On November 26, 2025, two members of the American National Guard were shot in the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., just two blocks from the White House. The incident quickly drew intense reactions from several quarters. Since the shooter was an Afghan national, it was immediately weaponised to stoke anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric. The U.S. president used the attack to justify two of his favourite measures—deploying additional armed guards in Washington and tightening restrictions on immigrants.
Yet very little public attention has been paid to the background of the shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who has been identified as someone trained by the CIA.
CIA-trained Militia
Lakanwal began working with the CIA in 2011. He was not an ordinary intelligence officer or a spy, but a member of the notorious “Zero Units”, a paramilitary force recruited, trained, equipped, and directed by the CIA as part of America’s so-called “War on Terror.” These units were trained to kill—often targeting not only Taliban or ISIS militants, but also Afghan civilians.
Although the Zero Units were nominally under Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), they did not follow the NDS chain of command. Their only true superiors were in Langley.
In Afghanistan, the Americans used them for night raids against presumed Taliban and ISIS targets. But as multiple investigations have shown, many of these raids were not conducted against combatants at all. Instead, they resembled the type of operations for which U.S. forces—and recently the British SAS—have been heavily criticised: night-time home invasions resulting in the killing of civilians.
According to Human Rights Watch, in many cases, the Zero Units targeted homes for night raids or airstrikes based on flimsy intelligence—sometimes nothing more than claims that a family had provided food to Taliban or ISIS fighters.
Beyond HRW, independent journalists have also documented these abuses. In December 2022, journalist Lynzy Billing published her extensive investigation “The Night Raids,” based on hundreds of interviews, confirming the pattern of brutality carried out by these CIA-backed militias.
Around 10,000 members of these “killer units” were airlifted out of Afghanistan during the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021. They were transported in cargo planes with little regard for human dignity—first to Qatar, and then to the United States, where many have since struggled with their legal status. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the Washington shooter, was one of them.
Trump’s Second Term
Trump repeatedly criticised Biden for mishandling the Afghan withdrawal—even though it was the Trump administration that negotiated and initiated the exit plan. He also called for re-vetting Afghan evacuees. Ironically, Lakanwal’s asylum application was approved in April 2025, during Trump’s own administration.
Still, Trump has never hidden his intention to limit Afghan resettlement. Asked in July about Afghan refugees, he said:
“We’re going to take care of those people—the ones that did a job for us, the ones that were told certain things.”
By Trump’s logic, Lakanwal should have been one of those “taken care of,” at least for the killings he carried out on behalf of U.S. interests in Afghanistan. But did he belong to “the ones that were told certain things”?
And more importantly: What exactly were those things?
Mental Health Issues?
After the attack, the “mental health” narrative, often deployed selectively depending on the shooter’s background, has emerged once again. The New York Times reported that a friend said Lakanwal “suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.”
Well, there is a credible reason to believe Lakanwal suffered from PTSD. In August 2023, NBC News quoted a letter from Mohammad Shah, one of the Zero Unit commanders that some of the unit members are suicidal.
Whatever the case may be, Americans will eventually have to confront the violent machinery their foreign policies have engineered and unleashed across the world. A nation cannot fuel instability abroad and still expect perfect tranquillity at home.
*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.
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