The gifts of freedom

Imad al-Din al-Saftawi with the doll he bought for his daughter Sarah when she was a young girl but was only able to give to her 18 years later.Mohamed Hajjar

Amjad Ayman Yaghi - 3 January 2019

Imad al-Din al-Saftawi waited 18 years before he could give a doll to his daughter.

In 2000, Imad traveled from Gaza to the United Arab Emirates as part of his work. “My daughter Sarah was the most precious thing I had at that time as she was the first daughter after three boys,” he said. “I was thinking of bringing her a gift from a big store in Dubai. When I saw a doll that looked like a beautiful girl, I decided to buy it.”

Yet Imad did not make it home from his trip. When he arrived at the Rafah crossing which separates Egypt from Gaza, he was arrested by Israel’s occupation forces.

It was not until November this year that Imad was informed he would be released from Ashkelon Prison – located inside Israel – within a month.

Before he was freed, Imad was handed a bag containing items confiscated from him in 2000. Among them were a mobile phone, an embroidered picture and the doll.

Now aged 20, Sarah only saw her dad twice during his imprisonment. She was blocked from visiting him by Israel. In 2007, for example, she went to see him, along with her grandmother.

But the Israeli authorities refused to allow Sarah to go inside the prison, claiming there was a mistake in the documents required for the visit.

View image on Twitter

Sarah@sarahsaftawi

الصورة الأخيرة التي جمعتني بوالدي قبل أن يتم سجنه، كلّما رأيتها أتمنى لو أن عيناي كانت نحوه تنظران.

11.7K

8:52 AM - May 16, 2018

Sarah had feared she would never meet her father again. His return to Gaza in December was a major celebration for many of its inhabitants but, most of all, for his family.

“When we saw each other, I couldn’t stop crying,” said Sarah, who is studying English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. “No one could feel the way I felt.”

Escape

Israel had previously jailed Imad over his activities prior to the first intifada.

Imad escaped from Gaza Central Prison in 1987 to Egypt and then fled to Syria. He worked from Syria in Islamic Jihad’s political bureau before returning to Gaza in 1995 and becoming an employee of the Palestinian Authority.

Imad al-Din al-Saftawi seldom saw his wife and children during his lengthy imprisonment inside Israel.

Mohamed Hajjar

His PA work brought him to Saudi Arabia, as he was involved in arranging pilgrimages to Mecca. He also set up an organization for Palestinian youth; the main purpose of his Dubai visit in 2000 was to seek financial support for that group.

Imad’s family has stated that he did not take part in any armed activities after coming back to Gaza in 1995.

Following his arrest in 2000, Emad was denied access to a lawyer and held in solitary confinement for lengthy periods. Violating the Oslo accords, Israel reactivated charges related to Imad’s alleged activities during the first intifada in Syria. He was sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment.

“Missing”

Imad’s wife, Saadia al-Hourani, was pregnant at the time of his arrest in 2000. She subsequently gave birth to another girl, who was named Leen.

“I started to notice [during my childhood] there was something missing and to feel jealous of the girls who had fathers,” Leen, 17, said. “When I became a teenager, I felt proud of my dad because he is a fighter.”

Leen recalled meeting her dad in prison during a 2013 visit.

The phone Imad al-Din al-Saftawi was carrying when he was arrested, along with letters his family wrote him during his imprisonment. The phone was returned to him upon his release.

 Mohamed Hajjar

“I entered a room with a glass partition in the middle and headphones on each side of it,” she said. “My mom told me, this is your dad. I laughed and wept at the same moment. I put my hands on the glass and after 45 minutes I was allowed to see my dad [without the partition]. I hugged him and cried and an Israeli prison officer took a photo of us.”

The last time she visited her dad was in the winter of 2016. On that occasion, she gave him a bracelet as a gift. Seeing this, an Israeli prison officer shouted at her father and instructed him to hand it back.

View image on Twitter

L E E N @LeenEmadAlDeen

بحاول المسه واصدق انه خلص بينا

8,983

11:38 AM - Dec 12, 2018

Imad’s sons have also encountered great difficulties visiting him.

Due to the limited opportunities in besieged Gaza – where youth unemployment now exceeds 70 percent – three of his sons have emigrated: Hamza, 28, lives in Turkey, Jehad, 27, in the US and Assad, 24, in Spain. Imad’s sons have not yet seen him since his release.

