and Hugh Brownb aResource Environment & Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia; bIndependent Researcher and Photographer, Darlington, Western Australia, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The ethnically diverse high-altitude region of Gilgit-Baltistan, with its Received 8 November 2016 complex political history, remains relatively free from the controlling Accepted 30 June 2017 gaze of the central state apparatus of Pakistan. In these extraordinary KEYWORDS terrain, where local communities rule the region as the “State by proxy”, Informal mining; informal gemstone mining provides an important supplement to ungovernability; ASM; livelihoods. This paper shows that gemstone mining in Gilgit-Baltistan is Pakistan; gemstone mining characterised by customary rules and regulations that are based on collective responsibility, and members follow customary authorities because they are not external to the community. It argues that the very idea of centralised “governance” of mineral resources, used widely in contexts of resource extraction as the panacea, needs to be reconsidered when dealing with the particularities of the context. It draws on the concept of ungovernability to underline the fact that sometimes it may simply be impossible to administer informal mining in the conventional sense of the term. It suggests in conclusion that informal mining, which has a long history in Pakistan and has played an increasing role as a source of rural employment and revenue, needs to be accommodated within the legal framework of mining. More importantly, to govern informal mining of gemstones, the first task would be to consider how things are currently done, understanding and respecting customary laws, and build upon them to incorporate their elements into systems that acknowledge community rights and a more equitable sharing of benefits.

Introduction: ungovernable spaces and livelihoods In resource management, the term “governance” has many connotations and various interpretations, but there has more or less been agreement among experts that governance should involve non-state actors (see Chambers 2010). This has marked a shift in the creation of more egalitarian and inclusive forms of governance in which tasks and responsibilities are more widely spread, and which recognise that the state alone cannot deal with the diversity, complexity, dynamics and differences in scale that characterise place-based resource-dependent livelihoods. However, these concerns invoke the concept of “governability”, that is, the possibilities (and the extent to which) a situation can at all be governed in the generally understood sense of the term. Janin (2007, p. 221) argues that “governability”, defined as the quality or capability of being controlled or managed, is a concept that arose in modern industrial societies and the hard sciences. The concept was then extended to contemporary globalised spaces in poorer countries and became commonplace in the social sciences. Indeed, the

concept of governability has now become pivotal to analysing power and domination, and how the state’s relationship with its citizens is mediated. The questions of governance assume greater significance in managing mineral resource extraction, posing unique difficulties. Growing awareness of the finiteness of these resources, and the social, cultural and environmental destruction caused by their large-scale extraction, has led to the formulation of a plethora of guidelines, standards and toolkits by states, industries and non-state actors. However, no globally approved and acceptable standards and guidelines can be established to govern what is collectively described as informal, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). Conse- quently, informal mineral production – often carried out in ways similar to other trades in informal sectors of countries in the Global South – is persistently conflated with illegality. A wide range (and vast amount) of minerals, metals, gemstones and fossil fuels are produced by millions of people throughout mineral-rich tracts in poorer countries, contributing sizeably to global production of these commodities; yet, no clear records exist. Sometimes the illegality is caused by the lack of legal titles or clear property rights (as noted by Echavarria 2014), but a host of other factors (as noted by Lahiri-Dutt 2016) can also be involved. Therefore, arriving at a simple and clear consensus about their governance has presented insurmountable difficulties (Jønsson et al. 2013, Geenen and Ridley 2014, Maconachie and Hilson 2014, Spiegel 2016). How can one govern what is so dispersed, so poorly known, so ill recorded, and so much beyond the state’s purview? Consequently, informal mining is almost always presented as needing formalisation, meaning the imposition of regulation or even regularisation by accommodating it within the laws (Lungu 2007). Strangely, although informality is conflated with illegality, it is the informal sector that provides economic opportunities to millions of poor in these countries, yet remains little known and poorly governed. Informal mining is widely criminalised and marginalised by governments, inhibits local actors from accessing official support and reduces their agency (noted by Tschakert and Singha 2007). Despite such views, within broader debates on ASM, experts tend to recommend that such mining should be formalised to enable the state to earn more revenue, to prevent social ills and exploitation, and to protect the environment (Spiegel 2015, Damonte 2016). This is a classical situation where documentation aims to make informal mining activities legible and calculable.1 However, in view of the little that has been accomplished on this front, the question remains if it is at all possible to govern informal mining. This paper examines the question of governance of informal gemstone mining within Scott’s conceptualisation of “Zomia”. Gemstone mining is carried out by local communities in the Karakoram Ranges in Pakistan – a rugged terrain, geographically difficult to access, historically and ethnically complex, well outside the mainstream economy and intensively contested politically. The region is the quintessential “no go areas” for the state and its law enforcement machinery, a non-state space described by Scott (2009, p. 19). Scott (2009, p. 19) argues that the statelessness of Zomia differentiates it from the lowland areas as:

