The buildings huddle on the city's outskirts, at the end of the road where the stubbled fields begin. Water is in short supply. The grass is tough and lean. As are the goats, the sheep, the buffalo - and the people. A picture of monotony.
The houses are rudimentary; some made of dung, the better ones of brick. They consist of two rooms, sometimes three. The floors are bare concrete. Wooden shelves on the walls hold stacks of old newspapers, a few odd cups and plates.
Sehzadi Akhtar has lived in Sialkot for years, ever since she was married off to a man who is now no longer able to support his family. He broke his arm and the bone didn't set properly. Akhtar's husband remained crippled, so she now shoulders a twin burden: she looks after the household and pays for the family's upkeep. Like her neighbors, she sits in the yard for seven or eight hours a day, stitching balls. Soccer balls.
Their handiwork sells under the brand name "Derbystar" - a quality product; it takes strength to drive the needle through the thick plastic. A ball like this can cost €99 in European stores. It takes Akhtar three hours and 750 stitches to piece together the 32 separate panels with waxed thread, to produce a ball she will deliver to a downtown manufacturer. Her reward will be 40 rupees, some 60 cents. Akhtar manages three balls a day, then her housework duties call. She is gaunt, tired and deeply devout. And, some would say, one of the city's losers - a casualty of a well intentioned but poorly conceived attempt to make the world a better place.
This experiment was launched in northeastern Pakistan. In Sialkot, a sprawl of a city growing unchecked and out of control. New housing, new huts, mushroom daily on its fringes. In the center people choke in the traffic: a jungle of donkey carts, buses belching black exhaust fumes, compact cars and motor scooters that transport entire families.
The newcomers hail from the western provinces bordering on Afghanistan - and the war. And from the southern provinces too, a region where the realities of life are even harsher. They dream of finding work, a future in Sialkot. If not here - in Pakistan's industrial heartland, the world's football production capital - where else can they hope to eke out a living?
People flock to this city from far and wide; 60 percent of the world's footballs are made here, by more than 200 producers. They sport names like "Laser," "Estrella International," "Ali Trading Company" and "Fox & Associates." Some are one-room setups equipped with a telephone and a few files. Others are headquartered in towers of glittering glass and concrete that would slot smoothly into European cityscapes. As a rule these companies ship their output overseas. They are integrated in the global economy, links in the international value chain. The owners are subcontractors for Nike, Adidas and other corporations marketing "lifestyle" products. Their earnings have transformed the region into Pakistan's El Dorado. People here make about $1,000 a year, nearly twice the national average.
The balls are all made by hand - in 2,000 workshops, sheds and backyards where 40,000 men and women stitch away, each subcontracting to a Pakistani company, each an entrepreneur in his or her own right. Workers are paid by the ball. Families with no fields to cultivate and no buffalo to milk need at least two full-time stitchers to put three square meals a day on the table. These people are members of the global proletariat. Their poverty makes products affordable for the rich. And enables the brands to run exorbitantly expensive image campaigns.
This is the way things are today. And the way things were in 1996, when England hosted the European Championships: an opportune moment to change the world. The initiative was born in the United States. Zakauddin Khawaja still recalls the moment vividly: it all began with a phone call from his agent in America. Incensed, the caller described what he viewed as a scandal, an assault by the U.S. media on the economy of Sialkot, on Pakistan's good name. Immediate action was called for, he said.
Back then, Khawaja was CEO of Capital Sports. He employed some 2,000 stitchers: men, women - and children. He neither disputes this fact nor apologizes for it; after all, his company was scarcely the only offender. At the time, at least a quarter of his workforce was underage.
Putting a stop to child labor
According to Khawaja's agent, human rights groups were instrumentalizing the Pakistani premier's visit to the U.S. Their mission: to alert the football world that its top stars were kicking balls tainted with the sweat of child labor.