The experience of the al-Saftawi family is not unusual.

More than 5,500 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails, according to the latest data. Among them are many parents whose children have to grow up in their absence.

Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.

Iran says despite U.S. sanctions, it has found new 'potential' oil buyers

Oil takners pass through the Strait of Hormuz, December 21, 2018. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

JANUARY 5, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) - All countries that were granted waivers from the United States to continue buying a certain amount of Iranian oil imports are complying with U.S. sanctions, a senior Iranian energy official said, noting that Tehran was hopeful to find new buyers.

The United States withdrew from a nuclear deal with Iran last year and snapped sanctions in place to choke Iran’s oil and banking industries, while temporarily allowing eight customers to keep buying crude from the Islamic Republic.

“China, India, Japan, South Korea and other countries that were granted waivers from America to import Iranian oil are not willing to buy even one barrel more from Iran,” Amir Hossein Zamaninia, Iran’s deputy oil minister for trade and international affairs, was quoted as saying by the Oil Ministry’s news agency SHANA.

However, without giving details, Zamaninia said: “Despite U.S. pressures on Iranian oil market, the number of potential buyers of Iranian oil has significantly increased due to a competitive market, greed and pursuit of more profit.”

The 180-day exemptions were also granted to Italy, Greece, Taiwan and Turkey.

Washington seeks to bring Iranian oil exports to zero in order to curb Tehran’s missile and nuclear programs and counter its growing military and political influence in the Middle East.

Iran has urged European countries, which are still committed to the nuclear deal, to oppose the sanctions by creating a financial mechanism that facilitates payments of Iranian oil sales.

Zamaninia said the mechanism, known as SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle for trade), would be “helpful but could not resolve the problems since U.S. influence will affect any European action”.

Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Alison Williams

Iran’s women truckers

Fatima Manji-5 Jan 2019Reporter

Women in Iran can be arrested for dancing or riding a bike – but there is some evidence that public life is starting to change as many wage a quiet battle for equality in the clothes they wear and the jobs they do.

One of them is Bita Bagheri, a working mother who has forged an interesting career path.

We’re more connected than ever – DC Dhemaji

by Bhabani Sonowal

She has won the best national awards for the administration. Born in Hyderabad and started her carrier as a journalist with one of the mainstreams in India, now she is serving as the Deputy Commissioner ( DC) of the Dhemaji District.

Dhemaji District is one of the districts situated in the remote corner of North East India on the north bank of river Brahmaputra.

In an exclusive interview with Sri Lanka Guardian, Deputy Commissioner Roshni Aparanji Korati talked about the current socio-political situation in the area a few days later inaugurating the Bogibeel bridge, the longest combined rail and road bridge in India and second longest bridge in Assam over the river Brahmaputra after Bhupen Hazarika Setu.

“People here are no more isolated, and one of the most prevailed challenges has been overcoming,” Roshni told the Sri Lanka Guardian. 
“Now the bridge has connected the people. This was one of the major challenges prevailed for many years. Transport solely depending through the river is not only difficult but that caused many people to cage them in this small area,” she said.

“Therefore, they could not even think about the rest of the country,” she added.

While warmly welcoming us at her Office located in Dhemaji, one of the most beautiful rural areas in India, she has narrated the public support she is getting in every difficult time. Roshni has won the hearts and minds of the people in the area. Many people those who talked to us bragged about her administrative skills and contribution she made for the benefit of livelihood in this rural society.

According to the government website, in Dhemaji, “agriculture is the main occupation of the people engaging about 59% of the working population. Paddy is the major agricultural crop cultivated in 69290 ha (Summer, Autumn and Winter paddy), constituting around 55% of the gross cropped area (2001-2002). Mustard is the major oilseed crop grown in the district. Potato and pulses are other major crops grown in the district. Fruits and vegetables are also cultivated on a moderate scale. Piggery, Dairy and Goat rearing are the major allied agricultural activities carried out in the district.”

“Time has arrived for more investors to look at Dhemaji and identify the potentials here. We as the government administrative entity is doing our best to attract more local investors who can truly understand and address the needs of people in the district,” she said.

( Bhabani Sonowal is an editorial adviser of the Sri Lanka Guardian)

China’s Muslims Brace for Attacks

First, it was the Uighurs. Now, other Muslim minorities are being threatened—and the worst may be yet to come.

