A U.S. court’s ruling sends a clear message to Israel organizations intent on suppressing advocacy for Palestinian rights / credit: Alejandro Alvarez / SIPA USA
A court in Washington, D.C., has entirely dismissed a lawsuit against the American Studies Association over its support of an academic boycott of Israel.
The lawsuit, which was filed in 2016 by Israel advocates, has now failed three separate times in court – a significant defeat for the Israel lobby’s attempt to punish scholars who back Palestinian rights.
“The court found that the claims primarily arose from advocacy on an issue of public interest and were not likely to succeed,” stated the Center for Constitutional Rights.
In a 2013 referendum, members of the American Studies Association overwhelmingly endorsed an academic boycott of Israel.
The vote followed an endorsement of the boycott by the association’s governing body.
Declaring the boycott an ethical stance, the ASA said that it “represents a principle of solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and an aspiration to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians.”
Israel advocates within the association, however, jumped into action to persecute colleagues who dared to criticize Israel.
Using a tactic known as lawfare, in which Israel lobby groups use legal means to harass and silence supporters of Palestinian rights, the plaintiffs claimed that the boycott resolution was brought by “insurgents” within the association who attempted to “subvert and change the ASA’s purpose” into a political advocacy organization.
The plaintiffs alleged that a “cabal” of leaders from the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) surreptitiously took over the ASA and used their positions on its executive committee and national council to foist the boycott resolution on the association’s unsuspecting membership, misspending ASA money in the process.
A federal court threw out a key claim in the lawsuit in 2017, ruling that the ASA’s endorsement of the boycott was not contrary to the association’s charter.
After the lawsuit was initially dismissed in 2019, the plaintiffs filed an appeal, and opened a second case in the Washington, DC Superior Court.
Later that year, the Superior Court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss in part, but denied their anti-SLAPP motion.
SLAPP suits are intended to suppress free speech and force people or organizations into spending money defending themselves in court.
But defendants appealed the denial of that anti-SLAPP motion.
The DC Court of Appeals ordered the court to reanalyze the case, resulting in the most recent ruling, notes the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The force behind the lawsuit was the Louis D. Brandeis Center, an Israel advocacy organization that has for years worked to smear Palestine solidarity activism as anti-Semitism, and attempts to suppress it with frivolous lawsuits and bogus civil rights complaints.
The organization’s former president, attorney Kenneth Marcus, represented the plaintiffs until February 2018 – when he was appointed as the Trump administration’s top civil rights enforcer at the US Department of Education.
“The purpose of lawsuits like these are really to harass and intimidate activists who support rights anywhere, but freedom and justice in Palestine in particular,” Astha Sharma Pokharel, staff lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told The Electronic Intifada.
Along with the anti-SLAPP laws that are designed to deter these kinds of attacks, the court’s dismissal “sends a message to Palestinian rights advocates that they are supported and that the law is on their side,” Sharma Pokharel added.
‘A Losing Strategy’
The Center for Constitutional Rights represented Steven Salaita, one of the defendants targeted by this lawsuit.
In 2014, Salaita was fired by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for social media comments criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza that year.
Salaita then found himself targeted by the lawsuit against the American Studies Association.
He told The Electronic Intifada this week that he was relieved that the DC court dismissed the lawsuit against the American Studies Association.
“It was something hanging over my head and I dislike being obliged to deal with people who deny my humanity,” Salaita said.
“I don’t know what message [Israel lawfare groups] will hear – probably nothing – but it should send them the message that it’s a losing strategy,” he said.
“More importantly, it should send them the message that even if their nonsense were to be effective according to judicial bodies in the United States, it still won’t stop anybody from agitating against the Israeli state.”
Boycotts, he added, are “designed to bypass and subvert state institutions.”
Editor’s Note:This article, originally published by Unbias the News, is part of the Sinking Cities Project, which covers six cities’ responses to sea-level rise. The investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu, European Cultural Foundation and the German Postcode Lottery.
In order to visit Alexandria’s most famous museum, you need to dive into its sea. Much of this ancient Egyptian city was lost to sea, and sank beneath the waves of the Mediterranean around the 3rd or 2nd century.
Located 2.5 kilometers (1.55 miles) off the coast of Alexandria, “Abu Qir Sunken Cities Museum” hosts the underwater ruins of both the Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus cities, where visitors can see the lighthouse that was one of the world’s Seven Wonders, along with anchors, gold coins, and the remains of the palace where Cleopatra and Anthony lived their last days, all lying at the bottom of the sea, as a testament of how vulnerable humans are to nature’s forces.
Since the discovery of the two long-lost cities and other underwater sites, scientists and researchers have been striving to unravel the reason behind the collapse and submergence of these great cities more than 1,500 years ago. They are also investigating the probability of history repeating itself.
Historical Precedent
Franck Goddio, the French underwater archaeologist who, in 2000, discovered the city of Thonis-Heracleion said that parts of the city’s ancient coastline sank beneath the sea “due to a combination of natural phenomena, including a series of earthquakes and tidal waves.”
