DC Shooter Was Part of CIA-Directed Unit
A childhood friend claims he had PTSD from his actions.
from PxHere
Writing about the shooting of two National Guardsmen in DC yesterday morning, I observed, “Given that more information is likely to come available soon, I’ll refrain from speculating on the motives of the shooter.” More information has indeed come to light and, alas, my instincts were pretty close.
NYT (“D.C. Shooting Suspect ‘Could Not Tolerate’ the Violence of His C.I.A.-Backed Unit in Afghanistan, a Childhood Friend Said“):
The Afghan refugee accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., fought in the late days of the U.S. war there as part of a “Zero Unit,” a paramilitary force that worked with the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on the investigation and an Afghan intelligence officer familiar with the matter. The units were known for their brutality and labeled “death squads” by human rights groups.
The suspect, identified by federal officials as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, grew up in a village in the eastern province of Khost. A childhood friend, who asked to be identified only as Muhammad because he feared Taliban reprisals, said that Mr. Lakanwal had suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.
“He would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure,” Muhammad said.
The suspect received asylum from the U.S. government in April, according to three people with knowledge of the case who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Members of the Zero units were among the thousands of Afghans relocated to the United States under the Biden administration after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops in August 2021, which allowed the Taliban to retake control of the country. Federal officials said Mr. Lakanwal was part of that program and had resettled with his family in Washington State.
“The Biden administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including C.I.A., as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,” the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, said in a statement, adding that the accused assailant “should have never been allowed to come here.”
Leaving him in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan would have been a death sentence. While that’s of small comfort to the families of his victims, one of whom is now dead, that would have been unconscionable.
An Afghan intelligence officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to comment publicly on the issue, confirmed that Mr. Lakanwal had served in Kandahar in one of the Zero Units, which were formally part of the Afghan intelligence service. The units had been trained for nighttime raids targeting suspected Taliban members, and were accused by human rights groups of widespread killings of civilians.
The intelligence officer said that one of Mr. Lakanwal’s brothers was the deputy commander of the Zero Unit in Kandahar, which was known as 03.
Muhammad, Mr. Lakanwal’s childhood friend, said he has last seen him a few weeks before the Taliban takeover in 2021, when Mr. Lakanwal came to Khost to marry his second wife. He had started smoking weed, Muhammad said, and ended up divorcing his new wife a few days after the wedding. Muhammed recalled that Mr. Lakanwal told him: “When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind.”
[…]
The C.I.A. has denied the allegations of brutality among the units, saying they were the result of Taliban propaganda. Current and former officials said the units played an important role in the American evacuation of Afghanistan. The units helped both U.S. citizens and Afghan partners flee to the airport and get on flights out of the country.
In at least one instance, however, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services used a Human Rights Watch report decrying the units as a reason to deny U.S. citizenship to an Afghan soldier who had worked alongside American forces during the war.
A CBS News report (“What were the Afghan ‘Zero Units’ that the National Guard shooting suspect reportedly worked for?“) adds:
An image of an ID badge circulating widely online Thursday that purportedly shows the suspect in the shooting of the National Guard members says he was assigned to the “Kandahar Strike Force” or “03” unit, one of a number of so-called “Zero Units” that worked closely with U.S. and other foreign forces during the war in Afghanistan.
The badge also carries the words “Firebase Gecko,” which was the name of a base used by the CIA and special forces in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, inside what was previously the compound of the Taliban’s founding leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
[…]
The “Zero Units” were exclusively composed of Afghan nationals and operated under the umbrella of the National Directorate of Security, or NDS, the intelligence agency established with CIA backing for Afghanistan’s previous, U.S.-backed government.
A former senior Afghan general under that previous government told CBS News on Thursday that “03 unit, also known as The Kandahar Strike Force (KSF), was under special forces directorate of NDS. They were the most active and professional forces, trained and equipped by the CIA. All their operations were conducted under the CIA command.”
The units were known in Afghanistan for their secrecy and alleged brutality, and members were implicated in numerous extrajudicial killings of civilians, particularly during night raids.
They were considered by the U.S. and its international partners to be among the most trusted domestic forces in Afghanistan.
[…]
As a member of a Zero Unit, the suspect would have been virtually guaranteed a route to asylum in the U.S. because members of these elite units were high on the list for Taliban retaliation after the group retook control of the country. Many members of these units played key roles in the August 2021 evacuation from Kabul, in return for a guarantee of space on a flight for themselves and their families out of Afghanistan.
Leaving him behind would have been a betrayal of the highest order. As, of course, were his actions on Wednesday. But one strongly suspects there are mental health issues here.
Obviously, the attack was well planned. He drove all the way from the Seattle area to carry it out. Why he targeted National Guard troops in DC, neither of whom had any connection to US operations in Afghanistan, is unclear.
This is all so distressing, up to and including the current administration’s response to this incident.
It bears repeating that we need the assistance of locals when we are fighting this type of war. And, let’s not forget that the administration has been trying to deport once-protected Afghans, apparently right around the time that this individual was granted asylum.
Also, calling yet another female reporter “stupid”–repeatedly–when she asked a perfectly legitimate question about this is decidedly un-presidential.
