Kabul, Afghanistan: A clinic in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan has reopened two weeks after an Afghan doctor killed by the Taliban was shot there. The longtime supporter of educating Afghan girls was the victim of a targeted shooting by the Islamic extremist group.

On August 8, 2005, four gunmen drove on motorcycles to the Yargatoo Comprehensive Health Center (CHC), located in a school building in the village of Mazoo. They walked into the outpatient unit as Dr. Hashim Andar was treating patients and opened fire on him. No one else was injured in the attack.

Dr. Andar was employed by the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC), an Afghan NGO operating 15 health facilities in Ghazni province with funds supplied by USAID through the Rural Expansion of Afghanistan's Community-based Healthcare (REACH) program. REACH is operated by Management Sciences for Health. The Yargatoo CHC briefly closed following the shooting.

"We are deeply saddened that Dr. Andar, a man who was bringing so much good to his people, has been killed," said Tony Savelli, REACH Director. "His death is a great loss to the community, and it's a personal loss as well to NAC and the REACH grant officers who work with them."

The doctor was known and loved by the people of the Andar District of Ghazni, where he was born and had worked for nearly 15 years. In a show of loyalty to Dr. Andar, community members apprehended three of the assailants and turned them over to the coalition-led Provincial Reconstruction Team in Ghazni province. The fourth Taliban member involved in the attack has not been found.

Dr. Andar had spent his own money to improve the quality of life for people in the community, most recently to provide a well and a pump to bring safe drinking water to the area.

However, he was perhaps best known for his commitment to education. He helped to open the first school for boys and girls in the Andar district, built by the Swedish Committee NGO on land Dr. Andar owned and donated.

During the Taliban era, Dr. Andar encouraged the Swedish Committee to continue operating the school despite the prohibition on education for Afghan girls and women; in retaliation, the Taliban captured and imprisoned him for two months. Those who knew Dr. Andar believe that Taliban members continued to seethe about the school, and ended up killing him because of it.

"He was an educated person," said Dr. Faizallah Batoor, Senior Officer, NAC. "He knew that educating people was the one way for our country to have a fine future. So he encouraged people in the community to send their sons and daughters to school."

Dr. Andar graduated from the medical faculty at Kabul University in 1963 and worked from 1971 until 1979 as a doctor in the Paktika Army Division. From 1980 until 1987, he was a director of an Afghan army hospital in Jalalabad. From 1987 until 1989 he served as deputy director of the Health Directorate of the army, overseeing all of the health sections of the army.

In 1989, he became the director of the Afghan Air Force Hospital, leaving in 1992 to work as a doctor in a private clinic in Ghazni province. In 1995 he became a master trainer of medical staff in clinics run by the Swedish Committee in Ghazni province, and in 2002 resumed the practice of medicine in the NAC clinic he had helped to open. Dr. Andar is survived by his wife and six children.

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