A Chinese Hui Muslim girl wears a fancy headdress as she is held by her mother after Eid al-Fitr prayers marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan at the historic Niujie Mosque on June 16, 2018 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

BY JAMES PALMER

| JANUARY 5, 2019, 8:00 AM
At a recent event at the Asia Society in New York discussing the million or more people, mostly Uighur Muslims, being held in internment camps in China’s western region of Xinjiang by the Chinese authorities, a young man of Chinese descent approached me with a disturbing question. “I’m a Hui person,” he said, referring to China’s largest Muslim minority group. “And among the community in China, they are very afraid that they will be next, after the Uighur. There are already ‘anti-halal’ groups attacking us and breaking the windows of our restaurants. What do you think will happen?”

The news for the Hui, and other Chinese Muslims, isn’t good. In mid-December, several provinces removed their halal food standards, a move heralded by government officials as fighting a fictional pan-halal trend under which Muslim influence was supposedly spreading into secular life. That’s a severe contrast with previous government policies, which actively encouraged the development of the halal trade for export. This week, meanwhile, three prominent mosques were shut, sparking protests. Many mosques across the country have already been closed, or forced to remodel to a supposedly more Chinese style, and the Communist Party presence there has been strengthened, with pictures of Xi Jinping placed in prominent locations and the walls covered in Marxist slogans.

There are more than 20 million Muslims in China, and 10 of the country’s 55 officially recognized minorities are traditionally Muslim, with the largest by far being the Hui and the Uighur. Islam’s history in China is more than a millennium old, and there have been previous clashes—as with other faiths—between imperial authorities and believers, most notably the Dungan rebellions of the 19th century. Muslim minority cuisine is common, cheap, and popular throughout the country; these restaurants usually feature Arabic writing and images of famous mosques on the walls. As Islamophobia has grown in the last four years, however, restaurants are increasingly removing any public display of their faith.

Islam isn’t the only religion being targeted. Beijing demands state control and oversight of all faiths. This supervision used to be run through the State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA), but that department was dissolved last March, with responsibility for religion taken over directly by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), which handles the Communist Party’s control of civil society domestically. The dissolution of SARA also meant the end of many working relationships between the department and religious groups. Most of the former staff have left, and while Wang Zuoan—the long-standing head of SARA known for a relatively light hand—is now one of 10 vice ministers at the UFWD, he has almost no staff, no power, and no role.

“SARA had become a very important buffer between the legitimate practices, needs, and works of the faiths and the demands of the party. Now it’s been turned into an instrument of overt and explicit control. They were once there to make religion work well. Now they are there to make religion work for the party,” commented one Westerner with long experience working with religious NGOs in China, who asked for anonymity. Local officials, meanwhile, under pressure in an increasingly paranoid internal party environment, have been forced to abandon policies of local tolerance in favor of heavy-handed enforcement.

On the ground, that has translated into a much colder environment for believers. Christians across the country have faced a wave of repression, with arrests of prominent ministers, the closure of churches, a ban on Bible sales online, and the removal of crosses. Tibetan Buddhism, always closely monitored, is being more tightly watched than ever. Even so-called Chinese religions, such as Taoism and non-Tibetan Buddhism, are having a tough time, being denied permission for new buildings or classes and going through layers of added bureaucracy.

But the turn against Islam is by far the most prominent—and potentially the nastiest—example of China’s clampdown on religion. In large part, it flows from the adoption of a totalitarian regime in Xinjiang, where any Islamic practice is now read by the security state as a sign of potential extremism. Other Muslim communities were previously able to endure the storm in part because their Uighur members were forced back to Xinjiang; even advocates of Saudi-style Salafism were able to operate in Ningxia and elsewhere.

Today, though, the intensity of the anti-Islamic campaign in Xinjiang has resulted in other provinces adopting the same ideas, lest their leaders be accused of being soft on terrorism or of having ideological sympathy for Islam. That’s particularly the case for party officials who are from Islamic families; numerous Uighur officials have been arrested for being “two-faced”—presenting themselves as loyal party members while being secretly sympathetic to religion. “They used to ask the Hui officials to help handle Hui affairs sensitively,” a Han Chinese state employee who works in Islamic areas told Foreign Policy. “But now if you’re Hui, you have to be doubly hard on your own people.”

