The suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, worked for a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” known as the Kandahar Strike Force (KSF) or the “03” unit, which has been implicated in war crimes against Afghan civilians.
Lakanwal, 29, arrived in the US in September 2021 as part of a program called “Operation Allies Welcome,” which brought tens of thousands of Afghan nationals into the US during and after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, mainly people who worked with the US against the Taliban.
Lakanwal was granted asylum by the Trump administration earlier this year. His cooperation with the CIA has been confirmed by the spy agency’s director, John Ratcliffe, who said Lakanwal worked “with the US Government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar.”
The Zero Units worked under the National Directorate of Security (NDS), an intelligence service in the now-defunct US-backed Afghan government, formally known as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
A former Afghan general under the previous US-backed government told CBS News that the “03 unit, also known as The Kandahar Strike Force, was under the 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.”
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in 2019 that Afghan members of the Zero Units “have been responsible for extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war.”
HRW said that it documented Afghan special forces raids on medical facilities that were carried out by the KSF and two other Zero Units between May 2018 and July 2019. “During these kill-or-capture operations, the forces involved assaulted and, in some cases, killed medical staff; assaulted or killed accompanying civilian or noncombatant caregivers; and caused damage to the facilities,” HRW said.
A relative of Lakanwal told NBC News that he grew up in Afghanistan’s Khost province and was living in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife and five children before the shooting.
The two National Guard members were shot in the head, and they remain in critical condition. They have been identified as Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, from the West Virginia National Guard.