Spending most of his long career studying ancient Alexandria, Magdy Torab, professor of Geomorphology at the Faculty of Arts, Damanhour University, suggests the same reasons for what happened there. “Alexandria is located close to some active tectonic plates, we witness a lot of earthquakes from near and distant sources that caused damages to the city, both in historical and recent times. One of the effects of those land movements is causing land subsidence,” he said.
In a study published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press in 2018, Torab also investigated sea level variation at Alexandria over the last millennia. “There is an abrupt relative sea level rise that occurred from the mid-8th century to the end of 9th century that explains the wide movement of sinking that happened at this time.”
Exploring the different reasons that led to the disappearance of this coastal city has a special importance as it is used by scientists to predict earthquake hazards in the coastal areas today.
Torab describes the effect of the seismic activities that the ancient city of Alexandria faced at this time, “land may have subsided as a result of an earthquake that followed an undersea earthquake or tsunamis.”
Land subsidence is a gradual or sudden sinking of the earth’s surface. The phenomenon can be caused by many reasons. Some of them might be related to human activities or part of a natural process like earthquakes.
The Mediterranean region has a witnessed many destructive earthquakes, among them the 365 Crete earthquake, which happened between the fourth and sixth centuries and was followed by a devastating tsunami that swept out Alexandria, and the Nile Delta, killing thousands.
So the great port that hosted the legendary Alexandria library flooded by a giant wall of water that puts big parts of the city under the water. Does this indicate that this might happen again?
According to the UNESCO, Alexandria is among five cities in the Mediterranean sea that is under the threat and need to be “tsunami-ready” by 2030. “Statistics show that the probability of a tsunami wave exceeding 1 meter in the Mediterranean in the next 30 years is close to 100 percent.”
Between the Sky and the Sea
Ziad Morsy knows Alexandria by heart. That’s hardly surprising, considerings he and his ancestors have lived in the city for decades. But what is remarkable is how much he knows about the invisible part of Alexandria, the part settling underwater.
For more than 12 years, Morsy’s work was under the water, as a scholar at Alexandria Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Underwater Cultural Heritage, then a visiting Lecturer of Maritime Archaeology. His job was to dive in the sea and collect data, because, as he said, “to be prepared for the future we need to understand the past”.
“Global warming will definitely affect Alexandria’s shoreline. But is it going to be the reason behind its sinking? I don’t think so. From my point of view, there is a long list of reasons, and global warming comes at the end of this list,” Morsy told Unbias the News.
He summarized the factors that determine “whether Alexandria is going to stay above the water or sink under the water” in three points: The city land level, the Mediterranean sea level, and Lake Mariout.
Geographical Precarity
If you search for Alexandria in the map, you will notice the port’s unique location, at the western end of the Nile River Delta and between two water bodies: the Mediterranean Sea in the north and Lake Mariout in the south.
The lake, which used to be much larger, is filled with brackish water because it receives a large amount of sewerage output and discharge of untreated irrigation wastewater that comes from the western delta. Although it connects to neither the Mediterranean Sea nor the River Nile, in order to keep the water level in this landlocked lake below sea level, water gets pumped and discharged from the lake into the sea.
“Imagine if the pumps didn’t work for any reason, the water level in the lake would increase and overflow, which means that parts of southern Alexandria would be flooded by the water,” said Morsy, citing another infrastructure risk.
Morsy believes that researchers are turning their heads toward the sea level rise effect, when the real focus should be on the land of Alexandria:
“A tsunami will not remove Alexandria from the map. Tidal waves will certainly cause damage. But what will swallow this city are earthquakes and land subsidence. We will go down to the bottom of the sea, just the way it happened before.”
The Mermaid of the Mediterranean
The spot where Alexandria was constructed is playing a vital role in the city’s sinking scenarios. It dates back to 331 B.C, when Alexander the Great chose to build a city surrounded by two water bodies: the Mediterranean Sea in the north to make it a trade center, and Lake Mariout to the south, where he directed the Greek architect Dinocrat to design “Alexander’s Harbor.”
But the chosen location was a barren area. So the engineer needed to establish a complex, intelligent system to supply water from the Nile through canals, and then distribute water through a branched pipeline system and store it in underground tanks.
Parts of this old pipeline system still exist but are not functioning, as the new city is built on the top of the many ancient cities that came ahead of it, “And this is in itself another cause of subsidence,” said Torab.
“If you are living in Alexandria, it will be normal for you to suddenly pass by a big hole in the middle of a road you are used to walking on every day, or see a building with visible cracks. It is an obvious form of land subsidence,” Morsy said.
Building with cracks and damage, a common sight in Alexandria / credit: Rehab Abdalmohsen
This issue inspired the Goethe Institute in Alexandria to join the project “Atlas of Mediterranean Liquidity,” which aims to show the impact of climate change on the Mediterranean through interactive maps and artwork.
Morsy contributed to the project. He sees it as a good way to raise awareness on how the city water sector was historically managed, and the challenges the city is going through. All is done through an interactive map done based on historical maps and city plans.