The state campaign has been backed by a growing popular Islamophobia, which has erupted in the last four years. Anti-Uighur racism has always existed, but it previously focused largely on ethnicity, not belief. The new hate largely began with the terrorist attack at a train station in the southern city of Kunming in 2014, when eight Uighur attackers killed 31 travelers. A newly aggressive Han chauvinism became the norm online—aided, perhaps, by it being one of the few remaining forms of tolerated public political speech. Many Chinese friends and colleagues, even relatively liberal ones, bristled at any mention of Islam, seeing Westerners as anti-Chinese and biased in favor of Islam. While other online speech has been harshly shut down, the censors have barely touched abuse of Muslims, even calls for violence.

Chinese Islamophobes have created a mythical halalification movement, which functions in their imagination something like sharia does in the minds of rural American lawmakersfearful that the mullahs might start marching down Main Street. Food has often been a clashing point; young Uighurs often avoid eating in nonhalal restaurants not for religious reasons but as a gesture of cultural defiance, and the forced consumption of pork has now become routine in Xinjiang. In the minds of Chinese Islamaphobes, however, Muslims are the ones imposing themselves on good, ordinary Chinese. The mere offering of halal services is taken as a sign of imminent threat; when one delivery app included it as an option, Muslims faced a wave of online hate.

Several fears are bundled together here. Chinese are very worried about food safety, and the description of halal food as qingzhen—which just means “Islamic” but literally translates as “pure and clean”—created a belief that halal consumers were somehow privileged or claiming that the Han were dirty. That’s linked to a deep-seated belief among Han Chinese that ethnic minorities are enjoying special treatment, based on government policies that gave them bonus points on university entrance exams or allowed more lenient family planning. (As with affirmative action in the United States, those policies were real, but the daily discrimination faced by visibly non-Han Chinese citizens, in contrast, was largely invisible to Han.) Fake news about Muslim atrocities generated by racists in the West, meanwhile, has spread via social media into Chinese society.

There could be another reason for Islamophobia in China. A newly powerful Han nationalism needs an internal enemy, and Islam fits the bill. Originally, the People’s Republic of China, like the Soviet Union from which it drew its model, envisaged itself as a multiethnic state. As with Russians in the Soviet state, though, Han Chinese massively dominated—but at least in official statements, Han chauvinism was condemned from the very top.

Today, however, Han nationalism is openly on the rise, both among ordinary Chinese and in state policy. Minority language education, once guaranteed, has been vastly restrained; even for minorities largely viewed in a positive light, such as Koreans, the number of schools offering their own tongues has shrunk from dozens to a handful. State rhetoric increasingly pushes a purely ethnonationalist line.

A new identity often depends on a convincing foe. The party might prefer it if young Han men and women defined the enemy as Americanness, but that’s impossible in a country that loves The Big Bang Theory and defines success as getting a child into Harvard University. Islam, however, makes for the perfect enemy. It’s perceived as foreign, but it’s present across China. It’s ideologically unacceptable to the state. It’s stained by an association with terrorism. And for the vast majority of Han, it has no cultural or political appeal.

For China’s Muslim citizens, vast numbers of whom see themselves as loyal Chinese, the turn against their faith and history is already a tragedy. But with Islamophobia fueled by both the terror of Xinjiang and the anger of ordinary Chinese, there may be worse to come.

 

James Palmer is a senior editor at Foreign Policy. @BeijingPalmer

The US has Saudi Arabia over a barrel

  

2019-01-05

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman remains at large, the unapologetic murderer (according to the CIA) of the respected dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Although President Donald Trump came close to accusing him of the deed, he has pulled back, citing Saudi  Arabia’s importance as an oil producer and arms buyer. The Prime Minister of the UK, Theresa May, is too preoccupied with Brexit to want to give up an important market. President Emanuel Macron of France is silent after an initial outburst. Now pressed by the demands of the demonstrators, he also wants to keep sources of revenue that come from sales of jets. 

Last week King Salman stepped into the crisis. Whatever admonishment he may have given his son, he is clearly not prepared to sideline him from his seat of power. Instead, he has compromised by merely reshuffling the Cabinet. 

Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a long-term programme to diversify its economy so it can be less dependent on oil. Billions are being poured into industrialisation and new cities

The acceptance of the status quo must be halted. If Russia were to be penalised with sanctions for the murder on British soil of an ex-Russian spy living in Salisbury, so must Saudi Arabia be punished. In today’s world in peace-time such a murder is not just for condemnation, the perpetrators must be punished. It’s a crime against humanity and UN Security Council members should pass a resolution demanding the crown prince’s arrest and trial at the International Criminal Court (The US, though not a member, has voted for a prosecution before.) 

