The bread he makes is round and flat and eaten with almost every meal. This makes the price of bread one of the best ways to track the impact of the crisis on the lives of Syrians, such as the residents of Douma, who rely on Abu Saleh's bakery. On average, in regime-held areas, bread costs three to four times more per bag today than it did before the war, according to data gathered by the WFP. In besieged areas, the average figure increases to ten times the pre-war pricing, with the highest increase seen in the divided city of Deir Ezzor. Although bread prices were, in real terms, increasing before the war (due to the nationwide drought), nothing prepared people for the disaster that has followed."The amount of flour and the quality of it used to be supported by the government, but now the flour is private."
These bakeries are big. "The capacity of this bakery can take up to five to six tons of flour per day," says Abu Saleh. "But now there is no flour all the time so when we have flour and the other materials, we make bread, and when we do not have them, people stay hungry." In Darayya, another besieged suburb in rural Damascus, the Local Council explained that all of the bakeries are now closed because of the siege. In June 2016, enough wheat flour for an estimated 2,500 people made it into the area on the first UN aid convoy containing food to enter the area since 2012. The flour had to be distributed under heavy barrel bomb attacks to residents to use privately, since no central bakery exists."Ten bakery attacks is not random—they show no care for civilians and strongly indicate an attempt to target them." A year later, activists found that at least 80 bakeries had been systematically attacked.
A picture taken on June 19, 2016 shows pita bread at a bakery in the rebel-held town of Douma, east of the Syrian capital Damascus, as a part of an initiative to distribute bread to impoverished families in the Eastern Ghouta area during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Photo by Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images.