Pashtuns in the Gulf: labour migration since the 1970s

At a glance

• Men from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have worked in the Gulf since the mid-1970s. From 1981 to 2013 the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment placed 1,668,244 workers from the province, 26.42 per cent of all Pakistani placements, from a province with 13.45 per cent of the population. [1]

• Dir and Swat send more workers in proportion to their size than almost any district in Pakistan. In 2001 to 2010 Dir sent 51,490 workers through the Bureau, 3.99 per cent of its 1998 population. [1]

• The work is mostly construction, driving and shop work, and most of the men go as unskilled labour. [1, 2, 7]

• Gulf money paid for concrete houses, guest rooms, land and businesses at home, and in conflict years it fed families in Swat and Lower Dir. [1, 2, 6]

• The same workers live under the sponsor system: visas tied to an employer, recruiters' fees, and a risk of injury and death on construction sites and roads. [5, 11, 12]

The first men from Kohery

The best account of how the migration began is an anthropologist's. Francis Watkins lived in Kohery, a village in Dir, and wrote his Edinburgh doctoral thesis, Save There, Eat Here (1995), from the life stories of its men. [2] The village had sent men away to work for generations: as labourers for the British, as mullahs in Balochistan, then to building sites in the Punjab and Karachi. [2] Gulf work came last.

Watkins found two men who had gone earlier, one by road to Jordan in the 1960s and on to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage, another, Gul Hamid, who worked in the United Arab Emirates before 1970. Both were lone cases. Men in numbers went only from 1975. [2] Abdul Hadi, working in Karachi about 1970, remembered a neighbour, Ghasurahman, telling him he was going to "a place called Dubai". A friend had found him the visa, and the plane ticket cost Rs 1,000. A group of men took him to the airport without much idea of where he was going. Abdul Hadi followed in 1975, by which time there were already other Kohery men there. [2]

The timing mattered. The building boom in Karachi was ending just as the Gulf states, short of labour, were hiring. Almost every Kohery man who had worked in Karachi moved on to the Gulf. [2] Many of the first men came on "agreement contracts" tied to one company for a fixed period, and left the company as soon as they saw better work elsewhere. In those years, Watkins writes, the UAE was desperate for labour and ignored some illegal working. [2]

In the 1980s Saudi Arabia, mainly Riyadh, opened up. Visas cost more and came through an agent, but the jobs paid better. [2] By the 1990s some in Kohery claimed that Dir alone sent a planeload of men to Dubai every day, and Watkins notes that PIA did run a daily flight between Dubai and Peshawar. In one neighbourhood of the village, Bagh, 67 per cent of adult men were away in the Gulf in 1993. [2]

Migration of this kind is circular. Men stay two years or more, come home, and go back. Ismail Khan, who did twelve months of fieldwork among the Pukhtuns of Dir for his Edinburgh thesis of 2024, found the same pattern and the local word for it, musafari (مسافري). [5] The wider background is in Pashtuns today.

How many, and from where

Pakistan's official count is of workers who register with the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment or a Protector of Emigrants. It does not record ethnicity, so there is no official count of Pashtuns in the Gulf. The nearest figures are by province and district.

Rashid Amjad and G. M. Arif, working for the International Growth Centre in 2014, found that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had kept a share of about 25 per cent of annual placements throughout 1981 to 2013, almost double its share of the population. Punjab's share of placements matched its share of the population, and Sindh and Balochistan sent far fewer than their population would suggest. Balochistan accounted for 1.25 per cent of placements. [1] The former Federally Administered Tribal Areas, listed separately, had 5.04 per cent against 2.39 per cent of the population. [1] Of the workers the Bureau placed in these years, 98 per cent went to the Middle East. [1]

The Bureau's district figures show where the workers come from. In 2001 to 2010 the twenty districts that sent the most workers included Dir (51,490), Swat (40,518), Swabi (20,463), Peshawar (19,452), Mardan (18,517) and Kohat (16,614). Measured against population, Dir ranked first in the country, with 3.99 workers per 100 people, Poonch in Azad Kashmir second, Swat third at 3.22 and Kohat fourth at 2.97. [1] Dir stood third in the Bureau's list for 2009 and fourth for 2012, with Swat just behind it. [1] A study of rural Lower Dir by researchers at the University of Peshawar in 2008 called Malakand Division the highest labour-sending region in the north of the country, with Lower Dir at the top within it. [3]

The latest figures are for the whole province. In 2024 the Economic Survey, reported by Business Recorder, listed 187,103 workers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and another 29,937 from the tribal areas, out of 727,381 Pakistanis who left. Punjab had 404,345. Saudi Arabia took 452,562 of the total, the UAE 64,130, Qatar 40,818 and Bahrain 25,198, and Oman about 11 per cent. [13] Taken together the province and the tribal areas sent about 30 per cent of all workers.

