“To be able to get bread I had to search half the city and stand for hours in front of the ovens — still even then I would often go back home empty-handed,” Ahmad al-Barro, a father of three from Qamishli, told Al-Monitor. Barro, like many others in northeast Syria who live in areas under the control of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, has struggled to provide for his family over the last month as the region has experienced a severe shortage of bread.
The crisis started in late December when owners of private bakeries went on a collective strike in protest of the increasing price of flour, closing their doors until the autonomous administration reduced the price of flour or allowed them to raise the price of bread.