The arms purchases which are huge for Saudi  Arabia are in fact only a small percentage of both America’s and Europe’s arms production. Given their brutal anti-civilian use in the war in Yemen, they should have been halted long ago. With this added reason for cancellation, again the Security Council should vote on a resolution to ban them. 

This will have little effect on Saudi  Arabia. It has large stockpiles and spare parts that can easily be bought on the black market. However, it is a shot over the bows. 

Oil is another question. Oil prices have fallen dramatically in the past two months to 50 US Dollars a barrel. It’s opening up a great hole in Saudi  Arabia’s budget. Oil importing countries have Saudi Arabia“over a barrel” as the saying goes. The price must be held down until Saudi  Arabiacries “uncle.” 

Saudi Arabia has tried to persuade OPEC to agree to its members cutting their oil production without much success. Meanwhile, America’s shale oil production isn’t deterred by the low price. Production in the shale formation that stretches from west Texasto New Mexico, the epicentre of production, is still increasing. The US is now the world’s largest producer of oil. This is one of the key factors in the price fall. But the overwhelming majority of large shale oil producers are still making a profit. 

Trump has said he is happy with this state of affairs, equating the fall in gas prices for motorists as akin to a tax cut. 

The US is in a very comfortable position vis a vis the oil kingdom. So are the other Western nations. Trump has self-interested reasons for continuing on this path. The “tax cut” is worth more to the USeconomy than the value of arms sales. He is being pressured by a fairly united Congress to be tough on Saudi  Arabia. He himself has criticised the murder. If his policy brings down the crown prince he won’t be particularly sorry. It will make him look good. 

Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a long-term programme to diversify its economy so it can be less dependent on oil. Billions are being poured into industrialisation and new cities. It is costing more than the country has available. 

Its future looks bad. US oil imports have fallen from 13 billion barrels a day in 2005 to 2.4 b/day last year. It’s forecasted that this year they could fall as low as 330,000 b/d. 

One would have thought the king, seeing what is going on, would have deposed his errant son by now. The only explanation for him not doing that is the mistaken belief that, under the influence of a further fall in prices, USproduction will contract and American pressure will ease. 

But this is wishful thinking. The USis OK about the present price. Technological and efficiency gains are enabling oil-shale producers to still make a profit. Its production won’t contract. As for Saudi Arabia, it dare not increase production to drive the price further down to put shale producers out of business. It needs every dollar it can get for its own needs. 

The Saudi’s bluff will soon be exposed. The Security Council must now make its move.
Copyright: Jonathan Power  

Sudan protesters plan Sunday march as Bashir sacks health minister

Deadly protests have rocked cities since 19 December, when violence broke out over government decision to raise price of bread

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir speaks at recent meeting with police officials (AFP/file photo)

Sunday 6 January 2019 

A Sudanese group organising anti-government protests called for a march on the presidential palace on Sunday as President Omar al-Bashir sacked the health minister on Saturday over rising costs of medicine.

Deadly anti-government rallies have rocked cities including Khartoum since 19 December, when protests broke out over a government decision to raise the price of bread.

Authorities say at least 19 people including two security personnel have been killed in clashes so far, but rights group Amnesty International has put the death toll at 37.

The country has faced an economic crisis over the past year. The cost of some commodities including medicines has more than doubled and inflation has hit 70 percent. Food and fuel shortages have been regularly reported across several cities, including Khartoum.

"We call on our supporters to gather at four different places in Khartoum and then begin a march on the palace" of the president, the Sudanese Professionals' Association said on Saturday in a statement, AFP reported.

Violence in #Sudan continues as #inflation remains high. Protesters fight against corruption, political incompetence, & poverty as they attempt to oust strongman al-Bashir. Protesters desire #freedom, especially free enterprise & markets. pic.twitter.com/QGUWCc8EpR

— Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) 4 January 2019

Prof. Steve Hanke

✔@steve_hanke

Violence in #Sudan continues as #inflation remains high. Protesters fight against corruption, political incompetence, & poverty as they attempt to oust strongman al-Bashir. Protesters desire #freedom, especially free enterprise & markets.

452

12:04 PM - Jan 4, 2019

581 people are talking about thisTwitter Ads info and privacy

The association, which includes teachers, doctors and engineers, has held similar rallies in recent weeks but they have been swiftly broken up by riot police.