The ancient Alexandria was also built on limestone coastal ridges covered by a layer of clay, then a layer of the Nile river silt accumulated through the years. These landforms added to the fragility of the land toward subsidence, Morsy explained. The ancient Alexandria was also built on limestone coastal ridges that were covered by a layer of clay, then a layer of the Nile river silt that was accumulated through the years and these landforms added to the fragility of the land toward subsidence, Morsy explained.
Land Regression
Before reaching the Mediterranean, the Nile divides into two branches, Damietta and Rosetta. The number of branches is not clear, but they used to empty themselves in the Mediterranean Sea. One went through Alexandria even during the time of Queen Cleopatra. The blockage of the “Canopic branch,” due to the lack of maintenance, affected the sediment supply to the delta and the shoreline, which was vital for compensating the soil that got swept away by the waves, and caused land regression.
“Since the construction of the High Aswan Dam (HAD) across the Nile at Aswan in 1964, fresh water and sediment delivery to the coast of Alexandria declined every year. Because of the absence of sediments, the rates of soil erosion, land subsidence and groundwater salinity increased. This led to losing some lands to the sea, and we will be losing more,” said Ahmed Radwan, professor at National Institutes of Oceanography and Fisheries of Egypt (NIOF).
Daniel Jean Stanley and Andrew G. Warne published a well-recognized paper, “The Sea level and Initiation of Predynastic Culture in the Nile Delta.” They mentioned that, since 1964, essentially no sediment has been transported by the Nile River to the coast and also concluded that the Nile Delta “… is no longer an active delta but, rather, a completely wave-dominated coastal plain along the Mediterranean coast.”
He added that, without this dam, Egyptians would have survived neither the Nile flood, which killed hundreds of souls, nor the drought that hit the east African countries in the late ’80s and early ’90s: “The HAD was the real engine behind the development that happened in the country at this time.”
Land Reclamation
Radwan lives in Alexandria. He witnesses the coastal protection project that gets implemented by the government every day, and researches many hot spots. He believes the government’s reclamation and nourishment efforts are the safeguards for much of the coastland we are witnessing today:
“Let me give you an example. Abu Quir bay Headland is gained from the sea. Without the governmental effort to fill the gap in sediments, the area would have been lost to the sea. This is why sand feeding is important – to compensate for what nature was doing and bring in some ecological balance to the area that was lost to the sea with soil, cements or rocks.”
Between 1987 and 1994, artificial beach nourishment projects were implemented at Abu Qir, Stanley, El Asafra, Mandara and El Shatby beaches, with and without concrete jetties.
According to the UNESCO report, every year, 20-ton blocks are dumped into the water to protect the Corniche (road built along a coast) wall from wave action and seasonal winter floods.
Blocks line the beach in Alexandria / credit: Rehab Abdalmohsen
“Land nourishment is not a permanent solution,” said Hisham Elsafti, who participated in the design and evaluation of many projects in marine civil engineering in Alexandria as a researcher at Alexandria University.
Elsafti works for the Department of Hydromechanics and Coastal Engineering at Leichtweiß Institute for Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources of the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany. He explained that “soft” solutions like beach nourishment might be more favorable because the global direction nowadays is to implement an Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM). It is an interdisciplinary, iterative approach for sustainable use of the coastal zone combined with nature-based solutions, sometimes also referred to as building/engineering with nature.
He gave an example of nature-based solutions supporting local coastal ecosystems to protect the coast, “in Indonesia, the country is using mangrove forests to dampen tsunamis’ damage to its coast.”
Hard and Soft Solutions
In 1984, the American engineering services company Tetra Tech, Inc. developed a Shore Protection Master Plan (SPMP) for the Nile Delta Shoreline and Alexandria for the Shore Protection Authority (SPA) of Egypt. It designed specific schemes for 13 selected shore protection projects, which were then categorized as “first priority projects,” and “second priority projects.”
The solutions applied by the Egyptian government are mostly “hard engineering solutions.” It is a well-known technique to protect its shoreline by placing coastal concrete armor units that change the patterns of seabed erosion and siltation for a long distance along the shore, as Elsafti said.
Before the soft and hard engineering solutions, Alexandria used to get its shore protection from two natural sources, the long shore parallel breakwater called “Pharos Island,” an island composed of a series of ridges. The Nile and the Litani—especially the Nile river—were significant in supplying sediment along the shore and filling the deficiency in the coastal sediment budget.
Humans tried to mimic those natural islands, and make artificial islands through land reclamation. Part of the supposed benefits of those islands is protecting the main shoreline. The government reclaimed a big part of the shore in Alexandria. In the north coast, and in Al-Alamein city to the west of Alexandria, a big project of land reclamation took place, aiming to build more than 25 high buildings, each including more than 41 floors.
“The benefits of those projects are economical but their relation to coastal protection is limited,” said Elsafti who also explains how any human interference in nature should be studied well, in order to avoid fixing a problem in one location only to cause problems in others.
He added that if sand nourishment is done at a place in the sea where the sand doesn’t belong, then the sand will shift from that spot, and sediment in another. “This is why any sand nourishment project takes into consideration the annual sand feed process.”
