Christina Goldbaum
The crowds begin to form at dawn. They swell through the day as hundreds of men and women swathed in bright purple and pink scarves wait outside the charity’s gates in Karachi, Pakistan. Many sit for hours, desperate to collect enough flour, rice, sugar and cooking oil to break their daily fast for Ramadhan.
“Ramadhan is for fasting, praying and celebrating, but in Pakistan, inflation has been forcing people to queue and die in stampedes to receive free food,” said Muhammad Aziz, a textile worker, 52, as he waited in the crowd. “It is the most expensive and unaffordable Ramadhan of my life.”
Across Pakistan, the season of Ramadhan — a time of daily fasting and nightly feasts with family — is in full swing. But this year, an economic crisis that has sent the price of goods soaring to record highs has muted celebrations for millions of families struggling to buy the dates, rice and meat needed to break their daily fast.
The South Asian country — home to more than 230 million — is facing one of the most daunting economic challenges of its history.
As Ramadhan began last month, inflation was at a record 35.4 per cent — the highest in nearly five decades — according to government figures. Severe floods last fall devastated much of the country’s agricultural belt, ruining wheat harvests and damaging farmland for what may be years to come. And because Ukraine exports essential grains, the war there has further strained Pakistan’s food supply, officials say.
The rising prices have stoked anger among many Pakistanis. After Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted in a vote of no confidence last year, many hoped that the new government, led by Shehbaz Sharif, would bring an end to the inflation that had begun rising under Khan’s tenure.
Instead, the prices of necessities have continued to soar as the government has struggled to secure a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Some critics have also blamed the government, accusing the country’s political elite of being preoccupied with the drama surrounding Khan’s political comeback and distracted from addressing the economic crisis.
“Pakistan’s ruling elite has failed in providing relief to the people, and nothing will be able to prevent the wrath of the latter from falling on the former in the weeks and months to come,” said Uzair Younus, the director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Atlantic Council. “This is a confluence of economic, political and security crises in Pakistan, and should be viewed as the most serious threat to the country’s cohesion since 1971.”
The economic desperation among Pakistanis has played out in stark scenes across the country during Ramadhan. Since the holiday began nearly a month ago, at least 22 people have been killed and dozens injured in stampedes and long queues as people struggle to get some of the food being distributed across the country by charities and the government.
In one of the most devastating episodes, 11 women and children died last month in a crowd crush after hundreds had gathered outside a factory in hopes of getting a 10-kilo bag of flour and $3.50 in cash from a local philanthropist.
Even charities are struggling.
It is during Ramadhan that many Pakistanis donate their religiously prescribed yearly zakat, or alms, often giving them to charitable organisations that prepare ration packets for distribution among the poor. But this year, skyrocketing prices and the crunch on donors’ incomes have left the charities with less to distribute.
Those unable to receive charity have bought what they can. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that borders Afghanistan, the price of flour has more than doubled since the beginning of last year.
In recent years, Pakistan had been importing wheat from Ukraine to meet the needs of the province, home to 18 per cent of the country’s population. But with that supply disrupted by war, Russia is now the top exporter of wheat to the country.
The government has started an initiative to provide subsidised flour during Ramadhan and set up distribution points for donated flour. But in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, mismanagement and overcrowding have plagued these efforts, according to local officials.
— The New York Times
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