Red Cross honours Afghan guard

Patients at a Red Cross orthopaedic clinic in Kabul Kabul - Arabstoday The Red Cross halted work across Afghanistan on Thursday to pay a one-day tribute to the guard killed outside its offices in Jalalabad city in an unprecedented militant attack on the organisation. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) closed all its 16 aid centres, which provide help to war amputees, displaced people, hospital patients and families divided by decades of conflict. The ICRC maintains strict impartiality in the Afghan war, and the two-hour assault on its compound in Jalalabad on May 29 provoked widespread shock as well as fears that aid groups could withdraw from the country. Abdul Bashir Khan, an unarmed guard at the ICRC in Jalalabad, died at the start of the suicide and gun attack, in which seven foreign staff were rescued safely. The ICRC said that Thursday would be dedicated to the memory of Khan, a father of seven who had worked for the organisation since the hardline Taliban era (1996-2001) when it was one of the few aid groups to operate in Afghanistan. "We are not afraid, but we cannot ignore what happened," Najmuddin Helal, the head of the ICRC orthopaedic clinic in Kabul, told AFP. "The job will go on. There are so many disabled people, they need our services. We will continue and at the same time the ICRC will reassess the situation. "This is something really new... Who? Why? It's not clear." The Taliban, which previously praised the ICRC for its humanitarian work, denied any involvement in the attack. Helal said that the aid group had always declined to use armed guards in Afghanistan and its impartiality had previously served as a protection against being targeted. "We do not have armed security around us, and we should not have it, because this is a place of independence, neutrality and is for everybody, not certain people," he said. The ICRC, which has 1,800 staff in Afghanistan, helps return dead bodies to all sides in the war as well as organising water and sanitation projects and emergency food distribution. It has withdrawn some international staff and cut back on services as security is reviewed. The Jalalabad facility has been closed since the attack and one expatriate has been pulled out of Kabul. "We hope our colleague will come back soon," said Amir Jan, a technician in the Kabul workshop where he oversees the manufacture of artificial limbs. "We've talked about the attack together, because this was the first. We will not work (on Thursday) to show respect to our colleague." No ICRC office had ever been hit before in 25 years of operating in Afghanistan, though a Swiss engineer with the organisation was murdered by the Taliban in 2003. The threat of radical insurgents trying to banish any international presence from the country would pose huge challenges as the US-led military coalition prepares to withdraw next year after 12 years of fighting. Foreign aid and investment is needed to develop the transport system, power supply, education and health care, with the economy destined to rely on outside funding for many years. Any pullout by aid agencies and humanitarian workers at the same time as the international troops would increase the risk of economic collapse and a return to the instability of the Taliban era. "The Afghan government have a lot of problems," said Jamil, who lost his left leg when stepping on a mine nine months ago in Parwan province, north of Kabul. "If the ICRC stops, the government will not take care of us. So who will do that?"