The Shore Protection Authority released a report titled “Adaptation to Climate Change in the Nile Delta through Integrated Coastal Zone Management.” It mentioned that “even if these measures—of coastal protection—were fully in place some of them may eventually prove to have negative impacts without a proper understanding of longer-term coastal dynamics associated with climate change. Therefore, more complex (mixed) approaches are required to increase the robustness of the coast and ensure sustainable long-term adaptation.”
Unlike the old city of Alexandria, the new Al-Alamein is considering coastal protection mechanisms throughout the construction process. During my visit to the place, I witnessed the large scale of engineering coastal protection work even before the completion of the construction.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) mentioned that the Egyptian government has committed $200 million to hard coastal protection at Alexandria and adopted integrated coastal zone management for the northern coast, including jetties, groins, seawalls, and breakwaters to combat beach erosion. “Recent activities include integrating SLR (sea level rise) risks within adaptation planning for social-ecological systems, with special focus on coastal urban areas, agriculture, migration and other human security dimensions,” says the report.
Lack of Coordination
Working as climate change advisor at the technical office in the Ministry of Environment and Environmental Affairs Agency has given Nadia Mohamed Elmasry a chance to witness what is happening on the ground to save Alexandria from sinking.
In 2017, she was involved in a project with the Public Authority for Shore Protection on a project to map the hotspots that urgently need the construction of tide breakers, to decrease erosion in these areas.
“After finishing the study, we noticed that some spots got eroded more than our expectations. Does this mean that the study was wrong? No, there were some unplanned development projects not included in our study, and they were built without considering the erosion map, such as the North Coast Compounds and new Al-Alamein.”
This explains why the beach looks different before and after the establishment of the compounds oin the north coast. “Before the construction you could see a sandy, beautiful beach. But after it you will notice the sudden appearance of a rocky beach,” said Elmasry.
She explained this normally happens when extensive engineering projects take place in the sea—such as those undertaken to create yacht marina or jetties—without studying the erosion rates, the shoreline change pattern and the tidal movements. These affect the tides’ direction and the erosion pattern, and cause high erosion rate in one place and increase in sedimentation in another one.
Elmasry opened the map and pointed her finger at the coastline of Alexandria and northcoast and said:
“Look at this shoreline. Some spots here were under high threat, but the situation in those spots improved a lot. Unfortunately some other spots deteriorated. I believe it’s not because of the lack of environmental studies, but the lack of cooperation between the different entities.”
The Egyptian government is facing this threat from many quarters. At the top of the list come the Egyptian Coastal Research Institute and the Egyptian Public Authority for Shore Protection, whose roles are to monitor the evolution of the Egyptian coasts to determine the near shore zone changes of the coasts. They predict future changes in the coastal zone by using mathematical models to select the most economical and effective protective measures.
They also prepared the Alexandria Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project (AICZM) under climate change scenarios, along with other entities such as the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) which, they say, is providing the most efficient, low cost and effective control works to protect the heavily populated areas.
Who Can See the Sea?
Alexandria has gone through many phases of abundance and deterioration throughout its modern history. The city lost its prestigious place and importance as a cultural and commercial center, and its population notably declined. It happened just before the earthquake that hit the city and caused big damage to its infrastructure and buildings, including ruining the lighthouse around 956 AD.
But gradually the city regained its place. Now it is facing the opposite problem. An over-growing population shrunk the space for houses, which encouraged the construction of tall buildings by the seaside. Many cafes and restaurants sprung up on the now-concrete shore, and together all these structures added big pressure on the infrastructure and the land.
If you plan to visit the remarkable coastal city, there is a high chance you won’t be able to see the sea, or sit on a sandy shore. The coastline mostly consists of big blocks of concrete to protect the shore from erosion, with either cubic shapes or four-legged quadripods, or restaurants and cafes that will stand as a barrier between you and the sea view.
Elsafti clarified that coastal defenses along Alexandria’s coast were developed to support the widening of the Corniche by means of a revetment structure. These sloping structures erode the power of the waves behind them, but it is not related to SLR. “Revetments should be designed to prevent the seepage of fine soil material from the large gaps between the coastal concrete armor.”
He described how hard it used to be to move from one place to another using the Corniche road before the widening, and the shore nourishment that had been done years ago, “Traffic used to be a nightmare. The Corniche widening project helped a lot in facilitating the movement.”
Yasmine Hussein is a research director at the Human and the City for Social Research (HCSR), and her family members are old residents of Alexandria. Before talking about the city, she took a deep breath and, with a voice full of sadness, she said: “Yes, there used to be sand and shores, and walking on the Corniche was a basic outing for Alexandrian families. I built hundreds of sand castles just like all kids my age at the time. Those childhood memories are gone, and now, there is almost no shore. There are either concrete blocks, or restaurants and cafes constructed on the shore. The generation that witnessed Alexandria 15 or 20 years ago is feeling a great amount of sorrow and nostalgia.”
People sit, fish and relax on concrete blocks lining the seaside in Alexandria / credit: Rehab Abdalmohsen
Hussein contributed to many studies about Alexandria. One of them is “Alexandria Corniche: Between privatization and the right to see the sea,” which investigated how the highly populated city of Alexandria, with its more than half a million inhabitants nowadays, lost most of its shores. She attributed this loss to the urbanization projects implemented without enough consideration to the environment, or before the completion of the project’s environmental studies.