the hills, unlike the valleys, have paid neither taxes to monarchs nor regular tithes to a permanent religious estab- lishment. They have constituted relatively free, stateless population … Further, by virtue of its location at the periphery of different states, Zomia represents a “novel object of study”, and “a new way to think” about statist governance (Scott 2009, p. 100). Indeed, thinking of governing a terrain that offers an opportunity to shape human livelihoods in certain ways may address the wider question of the role of terrain in determining a way of life within a local environment. A not unrelated concept, presented by geographers, is “ungovernable spaces” (Watts 2004a, 2004b) – comprised of chieftainship, indigeneity and nationalism – to explain resource politics around petroleum exploitation in the Niger delta. Watts’ conceptualisation draws on Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose but underlines violence and conflicts over resources. Consequently, Watts’ ideas have been taken up widely to explain resource conflicts by geographers (for Melanesian context, see Allen 2013; for artisanal fishing, see Quist and Nygren 2015). In these formulations, certain spaces, comprised both in their physicality and as “fields of power of governmentality” (Allen 2013, p. 153), are presented as ungovernable in their particular configurations of resources, territory 1430 K. LAHIRI-DUTT AND H. BROWN and identity. In light of these works, one is encouraged to reframe questions of governance and ask: where the availability of resources is shaped by nature, does physical terrain limit the governability of informal mining-based livelihoods? The following sub-section provides a brief overview of the region’s geopolitical position that might be helpful in answering this question.

The region Gilgit-Baltistan, formerly known as the Northern Areas, is a region of 72,400 square kilometres, sur- rounded by the Himalayas, the Karakoram Ranges and the Hindu Kush Mountains, and comprises a politically sensitive and geographically difficult terrain. The region is located between Tajikistan, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the west, the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir to the southeast (Figure 1). The surrounding mountains are made of sedimentary, igneous

Figure 1. The Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan. LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 1431 and metamorphic rocks, ranging from pre-Cambrian to Recent in age. Gilgit-Baltistan’s geology is characterised by a large number of mineral deposits, including metallic, non-metallic, energy minerals, precious and dimension stones, and rocks of differing industrial value. The mining areas visited are located in the southwest part of the Central Karakoram National Park and marked here in grey. These high-altitude areas – described as places where continents, mountains, cultures and political borders collide (Zain 2010) – are heavily disputed between the three neighbouring countries of Pakistan, India and China. The legacy of uncertain political boundaries in the region serves as a micro- cosm of the colonial history of South Asia. The region was seen as a “frontier” by the colonial British, whose main preoccupation in this area was access. The colonial state defined the Gilgit frontier by their shifting, inter-imperial, trans-frontier interests, positioning it between Chinese and Russian powers. Therefore, unlike the quintessential “borderlands” or spaces that are generally considered to be ungovernable, this frontier, Haines (2012, p. 18) argues, “was not a territorial unit with a defined border. Routes defined the colonial frontier”, which was “a series of in-roads, fanning out from a secure place into the unconquered”. For Haines, the frontier is as much a product of geography as it is of history. Indeed, Gilgit-Baltistan has had complex political relationships with Pakistan; local communities rule the region as the State by proxy. According to experts such as Russel (1994) in this region, three separate universes exist: those areas that had been ruled by local Rajas, those that had been directly governed by the British, and the tribal republics – where different permutation and combi- nations of the two principles of shared space and shared blood relations underlie the management and use of natural resources (Beg 2016). The locations of the study presented in this paper are where the Rajgiri – local Rajas or kings holding the highest authority – system remains strong. The customary regulatory system is based on collective responsibility that in most cases aims at using natural resources in a sustainable manner. At its most basic level, incomes from gemstone mining augments other sources of income (such as that gained from working on the farms). Some areas are mined only in summer due to the presence of heavy snow at other times of the year. In other areas, particularly in lower altitudes, mining is undertaken only in winter because summer months are too hot to mine. Miner groups try their best to distribute these incomes as equally as possible; in Sumaya, the village that supplies virtually all of the miners at Chumar Bakhor, a Welfare Fund had been established. One percent of all mining revenues goes to the Welfare Fund, which is used to repair roads and bridges, and also to contribute to education and healthcare expenses. In some years all the money is disbursed, whereas in others, some of it gets carried forward. There is no requirement – voluntary or mandated – however for the Welfare Fund to furnish accounts and there was no paper- work or documentation. So far as keeping track of mining revenues was concerned, it appeared that there were a number of villagers who knew with a fair degree of accuracy who had found what gems and what they were worth. As positive as all this sound, however, the reality of the situation was that Sumaya Valley has no hospital. It had only a small dispensary unit and lacks medicines. When people became ill, they are sent either to Gilgit or to Rawalpindi. Similarly there was no paved road between the Karakorum Highway and Sumaya, and there were no schools with good educational facilities. For those that could afford it, children were sent away to schooling in Islamabad or in Gilgit. An investigation of informal mining of gemstones was taken up in this complex space. The project was entirely self-funded, and required traversing remote and isolated areas. Fieldwork was carried out in two phases: a one-month reconnaissance in April to start building cost-effective networks, followed by a three-month block during August, September and October, 2015, involving living, sharing meals and working with the informal miners. The primary geographical focus of this fieldwork was on the high-altitude region between Skardu and Gilgit and the Hunza- Nagar area. Figure 1 shows the physical characteristics of the area. Detailed field-notes of obser- vations, records of conversations and meetings, and field diaries of multiple interviews with miners, gem buyers and traders, government officials, researchers and the local communities were kept. In addition, further assistance from local communities was sought where possible, and received. 1432 K. LAHIRI-DUTT AND H. BROWN

Board members of the Shigar Gems and Minerals Association, a key player in the Shigar Valley near Skardu, held meetings with the researchers and its members extended assistance. Names have been withheld to avoid identification. The process for gaining access to the large informal mining area at Chumar Bakhor in the Sumaya Valley, a part of the Hunza-Nagar territorial unit, was more informal. Initial contacts were established over several weeks. This was followed by more formal permissions from the communities overseeing the workings.