Television newscasts paraded representatives from Nike and the other feel-good brands feigning surprise. Their spokespeople claimed there had been no reports of child labor, but they would look into the allegations. Shortly afterwards the brands presented an ultimatum to their Asian business partners. Either the children vanished from the factories or the orders would vanish from their books. The human rights activists rejoiced. Khawaja did not.
"We had no alternative," Khawaja says today. He sits in his office chair, a 72-year old man bowed by age and sapped by cancer. He no longer needs to mince his words or sugarcoat a bitter truth. "We didn't ban child labor out of the goodness of our hearts. We did it because it would have put us out of business."
Before the ultimatum ran out, Sialkot's manufacturers, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) had signed an agreement. The corporations wanted no direct part in the negotiations. The whole affair was too ugly.
The Atlanta Agreement, as it was known, was heralded as a breakthrough by human rights organizations. It marked the first time they had wrested a binding concession from an entire industry - to ban child labor from its factories. The manufacturers had 18 months to satisfy the conditions laid down in the eight-page covenant, a document that spelled unconditional surrender. When Khawaja talks about it today, he can still barely control his anger.
"Our only concern was to satisfy our customers," he says. The actual work was handled by intermediaries, who supplied the personnel, rented the workshops and were responsible for delivering on time, he adds.
Graphic: Pakistan
"If anyone was to blame, it was the middlemen," argues Khawaja - and, of course, the children's parents. After all, they were the ones who schlepped their sons and daughters along to work. "Nobody was forcing them," says Khawaja. "We didn't encourage them." Having children in the factories hadn't benefited the companies an iota, hadn't increased their profits by a single rupee: "We pay by the ball, not by the hour." He makes no mention of the starvation wages his workers receive. He still feels he was treated unfairly; he's just another businessman trying to make a living. And that is hard enough in a global economy where you have to compete with the likes of China. A country where wages are lower, working weeks longer and conditions even worse than in Pakistan. Where machines produce balls ten times faster than manual stitchers and where mechanized production is protected by patents - and therefore beyond the reach of Sialkot's companies. Khawaja whines on like a small business owner in Germany.
The "meddling" by self-appointed human rights advocates from abroad is uncalled for, he feels. Yet again these latterday colonial overlords were imposing their own values and norms on other countries. Khawaja doesn't say this in so many words, but recrimination reverberates between the lines. The foreigners have forced him to think about the day laborers and acknowledge their plight. He would rather not know. What it all boils down to, he mutters in disgust, is just another of these "save the children"-style crusades.
His tone turns dismissive and he terminates the interview, saying he is tired, the chemotherapy has drained him. Leaning heavily on his cane, he heads through the corridors of the Chamber of Commerce to his office. The people he passes in the hall greet him respectfully, with a bow. They see him as a visionary, the man who saved the industry from collapse.
Khawaja's most important ally has always been a union official, a pragmatist who shares his world view: Nasir Dogar, a dapper, Victorian figure who wears frameless glasses perched on his nose and an ascot tucked into his collar. Dogar cultivates a measured cadence and speaks in low tones to command attention, frequently answering his own questions. Long retired from active duty in the class struggle, the good fight against exploitation, he has now settled back in his black leather chair, from which he orchestrates IMAC's activities.
IMAC, the Independent Monitoring Association for Child Labor, is a commercial police force. Its investigators are charged with keeping children in Sialkot out of the football workplace. IMAC's creation was one of the conditions of the Atlanta Agreement, and Pakistani manufacturers are required to fund the organization. Their customers, the global players, do not pitch in - although they profit from the image boost. The World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry is an exception. It made a donation. Once.
IMAC is an uncomfortable hybrid. It is not as independent as its name suggests, being funded by the companies that it monitors. Thus far no corruption scandals have rocked the organization; apparently the inspectors are still playing by the book. To ensure they continue to do so, Dogar has a computer containing all the relevant data on the production centers, and software that randomly selects locations to be checked.
