Is a Middle East food crisis around the corner?

By now we're pretty much used to the crisis du jour out of the Middle East: Israel, oil, Islamism, corruption, tyranny, human rights, etc.  Now a piece in the Asia Times says we are facing another one: food.

I've been warning for months that Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab oil-importing countries face a total economic meltdown [citations omitted]. Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed my warnings.

[...]

The numbers thrown out by the IMF are stupefying. "In the current baseline scenario," wrote the IMF on May 27, "the external financing needs of the region's oil importers is projected to exceed $160 billion during 2011-13." That's almost three years' worth of Egypt's total annual imports as of 2010. As of 2010, the combined current account deficit (that is, external financing needs) of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia was about $15 billion a year.

What the IMF says, in effect, is that the oil-poor Arab economies - especially Egypt - are not only broke, but dysfunctional, incapable of earning more than a small fraction of their import bill. The disappearance of tourism is an important part of the problem, but shortages of fuel and other essentials have had cascading effects throughout these economies.

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