The tribal areas and Balochistan show smaller numbers from the same hardship. The journalist Sabrina Toppa reported in 2018 that in the first three months of that year more than 2,000 men from the tribal areas and over 200 from Balochistan went overseas. [7] Gulzeb Tareen, 23, of Pishin told her, "We are marginalised in Pakistan." Sohail Khan, 21, of Zhob said a cousin with a master's degree was driving a taxi in the Gulf for about 50,000 rupees a month and "has no choice". [7]

Construction, taxis and shops

The Bureau sorts workers by skill. Amjad and Arif give the Pakistani figures for the Middle East as 44 per cent unskilled, 20 per cent semi-skilled, 32 per cent skilled and just under 5 per cent professional. [1] In Swat and Lower Dir, a 2012 survey of conflict-affected villages found that most migrants were male, working in the Gulf, 43 per cent as unskilled labour, 25 per cent semi-skilled and 25 per cent skilled. [1]

What this means on the ground is mostly building and driving. In Kohery, men picked up bricklaying and plastering abroad, and worked in gardens and on concrete. [2] Peshawar's Protectorate of Emigrants told Dawn in 2012 that many migrants from the province and the tribal areas work in construction and as drivers, trades in which "the risk of injuries and even deaths is high". [11] Taxi driving is the job the 2018 reporting keeps meeting. Nasir Khan, 26, from Bajaur, drove a taxi in Saudi Arabia until a passenger who refused to pay stabbed him. He survived and did not tell his family. [7] Umer Din Khan, 20, from the tribal areas, has eight relatives who drive taxis in the UAE and whose wages support the wider family. "They are spending their lives as prisoners in these foreign countries," he said. [7]

The pay explains why. A Kohery man told Watkins that a man with a degree from Pakistan could earn more with a shovel in his hand in Dubai. [2]

What the money built

The first thing the money built was houses. Watkins found that new building materials reached Kohery with the Karachi money: first concrete guest rooms, then houses with breeze-block walls, finally poured concrete roofs. The Gulf years carried this further. Every married couple now expected a room of its own, and houses grew in scale. Spending on houses was a matter of pride, and as Wahid Gul put it, "people prefer to spend their money now and make their children, mothers and fathers happy". [2] Families gave money to community mosques and to the upkeep of madrassas for the whole area, and did not build private ones of their own. [2]

Two studies in Dir and Swat put numbers on it. A survey of 100 emigrant families in four villages of Lower Dir in 2008, by Niaz Muhammad and colleagues at the University of Peshawar, found that before emigration a third of the families lived on up to Rs 10,000 a month. Afterwards 10.5 per cent were above Rs 100,000. [3] Ninety-six per cent said their economic status had improved, and the families described building cemented houses, buying vehicles and land, and sending their children to better schools. [3] A study of Swat and Lower Dir in 2012, cited by Amjad and Arif, found that migrants' remittances went to real estate and construction (35 per cent), business (28 per cent), social ceremonies (17 per cent), pilgrimage (9 per cent) and transport (7 per cent). [1]

Schooling is a smaller share of the spending but a large part of what families say. In a national household survey of Saudi-based workers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, food took 39 per cent of remittances, real estate and farm machinery 28 per cent, and education 3.9 per cent. [1] In Dir, Hazrat Islam told Arab News in 2018 that he left his studies at 20, went to Riyadh and sponsored three brothers. His parents could not pay school fees for his brothers and sisters, he said, but his own children attend private schools. "Just take Saudi Arabia out of our lives and the wheels of our life will stop moving," he said. [8] A school owner in Dir said the parents of more than 70 per cent of his students work in the Middle East, and the Upper Dir lawmaker Inayatullah Khan said no school existed in the region until 1960. [8] Shops in Dir are named after Saudi cities. [8]

Remittances also did something harder in the years of fighting. In October 2012 researchers in conflict-affected villages of Swat and Lower Dir found that 74 per cent of respondents said remittances had kept them from starving while curfews and violence stopped all other work. [1] Ashfaq Yusufzai of Inter Press Service met families from the tribal districts who had been driven out by army operations. Sherdil Shah, 59, of South Waziristan, lost his grain shop in an operation in 2006, sold his property and sent his sons to Dubai. They now send about 1,500 dollars a month, and he has bought a house in Dera Ismail Khan district. [6] Usman Wali's family of 13 left Orakzai for a camp in Hangu, and a contractor took his two sons and a brother to Saudi Arabia. The money let him open a cloth business and later a cement business. [6] A FATA Secretariat official, Abu Zar, told the agency that more than 400,000 people from the tribal areas were working abroad, up from fewer than 100,000 before 2005. [6]

Sponsors, visas and fees

Saudi Arabia ties a foreign worker's residence to a local sponsor, the kafala system. Ismail Khan's thesis is about what this does to Pukhtun men from Dir: it subordinates them to their sponsors, and the "azad" (free) visa, held by a worker who has paid for a visa and then looks for his own employer, increases their vulnerability. [5] Hiba Zayadin of Human Rights Watch told Dawn in 2025: "Employers still control visa renewals and residency status." [12]