“The threat comes not only from sea level rise but other factors, such as land subsidence and the threat of earthquakes. This is what happened in the past and led to the sinking of this city twice, in 956 AD and 1303 AD,” said Hussein.
“We are inside the climate change, not waiting for it to happen,” Hussein added with a strong voice, “We used to have seasonal rain in the winter. It is locally called ‘NOAA’. It is more intense now. The rain is heavier, the storms are faster, and the tides are higher. This situation is causing damages; almost every year we are witnessing (extreme weather events).”
She explained that Alexandria faces two challenges. The first is repeating the same scenario and sinking again by tsunamis or earthquakes, and the second is the seasonal sinking every winter because of the extreme weather events.
One of the challenges that adds to the fragility of the city is the heavy construction and housing projects that took place everywhere: “This is a heavy weight on the land. It is an unbearable load … that doesn’t consider the environment or climate change.”
This increased privatization also takes a toll on public space. In 2019, the research center HCSR launched a campaign called, “Alexandria can’t see the sea,” to create awareness and encourage communities to get involved and be aware of the situation in their city before it’s too late. Hussein recalled, “We received good feedback from the community members. We asked people to send photos of the sea view to compare between the view in the past and now, collected those “before and after” photos, held an exhibition where we showcased what is going on the ground, and presented our studies.”
Top of the List
In their annual report, the IPCC said that “in the absence of any adaptation, Egypt, Mozambique, and Nigeria are projected to be worst affected by sea level rise in terms of the number of people at risk of flooding annually in a 4℃ (39.2°F) warming scenario.”
The report explored the potential damages due to SLR and coastal extreme events in 12 major African cities. The city of Alexandria in North Africa leads the ranking, with an aggregate expected damage of $36 billion and $50 billion under the moderate scenario, where emissions peak around 2040 and then decline.
The Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation reports a sea level rise at an average rate of 1.8 mm (0.7 inches) per year until 1993. The following two decades, the water level rose by 2.1 mm (0.8 inches) per year, and since 2012 it reached 3.2 mm (0.12 inches) per year. The Nile delta is reported to sink at the same rate, which amplifying the negative impacts of SLR.
But Morsy believes that a satellite view might not give the most accurate data regarding the effect of SLR in Alexandria, “We need studies that will focus on small scales and local environmental aspects and their effects. The effect of climate change and SLR is not equal everywhere in Alexandria.”
Morsy agreed that sometimes researchers focus on the worst case scenarios to encourage governments to take actions: “There was an old study that predicted that Alexandria will sink in 2023. But look how the situation is now; the city didn’t sink.”
He said that if the city is going down it’s because of all the factors that get mentioned:“Every thousand years the city goes down by one meter.”
Morsy leaves me to dive again and swim beside the ancient Alexandria. His dream now is to live on a ship in the Nile in Aswan, so that if a flood happens he will be safe in his Ark.
Rehab Abdalmohsen is an independent science journalist and water reporter whose work has appeared in ScieDev.net, @NatureNews, the Niles magazine, among others.
TUNIS—Around 2:30 p.m., in the middle of the week, a dozen people lined up in front of a bakery in the district of Le Bardo, west of the Tunisian capital of Tunis. Some are daily customers. Many had gotten used to getting in line since Ramadan began in early April, though the people waiting were not the multitude they saw in the first days of the holy month.
“Before, and at the start of Ramadan, I would find some bakeries closed or running out of flour—now it’s better,” Mounir, a driving instructor in his late 50s, noted, speaking to Toward Freedom. “Still, people are going to shop earlier than usual to be sure they find enough bread.”
For him, the main problem is those buyers who are hoarding loaves, leaving little for the others.
Heavily dependent on grain imports and suffering its worst financial crisis, Tunisia is struggling with the global wheat shortage brought on by the fallout of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine.
That’s why Ramadan, known in the Islamic calendar to be a holy month of fasting—but also of feasting and consumption—is looking different this year.
Tunisians shopping for bread in La Bardo, west of Tunis / credit: Alessandra Bajec
Global Wheat Shortage Drives Up Prices
Tunisia is one of the predominantly Muslim countries throughout north Africa and west Asia that has been exposed to the impact of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine are the world’s largest and fifth-largest exporters of wheat, respectively. Tunisia relies on the countries for more than half of its annual wheat imports.
The situation has been aggravated by the economic crisis that the north African country has been passing through for more than a decade, as well as by a rapidly-impending public-finance crisis, which appears difficult to avert.
With a fragile economy plagued by high public debt, rampant inflation and unemployment, Tunisia’s funds are being depleted. Since December 2019, the Tunisian government has no longer been able to import on credit and has been forced to pay cash for each transaction due to its financial instability, which has led to foreign operators often demanding advance payment for fear of a payment default. As the country’s funds dwindle, suppliers hold goods offshore until payments are green-lighted.