I agree that we had a real obligation grant this guy asylum. I do wonder what kind of effort we are making to track people whom we ask to take the kinds of actions this guy had to take? Seems like that should encompass American soldiers as well. My guess from talking with my reservists and trying to find online sources is that if someone exhibits symptoms and asks for help they can sometimes get help, but not always but it’s limited to US soldiers. We just arent good at mental health or maybe rather being willing to spend the time and money to provide the care. Lose a leg or something visible and you get care. Mental health issues? Meh.
Steve
We trained him to kill, he killed. We made him persona non grata in his own country and now the rapist draft dodger wants to deport Somalis because Afghans, Somalis, Venezuelans, Mexicans, non-white South Africans — all the same color — and no one but white people should be here.
I wish we had some brown or black Trumpies here. I’d really love to hear their bullshit rationalizations.
@Michael Reynolds: We train a whole lot of people to kill. A vanishingly small number of them drive cross-country to kill people who did nothing to them.
@James Joyner:
That’s not what I meant to imply. But I’ll push back a little because we do not train a whole lot of people to help foreign invaders to assassinate their own people.
I wonder if he signed up specifically for a death squad, or whether he thought he would be doing things that were less death-squaddy.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have death squads. Fewer death squads at least. Less-death squads.
The best thing the Biden administration did was to just implement the Trump deal to surrender and retreat from Afghanistan, rather than stick around and try to negotiate an honorable exit.
Obviously, in a just world, we would give all of our death squads orders to kill the other death squads, and whittle it down to one death squad. (and then kill them in an air strike.)
It’s likely that he’s a loon, potentially driven loony by his time working with the death squad.
But, he’s also very clearly sending a message — there are lots of closer targets, even if he wanted to shoot soldiers occupying our cities. It’s definitely not just mental health issues.
If this reality was being written by a particularly schlocky writer, the shooter would have been trying to bring attention to the death squads, have failed many times, and looked for the most high profile very accessible targets to try to make sure the world knows about the death squads.
Or perhaps it would be the setup for a Hallmark movie about a guardsman returning to West Virginia and falling in love with his therapist as a VA hospital.
I may be hung up on the death squad thing.
@Gustopher:
Well, OTOH, death squads tend to cause fewer collateral casualties than cruise missiles or JDAMS.
@Gustopher: I’m skeptical of some of the reporting, and Human Rights Watch are lunatics. But, as@Michael Reynolds rightly notes, in a war where we’re hunting down terrorists and Taliban members for execution, commando-style operations are less likely to kill innocents than other modalities. The advent of cheap drones 20-odd years ago made those the preferred method for us, as they could kill on demand at very little physical risk to US forces.
@Michael Reynolds: Fair point. Most of our soldiers never actually fire a shot at an enemy soldier and killing “them” has to be easier than killing your fellow citizens.
This seems to come down to PTSD, chickens/roost, and, I suspect, a failed suicide by cop. And it will be used to justify a lot of bad stuff.
Early in my career, I did clinical work in polytrauma and rehabilitation units with service members and vets recently returned from Afghanistan. Mostly infantry and special ops who saw heavy action.
Among other things, I ran several groups, and these experiences really stuck with me. Lots of inspiring stuff. Lots of horrifying stuff too.
Of course, we spent a lot of time working through the things they experienced, the things they did, the things they didn’t do.
We also spent time on the things they wanted to do, planned to do, fantasized about doing now. Some of that was beautiful. And a lot of it was very ugly. As ugly and uglier than what Rahmanullah Lakanwal did.
I occasionally think about a few of the guys I worked with, wondering (concerned) about what they made of their lives. These are not pleasant musings.
The articles say that Rahmanullah Lakanwal is 29 years old, similar age range to most of the guys I worked with.
The 20s are an especially vulnerable period for neurocognitive development. First-onset serious mental illness often arises during this time — in the general public, not just those in war zones.
The prolonged stress (intense moments of terror sandwiched between monotony/boredom) of combat exacerbates this risk. So too does the dislocation of exit and return home. So too too does the dislocation of exit and relocation to not-home.
Thank you, James, this is very informative.
Minor quibble; all this guy needed was a gas card and a handgun. I could be on the road in 20 minutes. Even if I need to stop at Walmart for ammo.
I suspect his choice of DC was significant, when there were National Guard troops stationed much closer to his home. It suggests a political motive. One possibility is Trump’s recent decision to send Afghan refugees home because it’s now regarded as “safe” (would this have included Lakanwal?). Another is the regime’s cancellation of already-approved visas for Afghans in camps in places like Pakistan. Perhaps close family members were caught up in that reversal.
There’s a bigger point: Americans were warned, again and again, that their country’s military interventions in Afghanistan and the Middle East were creating a whole new generation of potential terrorists who would yearn for revenge. Americans who expect their government to shield them from even the slightest blowback from decades of wreaking death and immiseration on Muslim populations are living in a fool’s paradise.
@Daryl: Yes, poor phrasing. I simply meant that it was highly premeditated: he clearly planned to hit Guardsmen in DC and had an entire cross-country drive to think it through.