The computer is installed in an office where, every morning, he draws up the daily plan of action. A mouseclick is Dogar's way to curb corruption by individual inspectors, to prevent manufacturers from buying immunity from his system. The visitations occur unannounced. They are short and to the point, the inspectors about as cordial as the highway patrol during spot checks. The officials move swiftly around the premises: halls where stitchers sit in long rows or small rooms holding up to five people. The workers sit on rugs or squat on hassocks. On the wall is invariably a poster from Adidas or Nike or some other big brand - detailing employment regulations, minimum wages and maximum hours. In some rooms TV sets hang from the ceiling showing cricket matches. Pakistan versus India is always the biggest hit.
The stitchers acknowledge the inspectors' presence but do not address them. For their part, the inspectors do not fraternize with the workers. They verify their ages and check IDs if someone looks too young. But no underage workers have been discovered in recent years. Violating a basic principle of the Atlanta Agreement would constitute grounds for cancelling the contracts - and certain bankruptcy. The inspectors check the condition of the toilets and the drinking water supplies; they estimate the space provided for each employee: one square yard is the legal minimum. Dogar prefers not to disclose when the last child was found. Before the 2002 World Cup, pictures of child laborers from Sialkot surfaced in the media. "Forgeries!" Dogar fumes. The children weren't sitting properly, the tools weren't right, and the background was always the same - although the photos were allegedly taken at different locations. Now, on the eve of the next tournament, even an interview with a former child laborer could do permanent damage. The past is history, says Dogar. He is still in his office, on the floor is a pile of citations and awards. The one on top is from Texas. Dogar is a good speaker, a much sought-after guest at international conferences. He helps assuage the guilt that hounds his audiences at the thought of buying products made by children.
Of course child labor is wrong, says Dogar; of course it needs to be abolished. Yet he never ceases to be astonished by one unanimous assumption of foreign visitors, namely that child labor is a product of impoverishment. Dogar describes himself as a pragmatist rather than a social romantic. The real cause of child labor, in his view, is not parental poverty but parental greed. In the villages it was readily apparent that the families who sent their children to work lived in the nicest houses, the brick ones, not those made of dung. Many had TV sets. And he's heard that the fathers - Dogar leans forward and lowers his voice - spend most of the money on porno films or gamble it away at billiards.
A glance at his watch; time has flown. He heads out back to the garden, dumps charcoal on the grill and arranges lamb kebabs over the flames. Today Dogar is hosting his monthly barbecue, an event designed to foster team spirit among the inspectors. It is 4 p.m. and the officers are returning from their routes. They seem relaxed, satisfied: they are the winners in the Sialkot experiment. Their lives are as orderly as those of German civil servants. Their jobs are secure - with a little luck until the day they retire.
From Dogar's vantage point the experiment might qualify as a success. But his is not the only perspective.
A mother's dilemma
With a crippled husband at her side, Sehzadi Akhtar - the family's sole breadwinner - sometimes wishes her daughter could make footballs, too. Akhtar admits as much softly, apologetically. Her neighbors sitting next to her in the yard pretend not to hear. You don't say that kind of thing in Sialkot; it could cost you your job. Akhtar doesn't fit into Dogar's scheme of things. Neither she nor her husband squander their money; it's all they can do to make ends meet. Their income suffices for flour, sugar, salt, and fruit - the bare essentials. Her neighbor Abida reluctantly concedes that one of her sons worked in the industry as a child. She still misses his income. It's hard to feed the family, she says, because the companies refused to increase the piecework rate for adults when child labor was prohibited. They don't care about their employees' financial woes, she adds. Although wages have gone up in the intervening years, inflation has risen even faster and gobbled up the difference. The bottom line: football industry workers now earn less than five years ago.
When told that children are allowed to work in Germany, that farmers' sons traditionally help with the harvest, Akhtar and her neighbors are outraged. How can that possibly be? You steal part of our income, they say, you ban our children from making a single ball after school, and then allow your own children to work?
"It's the large corporations' doing. They don't want pictures of child workers in the media," says Dogar. Their mantra has always been "school not work" - never "school and work."