Security forces were deployed in key squares across the capital on Saturday night.

Late on Saturday, Bashir sacked Minister of Health Mohamed Abuzaid Mustafa, the official SUNA news agency reported.

He was replaced by Al-Khier Al-Nour, SUNA said, without giving details.

Rising drug prices and shortages have added to the anger of protesters already furious over the cost of other key products.

Sudanese pharmaceutical companies have been unable to import some medicines after a years-long foreign currency shortage worsened last year.

READ MORE ►

Sudan security forces break up anti-government protests

Economic problems, at the root of discontent that has simmered for years, accelerated after Sudan lost three-quarters of its oil production when the south of the country seceded in 2011.

In the eyes of protesters, the economic troubles are deeply entwined with corruption and mismanagement in the political elite and the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), Amjed Farid Eltayeb, an activist and spokesman for the Sudan Change Now movement, told Reuters.

"The NCP for the last 30 years have directed most of the national budget to the security apparatus, to the militias, and they cut all the funding of the social services, education, health," he said.

"So those people who are now in the streets have no social protection nets, they are alone in a battle with fate ... they have nothing to lose."

Sudanese authorities have launched a crackdown on opposition leaders, activists and journalists since protests erupted last month.

Millions face delayed tax refunds, cuts to food stamps as White House scrambles to deal with shutdown’s consequences

A sign in a market window in New York advertises the acceptance of food stamps. The assistance may be cut if the government shutdown extends into February. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

By Damian Paletta andErica Werner-January 4 at 6:17 PM

Food stamps for 38 million low-income Americans would face severe reductions and more than $140 billion in tax refunds are at risk of being frozen or delayed if the government shutdown stretches into February, widespread disruptions that threaten to hurt the economy.

The Trump administration, which had not anticipated a long-term shutdown, recognized only this week the breadth of the potential impact, several senior administration officials said. The officials said they were focused now on understanding the scope of the consequences and determining whether there is anything they can do to intervene.

Thousands of federal programs are affected by the shutdown, but few intersect with the public as much as the tax system and the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the current version of food stamps.

The partial shutdown has cut off new funding to the Treasury Department and the USDA, leaving them largely unstaffed and crippling both departments’ ability to fulfill core functions.

The potential cuts to food stamps and suspension of tax refunds illustrate the compounding consequences of leaving large parts of the federal govern­ment unfunded indefinitely — a ­scenario that became more likely Friday when President Trump said he would leave the government shut down for months or even years unless Democrats gave him money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The SNAP program is rare among federal initiatives because it requires annual funding from Congress, even though its existence is automatically renewed.

For federal contract workers like Pablo Lazaro, the continuing government shutdown means struggling to save money to pay rent and other bills. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

Congress has not allocated funding for SNAP beyond January, and the program’s emergency reserves would not cover even two-thirds of February’s payments, according to past disbursements. Last September, the most recent month for which data is available, SNAP disbursed $4.7 billion in benefits to recipients across every U.S. state.

Lawmakers last year appropriated $3 billion into a “contingency” fund for SNAP. USDA officials would not comment on the status of the $3 billion, but if all of that money is still available, it would cover just 64 percent of February’s obligations.

Agency officials have not said how they would address the shortfall, including whether they would prioritize who receives food aid or cut benefits for everyone across the board.

If the shutdown continues through March, there would be no remaining money for benefits.

“We are currently looking at options for SNAP,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department. “The best course of action would be for Congress to pass a legitimate appropriations bill to the president to end the lapse in funding.”

President Trump told reporters Jan. 4 he is prepared to keep the government shut down until an agreement on the U.S.-Mexico border wall is reached. (Reuters)

During the shutdown, the USDA office that administers SNAP has sent home 95 percent of its employees without pay, according to a flowchart on the department’s website.

“People in this country will go hungry,” said Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.). “It’s simple. They go hungry. . . . These are working people. We’re not talking about people who are dogging it.”

The disruption would hurt not only the families that receive the assistance but also grocers and other retailers where the money is spent.

Treasury Department officials, meanwhile, are trying to determine what to do with the flood of requests for tax refunds that will come in next month.

The Internal Revenue Service has sent home close to 90 percent of its staff without pay ahead of an extremely busy time for the tax agency.