Landscapes of difficulty or difference? It is not uncommon to come across the view that loose governance – in the formal sense of the term – of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and a major part of the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), as well as the desert areas in southern Punjab, eastern Sindh and some parts of Balochistan, is a result of the physical obstacles to the governance of those parts of the country. For example, Mezzera and Aftab (2009) suggest that the Gilgit-Baltistan region bore a “light footprint” of colonial administration because of the challenges posed by mountainous terrain to transport, com- munication, the delivery of goods and services, and the provision of administration and security. They argue that the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan today comprises one of the least governed areas in the entire world. Mezzera and Aftab (2009, p. 13) comment:

Historically, the state has been less able and (to an extent) less willing to deliver basic services to these rugged, remote and sparsely populated areas – even though the state extracts significant resource wealth from some of these regions. They remain the poorest and most marginal parts of the country. Haines (2012), however, identifies two other factors, apart from the terrain, that contribute to the ungovernability of Gilgit-Baltistan: the complicated socio-political history; and the diversity of ethnic communities that created “internal borders” and boundaries leading to imbalances and hierarchies within the State. On the first, complex political history, he argues that contestation over the ownership of the region is not recent, although the region was not directly governed by the British Raj during the colonial period. Gul’s(2010) views on tribal independence and autonomy seem to corro- borate this view; he emphasises not only the terrain, but also the border location and the relatively recent history of marginalisation. Haines (2012, p. 3) further adds ethnic rule into this mix – unilineal descent groups whose rule meant that “a cohesive, binding Muslim identity never took root (and continues to be the basis of violent conflicts)”. The process of uneven and hierarchical formation of the nation-state in Pakistan was spatially mapped through the marginalisation of borderlands such as Gilgit-Baltistan, whose spatial history, Haines suggests, “offers a window of rethinking” what is Pakistan today, or indeed, what a nation-state might be. In discussing how the resultant legal and political vacuum has created a “constitutional limbo” in Pakistan, Hong (2012) observes the crucial role(s) played by conflicts and contestations over natural resources. However, Haines’s(2012, p. 11) space is not just a “Car- tesian container” within which the state operates in Pakistan, but the domain within which Islam is asserted in multiple ways, giving rise to deep conflicts and isolation beyond simple spatial uneven- ness. Clearly, although the landscape plays a key role, the distinctive histories, religious orientations2 and ethnic identities create landscapes of difference that are crucial in creating the isolation of the frontiers from the central State. It is possible to say that intense anti-State sentiments are augmented by the inaccessibility of the terrain – the rugged, mountainous remoteness from the centre of the state. The local context of Gilgit-Baltistan – being a “disputed” area between India and Pakistan – encourages us to differentiate it from FATA, which, due to its proximity to Afghanistan, is more sus- ceptible to the political influences from across that border (Younus 2015, also see Ahmed 2009). Within Pakistan, the dominant view is about the need for “taming” these “strange land(s)” (Fazli 2011) and “ungoverned territories” that pose “challenges to the state” (Rabasa et al. 2007). Gilgit- Baltistan, with its complex history and difficult terrain, is no exception. An Order (2009 Order), known as the Gilgit-Baltistan (Empowerment and Self-Governance) Order, proposed “necessary LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 1433 legislative, executive and judicial reforms for granting self-governance to the people of Gilgit-Balti- stan”. The Order calls the region a “province” for the first time, extends fundamental rights to its residents, and provides the regional Legislative Assembly with greater powers. However, in this region, the authority of the state and in some cases even its presence is directly challenged due to the strong tribal allegiance. Moreover, to a large extent, these communities feel that they have been left by the national government to fend for themselves, with little in the way of support coming from the federal government for basic services such as hospitals, roads and utilities. For example, residents received little or no support after a landslide in 2010 washed down almost half of a mountain and blocked the Hunza River, resulting in the formation of Attabad Lake, which then flooded homes upriver and cut off the area from Pakistan for an extended time (Butz and Cook 2011). A materially simplistic suggestion is that resultant economic poverty contributes to the rise of radicalism (Von Hippel 2010), but such ideas had earlier been contested by Piazza (2006). Scott (2009, p. 326) argues that spaces are not static, timeless containers of historicity; moreover, the “Zomia”–an autonomous, peripheral and neglected zone – is a mental construction where the friction of mountains provides a natural defence against the state. Therefore, landscapes and terrains difficult to traverse also become landscapes of difference. Hong (2012) notes that communities from Hunza resist their marginalisation by engaging legal and political means at local, national and international levels, which she describes as “subaltern cosmopolitan legality”. It is possible that gemstone mining at high altitudes can be interpreted in a similar manner. Within the landscapes of difference, Pakistan’s geology has provided enormous mineral wealth, about which little was known until recently (Bachh 2003). The state sees this wealth as an opportunity that can allow it to pursue economic growth through expansion of its mining industry (Muhammad 2008). Mining in Pakistan is dominated by the public sector through federal and regional development corporations, mainly from China. Mineral exploitation contributes only about 1 per cent of the country’s GDP (International Alert 2015), but is seen by centrally based development planners as the key to good governance and inclusive growth. To begin attracting foreign investment, in 2013 the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources revised and updated the Pakistan National Mineral Policy (NMP) in consultation with the Common- wealth Secretariat in the UK, the federating units and other stakeholders (Asif 2015). The vast, over 600,000 square kilometres of mineral-bearing of Pakistan has attracted international development agencies (see World Bank 2015) as significant key to stimulating economic improvement through mineral revenues. The 2013 Policy aimed to create a joint mechanism to regulate mining by federal and provincial governments (Asif 2015). Artisanal extraction of placer or alluvial gold is extensive throughout the rivers of North Pakistan, including the Hunza and Indus rivers and their tribu- taries. Such mining, however, is spurned by the state. A GoP and World Bank (2003, p. 46) report notes:

