MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Hajji Sher Mohammad tended his flock of sheep at the foot of a northern Afghan mountain range, staring off into the distance and invoking what has become a magical name: Finland. Over there, somewhere.
“There is a country called Finland, and that’s where lamb skins go,” he said. Beyond that, Hajji Mohammad added, “only God knows.”
Most Western countries import little from Afghanistanother than carpets and opium. But Finnish fur buyers’ growing regard for the velvety pelts of Afghan karakul lambs has made them this country’s largest export destination in the West for any product, according to Afghanistan’s official export statistics.
Last year, Finland, a powerhouse in the global fur trade, imported nearly a half-million Afghan lamb pelts, auctioning them off to fashion houses to be turned into luxurious women’s coats, among other items.
It is a niche product, to be sure, usually found only in high-priced boutiques or department stores when it is sold in the West. (It is oftenmarketed as astrakhan fur in those quarters.) But the trade has remained vital to Afghanistan’s ailing economic sector.
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The hub of the Afghan-Finnish fur trade is the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Fur traders gather here each March and April with stacks of pelts of the karakul breed of sheep purchased from shepherds across the countryside. The traders stand in doorways and along the walls of trading floors, watching anxiously as middlemen one rung above them — the exporters — sort the pelts by quality into three piles and decide how much each is worth.
The talk often turns to Finland, which, for Afghan fur traders, is another name for the big leagues. Only traders who amass 20,000 pelts generally go on to Helsinki’s fur auctions. Those who have been there describe to those who have not a country of unimaginably cold winters, of people who refuse to take bribes, and of angry animal rights activists.
“They started shouting: ‘Go back home! Why do you kill these animals?’ ” Amin Tawakaly, a second-generation Afghan fur trader, recalled, describing the protesters who once confronted him outside his Helsinki hotel. “They were shouting in Finnish, so I had to ask what they were saying.”
Newborn karakul lambs are valued above other breeds for the luster and tight, soft curls of their fur, which form mesmerizing patterns and curlicues. But within a day or two of birth, a lamb’s fur grows woolier and loses its value.
A decision is made quickly whether to slaughter the lamb or raise it for its meat and wool, with shepherds weighing how much rain and grass they believe will be available that year. Usually about half of the lambs will be killed for their pelts.
It is not only European sensibilities that are offended by the killing of the lambs. The Taliban, when they were in power in Afghanistan, tried to clamp down on the trade as well, particularly in the cruelest top end of it: pelts from lambs that have not yet been born, requiring the killing of pregnant ewes to harvest. Experts estimate they make up less than 10 percent of the pelts sold.
Mr. Tawakaly even empathized with his Finnish hecklers to some degree. As a child, he dreaded the slaughter of lambing season and once ran away with a newborn lamb, hoping to save it.
“After two days, my father caught me and he killed it,” Mr. Tawakaly said, with a half-smile, half-grimace. “It was his business, and I couldn’t stop him.”
While most lamb pelts from Afghanistan and other Central Asian states are shipped abroad, a few of the best are sent to Kabul, where furriers style them into the memorable peaked hats former President Hamid Karzai made famous. A silvery or tan karakul hat can sell for more than $1,000.
The karakul sheep’s fur was once so widely admired that President Theodore Roosevelt personally involved himself in efforts to import a karakul flock to the United States in 1909. But despite years of trying, American ranchers and the Department of Agriculture struggled to raise a flock with the same quality of fur as those in Central Asia.
For decades, the Central Asian karakul trade continued to thrive, but suddenly plummeted after its peak in the 1970s. Upheaval in Afghanistan and the broader region was part of the crash, but so were global tastes and changes in the fur trade.
But if the West has in some part forgotten about karakul sheep, the shepherds of northern Afghanistan have continued to hold them in the same high regard as always. Some zealous shepherds tie banners of red cloth to the shaggy wool on the sheeps’ backs, or even directly paint the fur red — a shield against celestial forces, some say.
“That’s for their protection, so the stars at night won’t clash and make the rams ill,” Mohammad Hussain, a graying shepherd, 65 years old, explained as his flock nibbled on grass and small yellow flowers, amid a wind so strong that it swept birds backward when they took to the air.
Although karakul has a far smaller share of the fur market than fox and mink, it has been growing in recent years, said Kari Huotari, a manager at Saga furs, the major Finnish fur auction operation.
In the last quarter of 2014, Afghanistan exported $3.6 million worth of karakul pelts to Finland.
In Mazar-i-Sharif, most of the pelts pass through the marble-floored office of Sayed Mohammad Sultani, the largest Afghan fur exporter. With a karakul hat perched on his head and wearing a blazer over a flowing shalwar kameez, Mr. Sultani kept a close watch on the sorting process on a recent morning.
Nearby, one of his employees picked up the top pelt from the stack and ran his fingers on both sides to test for softness and thinness. The man then held it in his outstretched hands and regarded it as if he were farsighted, needing to see it at a distance to know what he held.
Then the man tossed it casually into the pile of middle-quality furs. Each of the furs there will fetch about 1,200 afghanis, or about $21, from Mr. Sultani, the exporter.
Mr. Sultani explained that he insisted on being present to make sure his employees did not place mediocre furs in the highest-quality pile, either as a favor to the trader who had brought them or as part of a secret deal to split the proceeds.
Surveying the operation, he declared, to an audience of Afghan fur traders and a reporter, what a relief it was to do business with the Finnish.
“The Finnish people are very honest,” Mr. Sultani said. He reached that conclusion through an experiment of sorts: “One time I offered to bribe the person in charge” of the karakul auction in Finland for his customer list, he recounted, trying to cut out the auction house so he might sell directly to the customers.
“I offered him 100,000 euros,” Mr. Sultani recounted, about $108,000. An impressed note entered his tale as he recalled that the Finnish auctioneer refused.
