Voices from the new breadlines in Syria: Who’s waiting? And why?

DAMASCUS, Syria – There are separate lines for men and women outside a Damascus bakery – it’s not polite in this city for men and women to squish against each other. And there are so many people here, waiting for bread, that they’ve parted into gender-segregated queues.

The wait is long, and the bread they’re hoping to buy costs up to ten times more than it did just weeks ago — from 400 Syrian lira to 4,000 Syrian lira for a dozen pieces of dinner-plate sized flat bread. That new price is the equivalent of 31 cents.

Rahaf, 35, mother to eight children, says she’s barely scraping by. “I’m only alive because I’m not dead,” she says.

Like many other Syrians NPR interviewed for this story, she only gave her first name. Others asked not to be named at all. That’s because they were worried that talking about the bread crisis could get them into trouble with the interim government.

The bakery scene, post-Assad

There have been scenes like this across the Syrian capital’s 69 bakeries since rebels toppled the Assad regime and formed a new interim government in early December.

“We’re in a period of some chaos,” says Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist, co-director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Bread is politically sensitive in Syria as it is across the Middle East, where its price and availability have triggered protests in the past.

Syria’s old Assad regime heavily subsidized bread, Landis says. But it often wasn’t available – one of the reasons why Assad was toppled – along with soldiers abandoning their posts and the weakening of their allies Hezbollah and Russia.

Landis says if this new regime can’t resolve the bread crisis, it will soon become a political crisis as well as a hunger crisis. “It’s very hard for us to understand the level of need. The vast majority of Syrians,” says Landis, “they’re just barely subsisting.” Just a few months ago, the U.N. reported that 90% of Syrians were living below the poverty line.

The illegal sale of bread adds to the frustrations. Mohammad Siyadeh, of the Ministry of Supply, which oversees the purchase of flour, says the old subsidized price of 400 Syrian lira, or 3 cents, for 12 pieces of flatbread, encouraged bakeries to sell bread on the black market for a steep profit.

“We found a lot of corruption,” Siyadeh says. He says by raising the price to 4,000 lira, the bakeries are less likely to sell to the black market. The new pricing, he says, prevents 765,000 tons of flour from being leaked onto the private market each day.

Even with the price hike, he says the ministry is still subsidizing bread, which he says would otherwise cost 12,000 Syrian lira, or 92 cents, for a dozen pieces. Most Syrians live on less than 2 dollars a day.

Siyadeh acknowledges that these higher prices have caused hardships. On Jan. 6, the government announced that public sector pay would be increased fourfold, which he hopes will ease conditions for many families.

The black market in bread persists

But some bakeries are still selling bread on the black market, one bakery worker tells NPR.

“The subsidies that the government provides isn’t enough to cover costs,” said a bakery worker. “If we don’t sell privately, we’d be making a loss every day.” And they’re able to charge higher prices to these black market buyers (who then sell the bread at even higher prices).

On a January day, NPR saw dozens of people in a breadline — competing with cars that would slow down as they neared the window counter, which overlooks a sidewalk. Bakers hurriedly handed over plastic bags that appeared to contain dozens of pieces of flatbread, presumably to be sold on the black market. Every one of those exchanges – there were at least half a dozen in the hour that NPR was there — slowed down the bakers’ ability to service the lines of people, resulting in longer waits for bread to be prepared.

“The subsidies that the government provides isn’t enough to cover costs,” said a bakery worker. “If we don’t sell privately, we’d be making a loss every day.”

And it’s not just the drive-by buyers who are part of the black market scene. Impoverished Syrians are packing the lines, buying as much bread as possible, then reselling it on the roadsides. The government tolerates those sales, Siyadeh says, because they’re one of the few reliable ways poor Syrians can make any money. “I have to sell bread to feed my children bread,” says 65-year-old Khalaf, who was selling two dozen pieces of flat bread by a roadside.

One black market customer is a 33-year-old single mother of three children, who had just purchased a dozen pieces from a roadside seller at a markup of 16 cents — paying 47 cents in total. She tells NPR she’s got kids at home and can’t waste time standing in a line. Even so, she was borrowing money for food. “Neighbors help me, they understand my situation.”

Despite the new higher bread prices, she says the current government is better than the Assad regime, which detained her husband — never to return. “That freedom is more important than bread,” she says.

Running low on flour

But there is a far more serious problem looming on the horizon. Siyadeh, of the ministry of supply, says the country has only a five-month supply of flour in storage. That’s it.

Russia, a close ally of the former Assad regime, used to supply Syria’s flour. But Russia halted those supplies after the new government took power, ostensibly over concerns about payment.

One country has offered help: Ukraine — another of the world’s great wheat producers, which is repelling a Russian invasion of its territory. In a December visit to Damascus, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha announced a gift of 500 tons of flour and said his country was ready to offer more.

Siyadeh says his country would like to purchase flour from Ukraine, but there’s a problem. “The sanctions on Syria,” he says. “They are the biggest problem facing us in terms of importing wheat.”

U.S. and European sanctions were largely imposed to punish the former Assad regime for its violent crackdown on Syrians. They’ve remained in place even after rebels toppled the Assad regime and largely prevent the Syrian government from using the international banking system, which is crucial for purchasing imports like flour.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department announced it would make it easier for the new government to purchase humanitarian aid but kept sanctions in place. But “so far, we haven’t seen any impact,” Siyadeh says of those eased-up rules on international purchases.

The sanctions have been a matter of deep frustration for the new government. “Don’t burden us with decisions you are fixated on, that is increasing the suffering of Syrian people,” said Syria’s new ruler, Ahmad al-Sharaa to a Saudi news channel in late December. By decisions, Sharaa was referring to the West’s use of sanctions.

Outside the bakeries, some Syrians say their patience is already wearing thin. As my NPR colleague and I walk down one breadline, a retired school teacher stops me. “I’ve been waiting here for two hours,” he says. “Until when? This new regime told us it’s bringing freedom,” he says, shaking his head. “But we can’t buy bread.”