Artisanal mining is often carried out without any rights to minerals or land by small groups or loose associations of individuals. The major part of this informal mining is carried out beyond the power of the authorities where there is neither environmental control nor any supervision of occupational health and safety. Implicit in this statement is the state’s perceived association of informal mining with illegitimacy. Geologists make similar comments, proclaiming that the

Uplift of the Gilgit-Baltistan is one of the top priority [sic] … We all wish to see these far-flung areas to prosper. We want these areas to open for all developmental activities so that the local people harness the benefits of the mineral wealth. (Government of Gilgit-Baltistan 2006) It is with these lofty intentions that the NMP was adopted by the government of Gilgit-Baltistan, a regular Directorate General of Mines and Minerals was established and aggressive efforts to usurp mining areas by granting mining leases began with central government support. For a brief moment, resource politics appeared to be poised for a radical change. However, those who began 1434 K. LAHIRI-DUTT AND H. BROWN

to receive licenses were from outside the region, and local communities began to perceive and resist the incursion into their territory because they wanted to maintain the integrity of their local networks. The authorities acknowledge the specific nature of gemstone mining: the fact that it is speculative in nature, its small investment requirement, the use of relatively light equipment and non-elaborate infrastructure, and the fact that gemstone mining cannot be a very large operation. On this, Bokhari say (2000,p.3)“…its success mainly depends upon the richness of the ore, re-marketability of the stones and prevention of pilferage from the mines”, Yet, in 2009 the Government of Pakistan attempted to issue an exploration licence to large-scale mining interests over an area of 372 square kilometres of the Karakoram Range in 2009. Issuance of the license led to the temporary cessation of mining by local peoples in 2009, who then spent a number of years protesting this licence in local courts in Gilgit and elsewhere, and established the Shigar Gems and Minerals Associ- ation in 2010. Ultimately, the Association succeeded. Collectively, the local miners resisted rules imposed by central government authorities. In retaliation, the government of Pakistan imposed a ban on mining. The ban, despite support from some political leaders, was ineffective. The Dawn reported that at a press conference in Skardu in December, Imran Nadeem, a Pakistan People’s Party leader, said at a local meeting that “thousands of poor people associated with the mineral sector have become jobless following the ban on issuance of license and movement of precious stones from GB to other parts of the country”. He also noted that “top officials of the GB mineral department were the main hindrance to the development of the sector”. The description that follows shows that informal mining, particularly the extraction and trade in gemstones at high-altitude areas in Pakistan, continues despite these developments. It remains very much a small-scale affair, carried out by groups that organise production using minimal equipment at great risk. Local areas are controlled by local communities who arrive at mutual understand- ings based on trust and reciprocated dialogue. Most of the mining is performed outside the government’s official records, and the formal system of knowledge gathering is “below” the state’s radar. We underline that such mining provides an important supplement to the livelihoods of local communities, and miners undertake arduous tasks at great risk.

Extracting gemstones, extracting sovereignty This section provides an overview of gemstone mining in two locations – Skardu and the Hunza- Nagar.

Gemstone mining in Skardu Skardu (altitude 2250 m) adjoins the Indus River and is the major centre in Baltistan. It is a base for trekking and climbing expeditions to K2, the world’s second highest mountain. Significant mining villages upstream of Skardu include Shigar, Dasu, Nyid, Apo Ali Gond and Chakpo. The gems include aquamarine, golden topaz, green and black tourmaline, green, black, gold and white quartz rutile, clear and crystal quartz, fluorite, granite, epidote, ziosite, and axinite. Additionally, the Karakoram Range around Skardu contains other minerals, including copper, marble, serpentine, mica, jade and chromite. Chutron, Doggro and Doko in the Shigar Valley, particularly upstream of Chutron, have many high- altitude gemstone mines that are accessed only with great difficulty and at significant personal risk. Some of these have existed for decades. Many of these locations are extremely dangerous, with scores of mine openings on a 90-degree face beside the Braldu River. Around Skardu, many miners work near the village of Apo Ali Gond at high altitudes, with base camps located at altitudes of over 4000 m. The miners reside in stone huts covered with plastic roofs. Some of the miners work high on steep, near-vertical cliff faces. In one case, access was gained by climbing 500-m cliff then swinging down on a rope to the mine opening. Over the past few years, glacial retreat in the LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 1435

Karakoram Range has resulted in the snowline in summer moving higher up the mountains, enhan- cing mining opportunities closer at even higher altitudes. Outside the Braldu and Shigar River valleys, on the Skardu to Gilgit Road, is an extensive mining area along the cliffs of the Indus River between Shengus and Astak. Again, the terrain is precipitous, with mines located on near-vertical cliffs. Access across the river in many cases is gained by flying fox, followed by ascending or rappelling on long ropes to the mines. The mining area extends along approximately 7 km of river, with much of the mining activity being concentrated on the southern side. Four villages own pegmatites on this side of the river and an estimated 100–200 miners work the area, which has been operating for almost 25 years. The miners generally have low levels of education. The Chairman of the Shigar Minerals and Gems Association, for example, grew up with no schooling and started working at the age of 14. Before eventually working in high-altitude gem mines around Dasu, he worked initially as a porter for trekking expeditions in the Karakorum, a common career trajectory. Though he had no experience in mining, the miners helped him to gain practical knowledge.