Analysts have warned that Tunisia may face a social explosion due to scarce wheat and high prices. Inflation rose in March to 7.2 percent and it is likely to continue rising as the war in Ukraine drives up prices of food like grains, as well as oil and fertilizers. Ukraine and Russia, which account for 29 percent of global wheat exports, are the main suppliers of grains to dozens of countries in north Africa and west Asia. Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey are among the most vulnerable countries to disruptions in wheat imports in the region. Egypt is the world’s top wheat importer with 85 percent coming from Russia and Ukraine. Tunisia relies on Ukraine for 50 percent to 60 percent of its wheat imports. Lebanon imports 60 percent from Ukraine. Turkey is also a big spender on Russian and Ukrainian wheat, with 85 percent coming from those two countries. Morocco is less dependent on wheat imports, with Ukrainian and Russian wheat representing 36 percent of its imports. However, it is currently experiencing its worst drought in 30 years, leading to food price hikes that will eventually push the government to raise grain imports.
Karabekir Akkoyunlu, a lecturer in politics of the Middle East at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, said on Qatar-based TV network Al Jazeera that Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon are at great risk from a rise in prices and a surge in demand. Meanwhile, food policy expert David Laborde told German public broadcaster Deutsche Wellen that people won’t immediately feel the rising cost of wheat, given that many regional countries have subsidies in place. Governments could start rationing or increasing the cost of wheat-related products at some point, which could spark social unrest.
Tunisians line for bread in local bakeries during Ramadan / credit: Alessandra Bajec
The Search for Bread
“I do my bread shopping after I finish work at 2 p.m., so I have time to look around. If I don’t find the quantity I want at one bakeshop, I go to another one,” Tareq, a 44-year-old clothing salesman, told Toward Freedom while holding a bag with ordinary baguettes and flatbread. For the first time, he plans to make sweets for the Eid (“feast”) celebration, since buying them would cost him a lot.
Bread, which Tunisians notoriously consume in abundance, has a symbolic value on the tables of Tunisian families. Statistics from Tunisia’s National Institute of Consumption (INC) showed that in 2018, average bread consumption per person was 74 kilograms (163 pounds) a year.
Fifty-eight-year-old Tili, a public sector worker who’s been buying from the same bakery for long, pointed out the wheat crisis is political. “Bread is always available,” he told Toward Freedom. He hinted some of the people who complain about diminishing grain supplies are implicitly taking a stance against Tunisian President Kais Saied’s handling of the scarcity.
On March 9, Saied announced that he was launching an anti-speculation campaign. He then issued on March 20 a new law (Decree-Law 2022-14) introducing heavy penalties for speculating on goods. These penalties range from 10 years in prison to a life sentence, including for the deliberate spread of “false or incorrect information” that would cause consumers to refrain from buying food or that would disrupt the supply of goods to markets, thereby causing price spikes.
Since then, the media has reported on police conducting raids on warehouses full of sacks of flour, semolina and other food.
Saied and government officials have blamed the delays and shortages on market speculators, labor union strikes, and a conspiracy by his opponents.
For several weeks, long queues for bread have been a common sight in different parts of Tunisia. The situation seems less critical these days amid reports of authorities pumping shares of flour into the market to limit shortfalls recorded at the beginning of April.
In normal times, bakeshops stay open throughout the week during Ramadan and availability of bread has never been an issue. But in the current period, they are either forced to ration the bread production or cut their working times because supplies are more limited. Some have raised their prices. Several others have even shut down due to the lack of semolina and flour.
Traditional fresh bread from a bakery in Hergla, Tunisia / credit: Faiza Affes / Wikipedia
‘We Must Keep Producing’
Coming out of another bakery in Le Bardo, Altra Cosa, 22-year-old student Imen complained about the wait time to buy bread. “I go to any bakeshop where I see the least longest queue. I normally have to queue up for half an hour or longer,” she lamented, speaking to Toward Freedom. “I sometimes can’t find bread at all. Then I have to go wherever I manage to.” In her view, market speculators hiding state-subsidized goods to sell at a higher price later are mainly those causing supply difficulties.
Ahmad, manager of Altra Cosa, said the government needs to fairly distribute raw materials among bakeries. “There are those that are delivered supplies of flour, sold for a price, others for a different [price],” he told Toward Freedom. “That should change.”
Despite the challenges, he stressed his bakery has been operating steadily in the recent period. “Bread will be always available here,” he vowed. “We must keep producing—otherwise, there will be a revolution.” Noureddine, one of the bakers, observed that the amounts of flour the state supplies to their bakeshop varies and, since the scarcity of cereals began, the staff have been carefully handling production volumes within set limits to suit the customer demand. To make sure subsidized bread is available for everyone, they sell no more than five baguettes per person.
“We’re making the same types of bread—regular and special—and haven’t changed prices,” the baker told Toward Freedom. “The government even asked us to make loaves of lesser weight, so [as] to ration the quantity of bread produced, though we don’t do that.”
A street cake vendor, Samir, stood nearby with his cart. He claimed wheat-based products could be found more easily now, in spite of the ruptures in the supply chain. He also alluded to Saied’s crackdown on goods speculators, intermediaries who hold on to stocks of foodstuffs to force prices up.
