“I want to feed my children” is the phrase Khalil Mansour repeats as he waits in front of the oven to buy just one pack of bread, in a country where long lines for basic necessities are repeated due to the economic collapse.
In front of a bakery in Beirut, Mansour, 48, bluntly told AFP: “I wait five hours if I have to, I want to feed my children.”
On Friday, Mansur waited for bread for more than three hours, and the day before he stood in line for more than two hours. “What else can I do? I went three days without bread last week,” he says. For two weeks, Lebanese flocked to the bakeries daily, waiting in long lines to receive packets of state-subsidized Arab bread. Waiting hours are not without problems, sometimes requiring security intervention, while bakeries regulate the amount they distribute, settling for one or two packs per person.
The price of a six-loaf pack of subsidized bread is 13,000 Lebanese pounds, or less than a dollar, while the black market has entered the scene, and the price of a pack sometimes exceeds 30,000. Mansour works in a candy store, and his salary today does not exceed one and a half million Lebanese pounds, or only about 50 dollars, according to the black market rate in the country where prices have risen sharply.
After the economic crisis, which the World Bank called one of the worst in the world since 1850, the local currency lost more than ninety percent of its value against the dollar. The central bank’s ability to support imports of vital commodities, including wheat, fuel and medicines, has declined.
“This is our right”
The Ministry of Economy has raised the price of Arab bread packets several times over the past two years. The Russian invasion of Ukraine since February has exacerbated the difficulty of exporting wheat, especially since Lebanon imports eighty percent of its needs from Ukraine. Lebanon’s ability to store wheat has been severely affected after a horrific explosion in the port of Beirut cracked some of the sacks two years ago. Authorities have been warning for days that parts of it could collapse.
After months of Lebanese spending long hours, sometimes more than 12 hours a day, in front of gas stations, the government removed fuel subsidies until filling a small car with gasoline was the equivalent of Khalil Mansour’s salary.
Today, Lebanese fear that the government will also take action to eliminate subsidies for wheat, which threatens to raise the price of a pack of bread that not many can afford, especially since eighty percent of Lebanese live below the poverty line.
On Tuesday, the Lebanese parliament approved a $150 million loan agreement from the World Bank for an emergency response project to secure wheat supplies, but that could only last a few months due to a lack of a clear plan.
In his overflowing oven, Muhammad Mahdi is busy distributing two bundles of bread one by one to the customers, asking them to hurry up so that he can fulfill everyone’s requests. “Sixteen days ago there were queues and there were even problems with weapons and knives,” Mahdi, 49, said, adding: “It’s harder to wait for bread than gasoline, you can find an alternative to gasoline, on foot or by car.” taxi, and here we are talking about snacks. And he continues: “The citizen feels offended while he waits.”
Dania Hassan, 22, wanted to spare her father the burden of waiting in front of the oven. “My father searches for half an hour or moves from one oven to another … but he works from morning until late at night to buy this tie,” she says. “What can I say… it is a very great suffering to receive the bread to which we are entitled, the least we should receive,” she added.
“A devastating effect on all”
In the aftermath of the grain crisis, mill owners blame the relevant authorities for not providing the required amount of subsidized flour due to the Bank of Lebanon’s delay in opening financial loans and difficulties with imports, which the Ministry of Economy denies. accusing some bakeries of storing flour or using it in the production of non-subsidized products such as sweets.
Since the onset of the economic crisis, the Lebanese authorities have been partly responsible for the deaths of more than a million Syrian refugees living in difficult humanitarian conditions after fleeing the ongoing war in their country.
Lebanon has witnessed from time to time an increase in hatred against refugees and calls for their deportation.
And the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday in a statement that Lebanon is currently seeing rising tensions between various groups, especially violence against refugees, leading to an escalation of violence.
She referred to “discriminatory measures based on citizenship”, stressing the need for continued international support for Lebanon “to ensure access to food security”. And recent media reports have suggested that some bakeries are now being given away only to Lebanese, while others have long been segregated.
