Egypt's bread lines turn deadly amid food crisis
At least 11 people have died since February
Abdel Nabi Salim's main job in life is queuing for bread.
The graying 65-year-old retired administrator stands under Egypt's glaring noon sun, waiting in a queue that snakes out to the street to buy 20 loaves of steaming subsidized pocket bread from a barred window for 1 Egyptian pound ($0.18).
Egypt has for decades provided cheap bread for the poor because it enables millions to survive on low salaries and wards off political discontent. But bread lines have lengthened in recent months as costs of other non-subsidized Egyptian staples soared.
The current crunch means that once Salim buys his first batch of bread, he will return to the back of the line to wait, again, for the additional 10 loaves he needs to keep his extended family from going hungry.
"This is a rotten system," he said, a half hour into a daily wait for bread that can last several hours. "I come here every day. I have no work, so this is my job. Waiting for bread."
Excruciating lines have prompted media headlines of a bread "crisis" in the most populous Arab country, where cuts in bread subsidies led to riots in 1977 that killed scores and forced the government to back down.
Observers say sustained problems in the subsidy system could lead to a repeat of the 1977 crisis, if not quickly contained.
"It may be something far more reaching and much more violent, I'm afraid, because people are increasingly feeling that their faces are to the wall," said Gouda Abdel Khalek, a Cairo University economist.
Death in the lines
Already, at least 11 people have died in bread lines since early February, including a heart attack victim and a woman hit by a car while standing in a queue that stretched into the street, security sources said.
One person was shot dead and three wounded after a fight broke out in a queue in one Cairo suburb. Elsewhere, an argument between two boys over their place in line escalated to a brawl in which four people were hurt.
Top Egyptian officials have vowed speedy intervention to restore easy access to subsidized bread, which provides daily nutrition to 50 million Egyptians -- or over two-thirds of the population, according to U.N. statistics.
Some, however, have also sensed opportunity in the current bread crunch: some bakers sell subsidized flour on the black market for a profit, a practice to which government inspectors had often turned a blind eye.
"Some of the bakery owners have no conscience ... They sell just a little bread, and the rest (of the flour) goes to the black market," said Mohamed Ahmed, who runs a bakery in Cairo's poor Sayyida neighborhood.
"If everyone worked right, there wouldn't be these crowds."
President Hosni Mubarak has called on the military to help provide bread to the masses. One minister said security forces would provide an additional 2 million loaves daily and Egypt would raise the share of flour sent to bakers, state media said.
Egypt's bread lines are largely fuelled by urban inflation, which hit 12.1 percent in the 12 months to February. Prices for dairy goods are up 20 percent, vegetables 15 percent and cooking oils 40 percent, Egypt's statistics agency said.
To help cope, Egypt last week waived import duties on rice, dairy products, edible oils and types of cement and steel. Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid told a London newspaper Egypt had to act against inflation because of the danger it posed to its liberalization program.
"People are coming and saying we don't have enough food to eat ... and that will hijack the whole reform program of Egypt. We cannot afford that," Rachid told the Financial Times.