The Run-Up to the Wheat Crisis
Since December, labor union officials at the port of Sfax have reportedly said several grain shipments have not been unloaded because the state struggles to pay for them.
Households across Tunisia rushed to stock up on flour and semolina, as well as other staples, as food prices started to rise with the advent of the war.
Based on a poll conducted by Tunisia-based Insights consultancy, between January 30 and February 8, 89 percent of Tunisians interviewed consumed bread daily and only 47 percent said bread was always available.
A video from the city of Sidi Bouzid that circulated on social media showed a crowd climbing aboard a truck delivering semolina.
A vido showing #Tunisia|ns antagonizing a truck of Semolina, Today in Sidi Bouzid. To mark that the country is knowing a historic crisis of cereals, including other basic materials. #Tunisia_couppic.twitter.com/TDoxcs7oED
— Haythem MADDOURI (هيثم المدّوري) (@HaythemMADDOUR1) March 11, 2022
Meanwhile, angry bakers in the city of Ben Arous, south of Tunis, threatened a strike in mid-March.
By the time Ramadan kicked off, crowds gathering outside bakeshops had become a regular occurrence. On April 2, the head of Kairouan Modern Bakery Group, Abdelbaki Abdellaoui, stated 17 modern bakeries (those that trade mainly non-subsidized bread along with a little subsidized bread) had shut down in the governorate of Kairouane, due to the lack of semolina and flour. He had requested the regional director of trade to intervene and provide the region’s share of semolina. The next day, residents staged a sit-in protest in front of the city’s municipal market to demand provision of primary staples.
‘We’ve Only Heard Promises’
The Kairouan bakery group’s president criticized the monthly 10,000-kilogram (22,000 pounds) allocation of flour the government had set for bakeries “very limited,” as he suggested the load would last 20 to 25 days, forcing bakers to stop production until the next month.
“We’ve just heard promises of increased loads from the minister of trade, and are still waiting to receive them,” Abdellaoui sighed, while speaking to Toward Freedom.
He mentioned one major problem specific to Kairouan is the lack of wheat flour mills, which makes it logistically complicated for flour delivery to bakeshops in the region, compared to those operating in other regions.
Abdellaoui anticipated that the wheat challenge will be bigger after Ramadan, when Tunisians will be returning to daily meals after observing a month of fasting.
Mohamed Jammali, president of Tunisia’s Modern Bakery Group, reported that a dozen modern bakeries closed their doors since the beginning of Ramadan because of the penury of basic wheat staples. Modern Bakery Group is part of Confédération des Entreprises Citoyennes de Tunisie (CONECT), an employers’ union organization that brings together private and public enterprises in various sectors of the Tunisian economy.
Early this month, the Tunisian union of bakers denounced continuous shortages of flour and semolina for more than four months in all regions, and called on the government to provide the necessary amounts of grains to ensure a provision of bread to citizens.
“10,000 kg of flour a month for bakers is not acceptable,” Jammali complained while talking to Toward Freedom. He added that while some bakeries getting subsidized flour, others are selling ordinary bread at a higher cost because they must use grain bought privately.
The head of the national bakery group appealed for the inclusion of bakers’ associations in relevant discussions at the government level, noting that they have been side-lined by the cabinet.
“We want to make decisions in coordination with the Ministry of Trade,” Jammali demanded. “We should take part in setting bread prices and regulating the bakery sector.”
Although the state has not raised flour prices, the price of bread in some non-subsidized bakeries has gone up by 25 percent in the last few months. A baguette costs only 190 millimes (6 U.S. cents) because it’s being heavily funded by the government in an effort to maintain social stability. However, it can sell for 250 millimes (8 U.S. cents) or more in non-subsidized bakeshops, where they cannot get enough subsidized flour or choose to lift their prices for more profits. Before hiking prices, bakers tend to reduce the shape and weight first.
A container ship / credit: NOAA’s National Ocean Service / Flickr
Running Out of Bread
A bakeshop at Tunis central market appeared moderately busy by 3 p.m. on a Friday. Two women in their early 20s were waiting outside while their father was buying bread. One of them noticed the line is usually long during the week.
“I come here regularly to get a baguette, I prefer it and it’s the cheapest. Other types can cost 500 millimes ($0.16) up to one dinar even,” she told Toward Freedom. The dinar is the Tunisian currency. “Prices of special breads rose before Ramadan after the Russia-Ukraine war, and have risen again recently.”
“The reserves of cereals already decreased before the war—now, they are insufficient,” her sister commented to Toward Freedom. “Tunisia has imported more than in the past years, and it’s struggling to cover import costs because of the economic crisis.”
The conversation abruptly ended as their father came out with fresh bread in hand and made it clear it was time to leave, preventing this reporter from catching the women’s names. As mentioned earlier, Saied’s law criminalizes the deliberate spread of “false or incorrect information” regarding food scarcity.