Gemstone mining in Hunza-Nagar Valley Chumar Bakhor is situated in the shadows of 7266 m Diran Peak on a steep slope above the Sumaya Valley. Chumar is said to mean “steel” and “Bakhor” to mean green, grassy area. However, some local community members believe that the name Chumar was used because the rocks sound like “big plates” when they fall, hence the reference to steel. Gem mining in the Chumar Bakhor region can be traced to 1978 when a hunter from Nagar dis- covered surface gems. For three years he kept it a secret, returning occasionally to collect gems, which were sold in the village. In July 1988, during the course of an ibex hunt, a senior member from Sumaya Village, Mohammed Hussein, saw footprints in the area and followed them to Chumar Bakhor. He came upon the people from Nagar and also found some aquamarine. The people from Nagar let him look for stones, and Mohammed did not challenge their right to be in the area as he was alone. However, as Nagar hunters set on their way back to their village, the original discoverer of the gem field fell and died. It was then that the existence of gems became more widely known. At Chumar Bakhor an estimated 500–600 miners work the gem field for about three months every year due to snow and the risk of avalanche. The season starts with the onset of the monsoons in mid- July and finishes by mid-October, although the more resilient miners remain active until the end of that month. During this time, overnight temperatures fall to between −3 and −8°C, and heavy snow- fall affects mining. Access to Chumar Bakhor commences with a jeep ride from Sumaya Village at the bottom of the valley. The track narrows at an altitude of around 3270 m. The rest of the journey must be completed on foot. Most equipment and consumables used by the miners are carried from here on donkeys. Approximately 300 m above the end of the jeep track, a few stone huts are used as overnight stop- ping points. The second author camped here both during the journey up to Chumar Bakhor and on the return. To ensure the best possible integration and rapport with mine workers, he lived in the mine camp that comprised around 99 stone huts at Chumar Bakhor. With 7 workers using each hut communally, there were nearly 700 miners present in 2015. The longest mines were cut into the mountainside and ran as far as 300 feet or so. Most were narrow with low roofs, forcing visitors and miners to crawl for significant distances before they reached the face. The highest mines at Chumar Bakhor are located at about 4600 m, but some workers were exploring options to open mines in 2016-2017 at altitudes of perhaps 100 m higher. There are no rules as to where syndicates could and could not mine other than that they could not interfere with the existing ones. A condition of working in the Chumar Bakhor mines is that the person must be from, or have a strong affiliation with, the village of Sumaya. Without such an association, miners can be sent 1436 K. LAHIRI-DUTT AND H. BROWN down to the village for their fate to be decided by a local jury. The local jury system within each community resolves conflicts in the local area. Hassan, one of the miners, observed that with this local jury system in place, they had not had, in the past 20 years, a murder in the Sumaya Valley, nor any house break-ins or even minor offences such as theft of mobile phones. This challenges the ideas presented in much of the ASM literature of lawlessness and chaotic violence around such mining. The local jury association located in the valley sets the rules for the mines at Chumar Bakhor. The Sumaya area comprises representatives from each of the nine villages in the Sumaya Valley: Khai, Rashfari, Daltho, Mehdiabad, Bosht, Yel, Phootkai, Raisman and Jotorkhen. Because the miners are related, social conflicts are very few. Miners form small groups that operate like mining syndicates, and are known as such. These groups are characterised by a great deal of internal organisation and non-hierarchical structure. There are usually 12–13 shares for each mine, depending on the number of workers. The miners and the cook each get one share – so if there are six miners and a cook, a total of seven shares. The food provider gets one share. The supplier who carries items to the mine, such as food, equipment and explosives, gets one share. At the end of the mining season, the value of gems is calculated according to the miners’ and investors’ estimates of worth. They are then sold to either the investors or the highest bidders (which may include the investors), and the proceeds are divided according to the share of each miner’s/investor’s entitlement. Each mine has local buyers who, as a rule, come to each mining syndicate at the end of the season to buy the gems. Three-monthly expenditure on explosives was estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000 rupees (USD 950–1900), depending on the mine’s needs. The drill machine and compressor cost around 155,000 rupees, added to which must be cartage – around 30,000 rupees – to transport the items to the mines. Drill rods cost 700–800 rupees for a one-foot rod; 900 rupees for a two-foot rod; and 1000 rupees for a three-foot rod. Drill bits cost approximately 400 rupees per bit. The minimum requirement for the three-month season is 12 bits, with one bit able to drill 12–13 feet. Bits are re-sharpened on the mountainsides. Two types of cutting machines existed in Chumar Bakhor – both Chinese-made – to extract the gems from the face of the mines. The first costs between 50,000 and 60,000 rupees, and require a generator to drive, adding a cost of around 200,000 rupees. A second type of cutting machine is used to reshape the gems down to their minimum size. It costs between 15,000 and 20,000 rupees. Food costs ran at approximately 60,000–70,000 rupees for the three-month season. These numbers indicate that for a small, high risk, seasonal investment, the returns must be good enough for the miners. Investment in mining is high risk and seasonal. Many workers earned incomes far in excess of what they could have earned in the village. There are also some miners who earn very little incomes. There is a degree of cross-subsidisation where more profitable miners assisted less profitable miners: for example, through the selling of gems to them at discounted rates. Consequently, a consistent theme emerging from interviews with miners was the economic change in the Sumaya Valley between 1988 and 2015. Many miners held multiple property and business interests in various semi-urban centres, and some were even able to buy new motor vehicles each year, which were then rented to earn more income. The miners’ groups represent the essence of customary laws that govern the way natural resources have traditionally been managed in this remote and high-altitude area: recognition of community property rights and equitable sharing of benefits amongst all members of the community. Traditionally, pasturelands have been managed in the same manner. In instances where the land is not owned by the community or an individual, or in instances where the individual does not have user rights to it, a small user fee – lagan – is paid as a means to get approval from community leaders. Similarly, the opportunistic “discovery” by an outsider, and the accommodation of this ser- endipity by the local communities, as well as the manner in which disputes are resolved, present the picture of a highly structured and well-governed livelihood activity that has brought prosperity to the region. LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 1437

