Taliban Will Allow Bakeries to Reopen

Afghanistan’s hard-line Taliban rulers reversed themselves Thursday and said the United Nations could reopen bakeries that employ widows and feed the poor in the fundamentalist Muslim country.

The decision came a day after the Taliban shut 25 bakeries and told the 360 women who worked there to go home. The regime generally forbids women to work.

Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel, who was in Kabul, the capital, gave no explanation for the change of policy.

The Taliban regime, which controls roughly 90% of Afghanistan, espouses a harsh brand of Islamic law and has imposed strict controls on women since capturing Kabul in 1996.

The bakeries, started by the World Food Program, allowed widows to earn salaries making bread that was sold at a subsidized price to other widows in the country.