'If there were other jobs to be had, I'd give this up instantly, but unemployment here is terrible,' says Khan, who lives with his family in Iqdar, a poor neighbourhood in Srinagar. 'I'm 25 and want to get married. How can I do that on the 2,500 rupees [about $430] I make each month? I used to earn more before the ban when many more shawls were being made, but now the work is irregular.'
The income that Khan and his brother, Shabir, get from their weaving must support a large extended family: their mother, who needs costly heart medication; a married sister and her unemployed husband; and a widowed sister and her five children.
Besides, the estimated 30,000 weavers, spinners and dye workers also struggle with depressed earnings. Many spinners are widows who have lost their husbands in the state's 16-year separatist conflict. In a conservative Muslim society, where it's frowned on for women to work outside, spinning and weaving give them a chance to earn money at home.
The Kashmiri government has been pressing the Indian government to lift the ban, but the Khan family isn't optimistic. 'We don't want the antelope to become extinct, either, but there has to be some middle way that protects people like us too,' says Shabir Khan.
Long-treasured by Mughal emperors, shahtoosh shawls are warm yet light because of the slenderness of their fibres. Antelope fleece is said to be 6 1/2 times thinner than human hair, and genuine shahtoosh shawls are so fine that they can pass through a ring. After years of working with the gossamer thread, most weavers end up with poor eyesight.
Imports to the west began after Napoleon Bonaparte presented his empress, Josephine, with a shawl. By the end of the 19th century, agents from Europe, China, Afghanistan, and Turkey were stationed in Kashmir to assist the trade.
Shahtoosh continues to be a coveted fashion item. For example, Swiss customs officials recently confiscated 537 shawls estimated to be worth more than Euro2.5 million ($23.1 million) in their destined US and European markets. 'Poaching has risen, and we know that shahtoosh production in Kashmir has also gone up,' says Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. The numbers of Tibetan antelope, which mainly inhabit high-altitude plateaus of Tibet, Xinjiang and Qinghai in China, have plummeted to fewer than 75,000 today from several million, 100 years ago.
It takes three antelope to make one shahtoosh, yet Srinagar shawl trader Aslam Ahmed insists the chiru aren't being killed for their fleece. 'The chiru rubs its body against bushes and shrubs,' he says. 'As it does this, the fluff is caught in wisps and people collect the tiny quantities.'
Poachers usually shoot the chiru with high-velocity rifles, but Aslam says the wool from a dead animal would smell. Meanwhile, the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce has had shahtoosh tested in a New Delhi laboratory to prove that it came from a live animal. But the piles of seized chiru skins and wool that activist Ashok Kumar has seen say otherwise.
'I realise the hardship of Kashmiri weavers, but I can't accept killing an animal so that rich women can make a fashion statement,' he says. 'They're not going to die of cold if they don't wear the shahtoosh, so why kill an animal for vanity?'
Kalim Ullah Khan, another Srinagar shawl trader, says that the ban has only driven the shahtoosh market underground. Prices on the black market have risen to US$20,000 for one shawl. At those levels, the profitability of poaching overwhelms any ban.
Kashmiris are proud of the shahtoosh because it's 'linked with our identity', Kalim Khan says, but they're aware of the dilemmas involved. 'No one wants to make the chiru extinct - that would create disharmony in nature. But I'm sure there must be ways of trapping it to get the fur because it's a timid, gentle animal,' he says. 'We must protect the animal, but also not let weavers starve. They are poor people with no other skill.'
Rather than maintain an ineffective ban, New Delhi-based economist Swaminanthan S. Anklesaria Aiyar wants chiru to be raised in areas such as Ladakh, where the antelopes sometimes graze. That would allow local farmers to get a share of the trade and reduce poaching, he says. 'Other animals have been saved from extinction through farming,' says Aiyar. 'In Europe, the feathers of the eider duck used in down products made the duck extinct in some places, but farmers in Iceland were allowed to harvest the live birds and the duck now flourishes.'
But conservationists such as Wright say the Chinese have tried breeding chiru but have found it impossible to shear the animal - the fleece is too dense and is packed close to the skin to keep it warm in temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius.
The chiru has never been kept in captivity. 'Every attempt to capture it has resulted in its death,' she says. 'The chiru can only live at altitudes of 12,000 ft [3,657 metres] or more and in extreme cold. The Chinese have tried bringing chiru down to 10,000 ft, but they died.'
Critics fear poachers will try to pass off the wild chiru as farmed animals. 'That risk does exist,' says Aiyar. 'But it can be reduced by allowing shawls to be woven only within regulated farms and certifying them as farm-based.'
After the ban, many Kashmiris have turned to weaving pashmina from the fleece of pashmina goats. Unlike shahtoosh, pashmina can be combed from the coat of a live animal and is cheaper. Fine fleece from the chiru's undercoat, however, can't be harvested without skinning the animal. But pashmina is now considered passe in fashion circles.
To the Kashmiris, the passing fancy for pashmina highlights the enduring appeal of shahtoosh. 'You can't compare the two,' says Shabir Khan, who usually weaves pashmina shawls. 'The silky softness of the shahtoosh is unmatched. It's simply the best.' But unless the traders can find a way to ensure the survival of the chiru, the shahtoosh industry may well face extinction, too.