The marketing and sale of rough gems, portrayed in mainstream media as associated with drug smuggling and terrorism financing (Khan 2014), could not be proved. In fact, this was clearly not the case with gems mined at Chumar Bakhor. Several avenues of distribution and sale were identified. The best gems are retained within individual mining groups until the end of the season, when all members of each mining syndicate assemble to examine the gems from the season’s work collectively and are given the first option to purchase. They are the first to see these gems and it is a rule of many of the syndicates that outsiders cannot be given the opportunity to see these gems until they have first been seen by the syndicate members. This system precludes outsiders from accessing the season’s best gems. Lower quality gems are sometimes sold at the mine site, and occasionally during the season individual miners are seen hawking such gems to tourists and buyers in towns and villages. Gems not purchased by individual members of a miners’ group are offered to outside buyers. The more organised groups have fixed buyers whom they sell to annually, and those buyers are given the first offering outside the group. At a macro level, gems could, and often do, pass through many different hands before they reach the major gem bazaars of Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Dubai. More successful traders also took their produce to major gem fairs in Arizona and Europe. Overlaid with this wider trade are those gem buyers/traders who move between mines, purchasing gems for the major gem fairs. Generally, buyers in this latter category build individual lots by purchasing lesser stones that might contain a few higher value gems. Some Pakistani traders have also been making trips across the border into western China to trade gems and search for new markets, and the more entrepreneurial ones have even established their own gem shops in China. Recent entrants into the trading of gemstones have been Chinese buyers who move between mine-sites and villages. At Dasu in the Braldu River Valley, some of them have built houses where they stay during gem-buying visits. The Chinese presence appears to be continually growing in size, although the trust at the foundation of the exchanges remains weak. One gem trader revealed that he had been swindled by Chinese buyers on more than one occasion. They had purchased the gems from him using trade credit and sold the gems in China without repaying the full amount of trade credit given by the Pakistani vendor. Consequently, he subsequently stopped issuing credit and required Chinese buyers to provide full, on-site payment. Given the highly fragmented nature of the selling market in North Pakistan, this behaviour in foreign buyers can be envisaged. The generally low coordination between gemstone seller groups across Pakistan opens up the possibility of fraudulent behaviour by an external buyer moving from one to another area. The considerable organisation of mining groups in individual areas is not replicated at a macro-scale to improve their collective bargaining power across North Pakistan. This is partly due to the local ethnicity-based organisation of the mining groups, with strict physical demarcation of areas of operation leading to poor coordination with one another. Virtually all of the gems sold out of North Pakistan are rough, though there are small cutting centres in the north. Major global cutting centres for Pakistan rough-cut gems are Jaipur, Bangkok and Sri Lanka. Historically, Belgium was a major cutting centre, though it appears that it and Hong Kong have diminished in relative importance in recent years. Close to the CBD of Skardu town, a col- lection of shops sells gems, catering primarily to outside buyers where the best gems are usually shown only to the very best buyers. Among important local players attempting to manage, if not regulate, gemstone mining is the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) established by the Aga Khan Foundation in 1982 to improve the quality of life of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral (GBC) areas. AKRSP has taken up a Gem and Jewellery Project, funded primarily by the European Union, to build a more sustainable value chain, with their overall goal of improving the socio-economic conditions of the people of northern Pakistan. This project has trained some local miners in cutting and polishing of gems, and to follow better and safer mining practices (AKRSP 2016). The AKRSP has partnered with two other NGOs, Rupani Foundation and Karakoram Area Development 1438 K. LAHIRI-DUTT AND H. BROWN

Organisation (KADO) operating primarily in Ismaili areas, to provide equipment and train workers in gemstone extraction, cutting-polishing and marketing.

