By Adam Ellick
In Pakistan’s commercial capital, Karachi, a company that makes 2,000 fetish and bondage products operates next to a mosque.
KARACHI, Pakistan — In Pakistan, a flogger is known only as the Taliban’s choice whip for beating those who defy their strict codes of Islam.
But deep in the nation’s commercial capital, just next door to a mosque and the offices of a radical Islamic organization, in an unmarked house two Pakistani brothers have discovered a more liberal and lucrative use for the scourge: the $3 billion fetish and bondage industry in the West.
Their mom-and-pop-style garment business, AQTH, earns more than $1 million a year manufacturing 2,000 fetish and bondage products, including the Mistress Flogger, and exporting them to the United States and Europe.
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It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.
“If our mom knew, she would disown us,” said Adnan, seated on a leopard-print fabric covering his desk chair.
“Due to cultural barriers and religion, people don’t discuss these things openly,” Rizwan said. “We have to hide this information.”
Even customs officials were perplexed at how to tax the items, not quite sure what they were, they said.
Recently, when a curious employee inquired about the purpose of the sleep sack, a sleeping bag-like product used in certain kinds of bondage, she was told it was a body bag for the American military in Iraq.
Adnan Ahmed, a former air traffic controller who is now AQTH’s chief operating officer, said the items were undergarments. When asked if he considered a red-hot puppy mask an undergarment, he had a straightforward, but honest reply: “No. It’s just for joking.”
Still, word of the business has at times escaped. Last year four “powerful guys” from a conservative Muslim group threatened to burn down the factory if it was not closed within a week. The brothers calmly explained that it was merely a business, and that the items were not used in Pakistan. The next day they bribed a local Islamic political organization to ensure their safety.
These days, the gravest danger is Pakistan’s crumbling economy. The brothers idolize former President Pervez Musharraf, crediting their success to his industry friendly policies, like not requiring export licenses and banning trade unions. When Mr. Musharraf resigned last year, the brothers “didn’t eat for three days,” Adnan Qadeer said.
Since President Asif Ali Zardari took office, Adnan said, trade unions have been legalized and prices of some raw materials, including leather, have shot up, as have interest rates. The result: a 15 percent dip in AQTH’s profits.
Echoing the pervasive fears of entrepreneurs across the country, the brothers are considering relocating to East Asia if Pakistan becomes more unstable — or if they receive another threat.
The shoddy factory seems like an ode to their humble upbringing. Adnan’s executive bathroom has no toilet paper. Rizwan has no office. And their preferred lunch is Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Their inspiration for success came from their father, a civil servant who supported a family of six with a $150 monthly salary. While other children were forced into labor, or played aimlessly, the Qadeer brothers had to study.
In 2001, after the brothers graduated from a university, their father lent them $800, enough to purchase their first computer and to cover several months of rent on a studio apartment. There, the brothers searched the Internet day and night for a high-value garment product that was not widely available.
They experimented with basic leather goods, like jackets and pants. Adnan slept at mosquito-infested stitching factories to oversee sample runs that, in the end, proved more costly than their Chinese competitors.
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(Submitted by a reader)