National Guard shooting suspect was in one of CIA’s ‘Zero Units’

The man suspected of shooting two National Guard members near the White House this week — one of them fatally — is an Afghan national who came to the United States in September 2021 because of his work with the U.S. government, including the CIA, according to authorities.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, who officials say drove across the country to carry out Wednesday’s attack,was detained moments afteropening fire on Sarah Beckstrom, 20, an Army specialist from West Virginia, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24,using a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. Beckstrom later died of her injuries, while Wolfe remains critically injured, President Donald Trump said Thursday.

Lakanwal was charged with three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed and three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence; the office of U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro confirmed Friday that he also faces a charge of murder in the first degree over Beckstrom’s death. Here’s what we know so far.

Lakanwal was 5 when the U.S. and allied forces invaded Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, marking the start of what would become the United States’ longest war.

Two decades later, Lakanwal was among tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who came to the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program, following the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem.

Lakanwal was granted asylum this April, a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told The Washington Post. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation. The White House has not disputed this date.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Lakanwal had been a member of a partner force in Kandahar, a province in southern Afghanistan that saw significant fighting during the war.

Further details about his specific role and service with the CIA are not yet known.

The Zero Units, also known as National Strike Units, were involved in dangerous and often deadly night raids and other missions to kill or capture members of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. The CIA and U.S. military provided intelligence and logistical support to the squads.

The CIA has never publicly acknowledged its work with the Zero Units,which have been shadowed by allegations of human rights violations, including a 2019 Human Rights Watch report that found they had conducted summary executions and other abuses.

Lakanwal and other Afghan paramilitary members would have undergone extensive vetting before joining the Zero Units and were supposed to be monitored closely once in service, people familiar with the matter said.

U.S. officials have said the Zero Units were effective fighters and that they played a critical role in assisting with the chaotic American evacuation from Afghanistan in late August 2021, probably saving U.S. lives.

Another neighbor, Mohammed Sherzad, who is also from Afghanistan, said Lakanwal was Pashtun. The two attended the same nearby mosque, he said, and their children attended elementary school together. He said he hadn’t seen Lakanwal in recent weeks.

After announcing the death of Beckstrom on Thursday, Trump threatened to halt migration “from all Third World Countries,” while the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the government has stopped processing all immigration requests for Afghan nationals “pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”

The Alliance of Afghan Communities in the United States, a network of advocacy groups representing Afghans in the United States, condemned the shooting while also asking the Trump administration to punish the perpetrator rather than the community as a whole.

In the statement, the group’s members wrote that the shooting represented “a Single Individual Not the Afghan Nation” and said they stand in “deep solidarity with the American people during this painful and tragic moment.”

“We urge the American public not to judge thousands of innocent Afghans based on the actions of a single person,” the group said. “This was an individual act of moral deviation, not the reflection of a nation.”