Discussion Accommodating informal mining within the legal framework Under the constitution of Pakistan, the federal government has jurisdiction over oil, gas and nuclear minerals. Provincial governments have jurisdiction over the development and exploitation of minerals, and enforcing the regulatory regime (Pakistan Minerals Working Group 2013). At the provincial level and in special areas, a Mineral Investment Facilitation Authority has been established, and separate departments of Mines and Minerals have been established in each province to issue licenses and leases, collect fees and royalties, and monitor mining activities. The current institutional and legal framework of the mining sector in Pakistan meanwhile comprises: The Regulation of Mines and Oil-fields and Mineral Development (Government Control) Act, 1948 for the minerals and oil- gas sectors; the NMP, jointly developed by the federal Government of Pakistan and the provincial governments, with the aim of promoting and developing the mining sector; and the Provincial Regu- lations (of 2002), developed at the provincial level for the practical application of the NMP. None of these considers informal mining, which has a long history in Pakistan and has played an increasing role as a source of rural employment and revenue. The Central Inspectorate of Mines is responsible for matters relating to the welfare of workers engaged in federally controlled mines, and the Provincial Inspectorates of Mines are responsible for administration and implementation of the Mines Act of 1923 in mines under their jurisdiction. Therefore, there is no government department responsible for monitoring the welfare of artisanal miners (Saleem 2004). Recognising this, the Government introduced special provisions in the mining legislation to legalise informal mining. The 2013 NMP, formulated by the federal government of Pakistan, in cooperation with provincial governments, articulates mining policy and legal regulatory aspects, and with it the Government aims to incorporate artisanal mining into the formal economy in an organised, sustainable way. According to Pakistan Minerals Working Group (2013), the National Mineral Policy – 2 (NMP-2) was formulated based on the following themes: firstly, increasing the contribution of the mining sector to Pakistan’s economy by attracting more private investment; secondly, being competitive for scarce and mobile international capital for investment in the mining sector through a stable and enabling environment; thirdly, ensuring smooth operation and effective coordination between federal and provincial institutions in the implementation of the regulatory and legislative regime for the mining sector; fourthly, ensuring that the exploration for, and development and production of, Paki- stan’s mineral resources is environmentally sustainable; and finally, encouraging small-scale mining and local private participation in the development of the sector. So the NMP-2 is focused mostly on private and international investment, which is consistent with recommendations by the World Bank in their Gilgit-Baltistan Economic Report (World Bank 2011) addressing large-scale mining and managing the mineral sector in Pakistan. Given the previously outlined complexities of the geographical and socio-political task of legalising informal mining, the non-emphasis on artisanal and/or informal mining is insufficient.

Accommodating custom in governance As evident from the field study, gemstone mining in Gilgit-Baltistan is characterised by customary rules and regulations that are based on collective responsibility, and members follow customary authorities because they are not external to the community. How to govern it needs to take into consider- ation how things are done. Beg (2016) emphasises that the primary differentiating feature between customary and statutory laws is the focus on equity; otherwise they operate much the same. There- fore, the governance of informal mining would not imply bringing in new mining laws and rules, but LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 1439 understanding and respecting customary laws, and incorporating their elements into statutory laws to acknowledge community property rights and equitable sharing of benefits. Bilal et al.(2003) observed that the local people make a distinction between three kinds of rules: Rawaj, Shariah and Qanoon. Rawaj is defined as those rules of life that were made by people in olden times. Shariah is the Islamic way of life, and Qanoon comprises the rules made by the government. Bilal et al. further note (2003, p. 13)

Most people [in Hunza] reported that Rawaj is the oldest system of rules. No one knows when it was put together but each area had its own Rawaj. They say Shariah came with Islam but it did not uproot Rawaj. They tend to look at the Qanoon as something undesirable because, as they said, Qanoon had destroyed their Rawaj. Further, Bilal et al. add (p. 13):

Several of the respondents in Nagar also said, “Qanoon is not ours and we do not accept it. All the natural resources restricted by the Qanoon we steal and use”. People in Nagar were also of the opinion that their Rawaj is in unison with the Shariah; that is why it continued even after the coming of Islam. They said there were just a few elements of their Rawaj that contradicted Shariah and were dropped.

Understanding liminality in local resource governance How resources are currently governed in Gilgit-Baltistan within the wider context of the local ecology is key to thinking about “what is to be done”. In their analysis of resource governance in the area, Butz and Cook (2016) draw attention to the apolitical narratives of governance put forth by the central state in Pakistan that portray local resource users as irresponsible, orderless and even destructive of the environment. Such portrayals then allow the removal of tracts of land or resources away from local control through conservation often with disastrous results for local communities. They argue (p. 212):

On the one hand, conservation initiatives have hastened the collapse of local mechanisms and institutions for subsistence- oriented resource governance; on the other hand, under the rubric of community-based conservation, they have reintroduced constrained forms of resource self-determination geared towards market-integration, mainly in the forms of trophy hunting and adventure tourism. Butz and Cook (2016) identify three factors in the liminality that are relevant to resource governance: the inclination and capacity to maintain and productively use the local environment, the limited access of locals’ to their ecological resource base and undermined the legitimacy of local resource control, and new identities that are both less materially rooted in the local environment and more capable of acting politically in support of local resource control. In Gilgit-Baltistan, physical peripher- ality and constitutional liminality that characterise the region vis-à-vis the Pakistan state has exacer- bated the inability of local residents to consolidate their claims over local resources. Consequently, local livelihoods based on gemstone mining have come to be branded as harmful to the environment and as a lawless field producing blood gems.