The parents of former child laborers did the obvious. Instead of sending their offspring to one of the new schools, they dispatched them to the brickyards and metalworking plants. The work was harder and more dangerous, but it was beyond the reach of the Atlanta Agreement - which only applies to Sialkot's football industry.
The attempt to make the world a better place didn't only deprive families of their children's incomes. Prior to Atlanta the balls were manufactured locally, in the villages. The women could tend to their children and households and make a few balls on the side. The new regimen put an end to this. The Atlanta Agreement delivered a compelling reason to centralize production: supervision. To help ensure compliance manufacturers had to reduce the number of stitching locations. Some built large halls, others rented vacant buildings. The stitchers had to leave their neighborhoods and villages, and commute to their workplaces - something that many husbands refused to tolerate. Some women created neighborhood sewing circles, but not everyone was able to join. The number of workers declined.
Akhtar and her friends have been fortunate; they work in their own neighborhood center. And another stroke of luck may be in the offing. They might be getting help from a man who had sufficient drive, power and money to break with the customs that tie them to their villages and undermine their industry's ability to compete globally. They may soon be quitting their houses and backyards and - like women in Europe and America - going to work in factories.
The future football
The man who wants to help them is Masood Akhtar Khawaja. His company, Forward Sports, is located in one of the imposing mirrored-glass structures that look so out of place alongside Sialkot's brickbuilt huts.
Khawaja is a football manufacturer and the son of a football manufacturer. Should the future and global market permit, the next generation will carry on this tradition. Khawaja's son now manages the company's research and development activities - which are geared toward securing both the dynasty's future and the family's comfortable lifestyle.
The R&D facilities are located in the basement, behind thick walls. In cabinetlined rooms, beyond a glass door, men in white lab coats - they look like doctors - stand at metal tables and fiddle with oddlooking contraptions. Khawaja is paying these men to perfect a seemingly simple object: the football.
How can you reduce water retention, stabilize the ball's shape, optimize its aerodynamic properties? How smooth or rough should the surface be to allow a winger to flight a perfect cross, and how does that affect the cover's resistance to wear and tear?
These are the questions that busy Khawaja's scientists. They search for answers using immersion baths, sanding machines and fully automated ball-shooting devices. They measure elasticity, fire the balls against steel plates at 50 mph and record when they go flat. After 24, 48 or 72 hours.
These tests are designed to assure quality and ensure the company's future. Like everyone else in his industry, Khawaja is in a jam. Chinese competition is threatening from below, bombarding the market with cheap, mechanically stitched balls. The Thai producers are bearing down from above, whittling away at Khawaja's market share with their hightech, glued product. His competitors have already scored a major victory. This year's World Cup stadiums will not be sporting hand-stitched Adidas balls from Sialkot. Glued balls from Thailand will be taking pride of place.
If he wants to keep in business, and stay on the winning side in the globalization game, Khawaja will need to be better and cheaper. Sialkot once produced four-fifths of the world's footballs; already this share has shrunk by a quarter. Khawaja expects the pressure to mount in the years ahead. The cheap balls from China will get better; the high-tech balls from Thailand cheaper. He needs to convert every chance he gets, or the game will be up.
In one of his factory halls, a hundred stitchers are working at machines that keep the thread at a constant tension. This guarantees a consistent quality - even late in the shifts when the workers have begun to tire. Another hall boasts a fully automated production line for laminating the covers, a technology Khawaja has imported from Europe. And a third hall is still waiting for the future to begin.
This hall is reserved for stitchers. Lots of them, and all of them women. Khawaja has found women more conscientious - and less prone to distraction - than men. Khawaja wants to start work here as soon as possible. To pacify their husbands, he will bus the women to the factory and back home again. If necessary, he will pay them more than the men. Traditionalists in the city are enraged by these proposals. Khawaja couldn't care less.
The most vocal critics are peers of Zakauddin Khawaja - Masood's uncle. They were the ones who rescued the industry from ruin in the decade past. Their duty is done. The time has now come for them to step aside. And let Masood Khawaja take the lead in shaping Pakistan's new century.