Since July 2023, people’s tables in the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan have become increasingly empty. Now, people can no longer afford basic staples like flour. Bread shortages and hours-long queues outside bakeries have become the norm in the region. This new normal has come at the cost of social unrest that killed one person at the beginning of this month.
On July 5, after waiting in line for hours in front of a bakery in Sistan and Baluchistan, two men got into a fight over their place in the queue. The argument turned violent and one of the men was killed. News of the incident angered Iranians on social media and attracted nationwide attention to the severe flour and bread shortages in Sistan and Baluchistan.
Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is home to the Sunni Baluch minority in the Shia-dominated country. It’s a poor and underdeveloped region plagued by drug trafficking from Afghanistan and petrol trafficking to Pakistan, as well as crippling drought.
Sistan and Baluchistan used to be called the “granary of Iran" because of its huge wheat farms, but since the 1980s the region has gradually turned into a desert due to water mismanagement and climate change.
'People whose daily meal was bread and tea can no longer afford it'
Roudin [not his real name] is a Baluch living in Baluchistan, Iran. He and his friends collect money to buy food for poor people living in Sistan and Baluchistan. He told us about the increasing shortages of flour and the profound impact it is having on people in this poor province of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Our region is very poor, that is no secret, and the fact that people here sleep on an empty stomach is nothing new. What has changed is that the situation has deteriorated dramatically in recent months. The first thing worth noting is that the people here are poor and do not buy their bread at the bakery but bake it themselves at home, so bakeries are rare. While a sack [40 kg] of flour cost 40,000 tomans [0.72€ ] a year ago, it rose to 130,000 tomans [2.36€ ] a few months ago and now costs 450,000 tomans [8.18 €].
This price increase can partly be explained by the general inflation in Iran, but the main reason why flour is not only more expensive but also very hard to find is that it is smuggled by boats to Pakistan and sold there at a much higher price than here. So if you have no money, you have no bread, and even if you have money, you have to queue for hours to get some.
And sometimes there are fights, like in Saravan, because people are angry, the air is polluted, there is a great water scarcity and now that the main source of food for the people here has gone, people are getting nervous, they are becoming violent.”
The situation has worsened since July 2023, when the Islamic Republic of Iran introduced a new restriction for bakeries limiting the quota of flour that was available at a subsidised price.
Officials said they hoped this would prevent the subsidised flour from being smuggled abroad. However, many Iranian experts believe that the restriction was put in place to reduce the huge economic burden that the subsidies were having on the government.
This measure has caused corruption. Bakers or shops that receive the subsidised price for wheat or flour sell it on the black market at the market price or they smuggle it. Last week, a public prosecutor in the northern Golestan province announced that 53,000 tonnes of wheat had been lost.
The Islamic Republic has been in economic crisis for decades, having fallen into deep economic corruption and having been subjected to international economic sanctions due to Tehran's suspected nuclear activities.
'If they have no flour they have no bread and that literally means nothing to eat'
Our Observer Roudin emphasised how important flour was for families around the country.
“Flour means food for many families here, if they have no flour they have no bread and that literally means that they have nothing to eat. Lots of people here only eat bread, which they eat with tea, that’s it. Rice and everything else is a lot more expensive than flour, which they cannot afford anyway.
We support some families here whose nutrition depends entirely on our donations, but there are many more poor families in the same situation that we cannot support. There are lots of big families here who need two bags of flour per month, and it is difficult to find donors as everyone is in a financial crisis these days. Last month we were only able to support 180 families and this month we still have nothing.
Many of these families are supported by single mothers, or by parents who are addicts and can’t work properly. Many of the other families just can’t find enough work to support their children.
Sistan and Baluchistan has been one of the most active provinces in the recent anti-regime protests that have rocked Iran since September 2022 under the slogan "Revolution of Woman, Life, Freedom".
The province experienced the bloodiest day of the crackdown during protests on 30 September 2023. Over the course of the day the Islamic Republic's security forces killed at least 66 protesters.