From late January through March 2 of 2018, the IRS paid out $147.6 billion in tax refunds to 48.5 million households. That money could be frozen within the IRS if the refunds are stalled.

Early last year, as part of its contingency planning for possible government shutdowns, the IRS said it would not issue any tax refunds during a shutdown. Treasury and IRS officials have not said they will completely suspend all tax refunds next month, but a senior administration official said such disbursements would be severely affected and likely slowed if they are paid.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday asking him to detail the impact of job cuts at the IRS and how the tax filing season will be handled during the shutdown.

“Please confirm whether the IRS will issue federal tax refunds at any time during government shutdown,” the letter said. “If so, please provide the anticipated date when the IRS will be issuing refunds.”

This could have an immediate impact on the economy, as well as on the finances of millions of Americans who frequently spend their tax refunds soon after receiving them.

“The IRS will finalize and release its filing season lapse plan in the coming days,” said a Treasury Department official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the internal planning.

Under normal schedules, tax returns for income earned in 2018 would be due April 15. People who anticipate receiving a tax refund — meaning they overpaid their taxes last year — tend to file their taxes as early as possible to recoup the funds quickly.

“It would be a huge political and economic hit for people who are expecting their $2,500 or $3,000 refund to not be able to get that money,” said Mark Mazur, a former top IRS official who served at Treasury during the Obama administration.

Trump has said he is willing to keep agencies shut down as long as necessary to force Democrats to appropriate several billion dollars for the construction of walls along the Mexico border. But some Republicans have said they are uncomfortable with this approach, and several this week sided with Democrats in their effort to reopen agencies immediately.

The scale of the consequences also reflects a deep disconnect between Trump, who has largely cheered on a prolonged shutdown, and the officials running federal agencies, who are trying to minimize the fallout.

“If we have to stay out for a very long period of time, we’re going to do that,” Trump said Friday.

White House officials have not fully briefed lawmakers on the expanding consequences of the government shutdown, leading to confusion about what happens as each week goes by.

Neal said that the IRS is considering bringing staffers back to work in the coming weeks to help deal with tax filings but that it’s unclear how the agency will proceed. These employees would have to work without pay unless Congress passed an emergency funding bill. He said delays in tax refunds would lead to “more anger, for something that can be solved.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top House conservative who had cheered Trump’s approach in the political confrontation, said he was unaware that there would be any impact on SNAP benefits.

He said he was convinced this money was automatically appropriated by Congress: “Food stamps go on regardless,” he said.

This is not the case, however, according to several senior administration officials.

Meadows said he was “not downplaying the potential consequences of a shutdown,” but said the whole situation could be easily resolved if Democrats would appropriate several billion dollars for the border wall.

The government shutdown began Dec. 22 after Trump blocked a bipartisan deal to fund numerous federal agencies through Feb. 8 because he wants more than $5 billion to construct 200 miles of wall along the border.

During his campaign and earlier in his presidency, Trump said the wall would be paid for by Mexico. That has not happened.

The shutdown began with an acute impact, cutting off funding to pay 800,000 federal employees, closing national parks and museums, and limiting federal services. The workers are expected to begin feeling the consequences of the shutdown more sharply next week: They will miss their first paychecks on Jan. 11 if a resolution isn’t reached.

“A month into this, we’re going to see people start to get evicted and their cars start to be repossessed,” said David Borer, general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 750,000 federal employees.

And a much broader part of the federal bureaucracy is expected to begin grinding to a halt in February, absent a resolution.

Nonprofit groups have been able to patch together money to keep certain parts of the government open for several weeks, but it’s unclear how much longer they can hold on. And none has sought to replicate the level of funding that would be lost if SNAP runs out of money or tax refunds are stalled.

“That’s scary, really scary,” said Lyman Hafen, executive director at Utah’s Zion National Park Forever Project, a nonprofit partner of one of the country’s most scenic parks. “It’s not a good situation without that support. We’re just taking it a day at a time, a week at a time.”

The cumulative impact of these changes could have a major impact on the economy.

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RMS U.S., an accounting and consulting firm, said a prolonged shutdown would shave an entire percentage point off the U.S.’s economic growth, in part because of an “uncertainty tax” that would freeze spending by households and businesses.

“If one doesn’t know what’s going to happen with respect to their own income . . . there will be a pull back on the purchase of big-ticket items,” he said. “Large firms will pull back on outlays on software, equipment and capital.”