U.N. Food Distribution to Restart Under Deal

The United Nations and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan agreed on a formula for hiring women for a key poverty survey, allowing the world body to reopen its largest food distribution project in the war- and drought-ravaged nation.

The agreement came after the U.N. World Food Program accepted the Taliban’s main demand: that women already working in the Taliban health ministry conduct the survey, which is needed for a new list of eligible bread recipients.

The deal means about 120 bakeries providing subsidized bread to 282,000 impoverished people in the Afghan capital, Kabul, will reopen by Tuesday, U.N. officials said. The bakeries had shut down Saturday after the Taliban missed a Friday deadline for allowing the food program to hire its own women.