Linking informal mining to the informal sector Pakistan has a large informal sector (described as the “hidden economy”), including both legal and illegal activities (Gulzar et al. 2010), coexisting with the formal economy. Tahir and Tahir (2012) comment that the absence of an effective regulatory state, as well as failure to develop a long- term strategy to harness labour force potential, has led to its growth. This sector is large in terms of people employed; about 22 million people earn their livelihood from the informal sector, of which the government has no record (Tahir and Tahir 2012). Although it is difficult to estimate the value-added contribution of the informal sector of Pakistan, scholars attempted indirect estimations based on employment and hours worked. According to Idris (2008), the informal economy accounts for 37 per cent of the country’s GNP, a significant share. Other scholars, such as Arby et al.(2010), 1440 K. LAHIRI-DUTT AND H. BROWN attempt to estimate the size of the informal economy by applying a monetary approach. According to Pakistan’s Labour Force Survey 2010–2011, about 74 per cent of employment in non-agricultural work is in the informal sector, in both urban and rural areas. The possibility of including informal mining in the informal sector of the economy, which is providing subsistence to a sizeable body of the labour force, has not arisen yet in Pakistan. For example, Gulzar et al.(2010) place mining and quarrying activities in the formal part of the non-agriculture sector. According to them, “The informal economy includes all those economic activities which are not reported or not included in the National Income Accounts” (Gulzar et al. 2010, p. 665). Yet, artisanal mining is classified as “informal” in nature under their “informal economy” category. Whether informal mining is part of the informal sector is a debate that needs to be initiated in Pakistan as much as globally to relieve this livelihood of its stigma of illegality. The issues involved are neither unknown nor untouched by scholars; to think more innovatively about governing informal mining, the politics over resource ownership, rights to resources, and the claims and counter-claims made by the state and the communities, and the state’s links with the corporate sector, should be discussed holistically, giving due importance to the socio-political attributes of the local context.

Governing “differently”? Considerations of governance cannot proceed in isolation from a broader understanding of the social and political trajectory of a local context, in this instance Gilgit-Baltistan. The region’s geology, com- bined with its unique geopolitics, as well as its social-cultural distance from the central State, has created the context within which the informal mining of gemstones is being carried out. It is this com- bined geographical context of deep social and political complexity in which local livelihoods are enmeshed. The blurred nature of political existence in the region means that the central State’s attempts to exert control over livelihoods are rejected and thwarted by the existing feudal or semi-feudal modes of governance. Community members who have been taking risks to enjoy the benefits of local endowment through the production and trade of gemstones resist the imposition of central control over what they see as a legitimate activity. Thus, it is the local context that gives rise to resistance to the state’s attempts to exert control, as seen in the continuation of informal mining despite a preventive order. Before labelling Gilgit-Baltistan as an ungovernable Zomia, there is however a need to consider its particular history. Unlike Scott’s conceptualisation of Zomia, which through historical processes became a place of refuge for people who want to evade the state, Gilgit-Baltistan has a long history of mining. Similarly, unlike the areas of recent mushrooming in informal mining studied by Watts – areas characterised by violence and ethnic conflict, fuelled through dispossession by aggres- sively expanding extractive capital and/or lack of alternative livelihoods for subsistence – Gilgit-Balti- stan’s mineral wealth has not been unknown to the local community. Two aspects – that this knowledge has existed for longer than the State’s knowledge or memory, and the more-or-less egalitarian manner in which local communities organise the mining – are directly concerned with how ideas of governance and indeed, governability should be considered. So, there is a need to ask simple questions about who or what is being governed, and by whom. Perhaps in resource extraction, the nature of the materials need also to be considered, as the mining of gemstone (unlike the tapping of petroleum) remains quite speculative everywhere in the world. In Pakistan, the central State and those who belong to the Centre have little or no productive knowledge of the livelihoods of these communities who continue to portray them as dangerous and illegal. Clearly, social and political factors have shaped the livelihood in this high-altitude area, which has remained off the state’s radar for many decades. The illegality that the State associates with such informal mining and those who pursue such informal mining-based livelihoods points to the failure of the state to care for its citizens, and portraying their livelihoods as illegitimate enables the attribution to nature of a determination of ungovernability. LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 1441

Finally, informal mining in Gilgit-Baltistan illuminates how we could, in future, imagine resource frontiers as analytical spaces. We know that through such mining, hitherto isolated spaces become directly linked to global markets, but the implications of these extractive livelihoods for how those spaces are governed, and when one considers governance questions such as “by whom” and “for what purposes”, assume great significance in incorporating greater justice.

Notes 1. Moreover, some “ASM” scholars see formalisation as either a route out of illegality or conflate the two (see Ver- brugge 2015), or consider formalisation as the ultimate goal (Fold et al. 2014). 2. For more on this, see Makki et al.(2015).

Acknowledgements The authors express their gratitude to the local communities who housed, fed and assisted the second author during his field trip, and acknowledge Ms Joyce Das’s research assistance. We also thank Prof Saleem Ali, Director of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, University of Queensland in Australia; Professor David Butz, Department of Geography, Brock University in Canada, Dr Keith Barney of ANU; Mr Aly Ercelan, Senior Fellow, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Dr Yaqoob Khan Bangash, Director, Centre for Governance and Policy in the Information Technologyu University of Lahore, and Mr Ch. Usman Ali of Pakistan; for reading through earlier drafts of the paper, and providing incisive comments that helped us to sharpen the arguments.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1336-1422

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