Walking out of the bakery, Chaima, a 30-something nursing assistant, carried a bag with three baguettes. “In Ramadan time, people normally eat a lot of traditional bread, but not this year,” she remarked, addressing Toward Freedom, and continued, “We don’t have enough flour at the moment. The country is running out of money. It can’t pay [for] its imports.”
Tunisians consume less subsidized bread during the Muslim month. Instead, they typically opt for special bread from a range of types that are today becoming less affordable for the average person.
Hamed, owner of the market’s bakeshop, explained that until the week before the supply of flour distributed to his shop by the state was lesser than the demand making it very hard to satisfy customers. Then, he said, the government allocated “an extra 15% share approximately” for bakeries though he specified that many of those based in the city’s suburbs are still counting on short supplies.
“Things are manageable now. With the share of flour we had before, we often had to close at 11 a.m., because we had finished our stocks by then,” the business owner told Toward Freedom.
In the last period, people seeking to buy the affordable baguette have resorted to the more expensive bread when no other option was available for fear of being left without bread.
Glancing at the price list stuck inside his bakery, Hamed pointed to a variety of loaves ranging from olive and barley, 500 millimes, to cereals, 800 millimes (26 U.S. cents) and semolina-made bread, 1 TND (33 U.S. cents).
“Except for the one-dinar bread, which we increased by 200 millimes, our prices are the same since last year. We’ve also been selling our baguette at 190 millimes for 15 years,” he went on to say.
‘Disruption Originates From the Top’
Besides mentioning diminishing government spending power, which has caused cash flow problems, Hamed hinted at the profitable smuggling trade that runs from Tunisian milling facilities into neighboring Libya.
Talking to independent Tunis-based media collective Inkyfada, Tunisian Customs spokesman Haithem Zaned said the largest part of subsidized foodstuffs (especially wheat products) that customs services seized [as part of the recent anti-speculation efforts] were intended for smuggling. He specified that the smuggling trade is primarily bound to Libya.
“There is clearly a problem in the supply chain, and the disruption originates from the top,” Houssem Saad of ALERT, an association campaigning to end Tunisia’s windfall economy that benefits influential business families, said to Toward Freedom. He referred to the government’s Office of Cereals, which is responsible for imports of grains that are then unevenly distributed through a system of quotas among milling companies making pasta and other wheat-based products.
Saad estimated 70 percent of grain quotas go to flour mills that have factories producing pasta, couscous and other goods, leaving the remaining small portion to mills that trade flour and semolina only.
These manufacturers purchase subsidized wheat or flour from the Office of Cereals, he explained, part of which is diverted to make products to export to different countries, especially Libya, where they resell the raw materials for a much higher price.
Minister of Commerce Fadhila Rabhi, reportedly highlighted the need to fight speculation and embezzlement of staple foods (such as semolina and flour) by moving from a system of subsidized prices to one based on compensation via direct transfers by 2023. She also was quoted in local media as saying: “Some people have interest in perpetuating instability to profit through smuggling. Subsidized Tunisian couscous (crushed durum wheat semolina) was even found on the black market in Niger, Sudan and Chad.”
“It’s officially a state monopoly where rentiers, a handful of milling companies, are given a privilege,” Saad argued. “Moreover, the government’s policy is not aimed at encouraging domestic production—instead, it’s based on imports.”
The Ministry of Commerce stated to local media last year that it will use “all necessary mechanisms to confront the phenomenon of monopoly and parallel markets.” This came at a time when prices of most food products had increased.
Tunisia has been increasingly importing cereals. According to data from the Tunisian Union of Agriculture and Fisheries (UTAP), 1 million hectares of arable land were used last year for cereal production, compared to 1.2 million hectares in 2020. The union forecasts the amount will decrease even more this year.
In referring to the country’s political instability and financial deterioration, Saad highlighted Tunisia is currently facing problems in paying foreign suppliers and is systematically paying late. He estimated that ships carrying cereals can be held unloaded for four to five weeks, waiting for the Office of Cereals to negotiate a high-interest loan with a private bank, at a cost of between $15,000 and $20,000 per day. That, in turn, pushes the price of imports up. At this pace, importing cereals is likely to get more and more costly for Tunisia.
The Office of Cereals admitted in a statement it was delayed in paying six ships at Tunisian ports that were carrying grains in December. However, the office also warned that false reports about payment issues “can be exploited by suppliers to increase the prices of imported cereals and to impose new exorbitant conditions in calls for bids” and that “such [a] situation will generate additional expenses in cash for the state’s treasury.”
Although the Ministry of Agriculture assured current wheat reserves should last until the June harvest, concern remains about the government’s ability to secure sufficient supplies. Meanwhile, on March 11, the Office of Cereals failed to conclude a deal for May’s wheat imports because it didn’t have the financing in place.
This reporter was unable to reach the Office of Cereals, the Ministry of Commerce and Saeid’s office for comment during Ramadan.
Tunisia hopes to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a financial rescue package in return for deep economic reforms, including cuts in state subsidies that keep bread accessible to the population.
Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist specializing in West Asia and North Africa. Between 2010 and 2011, she lived in Palestine. She was based in Cairo from 2013 to 2017, and since 2018 has been based in Tunis.