Watkins saw both sides in the 1990s. Azum Khan of Kohery wanted to work for someone other than his UAE sponsor, and the sponsor asked 3,000 dirhams to let him go. Many workers, "especially Pakhtuns", Watkins writes, ignored the rule that kept them in the area and the job of their visa, and paid for that when sponsors asked for money. [2] He also writes that the Gulf left the men treated as second-class individuals, dependants of Arab sponsors and bosses and "lesser Muslims". [2]

The price of getting there is high. Outside the official channels Toppa gave the average recruitment cost as more than 4,000 dollars for Saudi Arabia and 2,000 for the UAE, against 200 to 900 dollars through formal channels. [7] Dawn's Munib Ali Daudpoto put recruiters' fees at Rs 300,000 to Rs 500,000 in 2025, despite rules against them. [12] Sajjad Hussain, a 22-year-old student from Waziristan, told Toppa that 30 to 50 members of an extended family can depend on one man's wage, and that the main reason men go is that "there are no job opportunities in Waziristan". [7]

The Protectorate of Emigrants, which officials told Dawn has existed since the 1970s, said in 2012 that its Peshawar office protects 4,000 to 5,000 workers a month. Its two-year insurance pays nominees Rs 1 million if a worker is injured, paralysed or killed. Many workers did not know of it, and claims failed when they could not produce the identity cards of their parents or wives. [11]

Deaths and deportations

Workers die at the Gulf's building sites and on its roads, and in 2026 in its wars. A Pakistani minister told the National Assembly in August 2026 that 799 workers' deaths had been reported abroad in two years, and that the full number of Pakistanis dying abroad was higher. [17] The figure covers all Pakistani workers. Two cases show what the families from Pashtun districts have faced.

Moomor Khan, from North Waziristan, had driven for about five years for a contractor to the Abu Dhabi oil company ADNOC when a Houthi missile and drone strike killed him in January 2022. His body arrived at Peshawar airport. The Overseas Pakistanis Foundation arranged an ambulance to his village, and its welfare director described him as a poor man whose life had been affected by a military operation in the Wana area. His brother Javed Khan thanked the embassy for covering the cost of a special flight. [14] In March 2026 the AFP named Murid Zaman, 48, of Bannu, who had driven in the UAE for 25 years, among the Pakistanis killed in Iran's retaliatory strikes on the Gulf. [15]

Deportation is the other risk. The foreign minister told the Senate that 285,980 Pakistanis had been deported from Saudi Arabia in five years, with yearly figures running from 2015 to 2019, for expired residence permits, absconding, working in jobs other than those on their visas and other offences. [16] The figures do not say how many were Pashtuns.

Pashtun communities in the Gulf

Watkins shows how the men from one village lived abroad. In the UAE they lived mainly in two places, Dhaid, where Gul Hamid had first gone to work, and Muzeirah, where Abdulhai was the mullah of the main mosque. They had rejoined their village networks, and on Fridays men visited each other to swap news and give and receive hospitality, as they would in a village hujra (see the hujra and the qala). In Saudi Arabia the Kohery men all worked in Riyadh and lived together in two large buildings. [2]

A Gulf News report from September 2018 shows organisation at a larger scale. Pakistani Pashtuns formed the Pak-Khyber Wing under the Pakistan Association in Dubai, to give welfare help to poorer members of the community. Pakistan's ambassador, Khursheed Ahmad Junejo, said at its swearing-in that about 60 per cent of the more than one million Pakistanis in the UAE come from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. [10] The Bureau's 26 per cent of placements and the ambassador's 60 per cent measure different things, the first the flow of registered workers over three decades, the second an envoy's estimate of residents. Junejo said the wing would help all Pakistanis. [10]

For one man, Pashto goes with him. Assad Ali Khan, 31, drove a Dubai taxi from about 5am to 5pm and lived in a one-room villa in Satwa with friends, most of them Pashtun. He told the Khaleej Times in 2016 that he spoke Urdu, English and Pashto, and wrote Pashto poetry at night, mostly on friendship. He had written for a magazine, Shanazargona. He said he hoped to go home for good in a few years "and have more time to read and write Pashto poetry". [9]

The Afghan route

Afghan migration to the Gulf is smaller in the records and different in kind. Sabawoon Samim of the Afghanistan Analysts Network interviewed eleven migrants and their relatives from Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni and Kandahar for a report in 2024. Afghan men are more often in the Gulf legally than in Iran or Pakistan, he found, and they go without families. [4] Interviewees said that Daud Khan, the ruler in the 1970s, refused a UAE request for labourers but issued tourist passports that many used to find work. Migration rose after 1979, the civil war and the first Taliban government. [4]

Access has narrowed. The UAE stopped issuing new visas to Afghans in November 2020, one of 13 countries affected. When Samim wrote, only Oman was still issuing them, and some Afghans reached Saudi Arabia on Pakistani passports. [4] The Khost men in the report work mostly in construction. Ghazni and Paktia men are in bakeries. A Khost elder called the remittances "oxygen" for several districts and spoke of them as "Arab money". [4] Young migrants had repaired an old mosque over the elders' objections and now had more say than their fathers in some family decisions. [4]