A veterans’ organization reports that the individual suspected in the Washington, D.C., shooting of members had been associated with a specialized counterterrorism unit managed by the CIA.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, faces arrest for the fatal shooting of Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and injuries sustained by Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24. Both were West Virginia Guardsmen deployed to the capital under President Donald Trump’s directive.
AfghanEvac, a veterans’ organization assisting former Afghan partners of the U.S., issued a statement confirming Lakanwal as one of thousands of Afghans who collaborated with American forces throughout the two-decade conflict with the Taliban. The group noted that his unit benefited from “direct U.S. intelligence and military backing.”
His specific group, identified as the “03” unit, was part of a larger collection known as “Zero Units,” as conveyed by various Afghan and U.S. officials interviewed by the New York Times.
The following details are available concerning these units.
Extrajudicial killings
Lakanwal’s specific “03” unit, as indicated on his identification, conducted operations in and around Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province. His badge additionally featured “Firebase Gecko,” the designation for the CIA and special forces outpost in that southern area where unit 03 was situated, a site formerly occupied by Taliban founder and Afghanistan’s initial supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
TIME’s request for comment from the CIA received no immediate reply.
Functioning as Afghan intelligence and paramilitary forces, these units supported U.S. troops during their prolonged conflict with the Taliban. American special operations personnel provided their training, enabling them to undertake hazardous assignments and nocturnal incursions.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused these units in the 2010s of committing extrajudicial killings, conducting indiscriminate airstrikes, and perpetrating multiple breaches of international humanitarian law. Due to their reputation for night raids and covert operations, HRW reported that diplomats in Afghanistan labeled these units “death squads.” Both the CIA and the U.S. government have refuted these allegations.
An HRW report details a particular incident from 2018 where CIA-supported Afghan paramilitary forces conducted a raid on the residence of a non-governmental organization staff member.
“Late at night, the forces entered the family’s compound, separating males from females. They specifically targeted the staff member’s brother, moving him to a different section of the house. He was then shot and left behind, while another male family member was taken away, whose detention the government subsequently disavowed,” the report stated.
Kevin Maurer, a journalist who spent 17 years reporting on the Afghanistan War and accompanied Special Forces there, notes, “The Zero Units were shrouded in myth.” He adds that “positions within Zero Units were highly sought after due to superior compensation, enhanced training, and the opportunity to collaborate with elite U.S. operatives.”
Allies Welcome Initiative
Roles within these units were also highly desired due to the prospect they offered participants for immigration and resettlement in the United States. Following the Taliban’s resurgence to power in 2021, the Biden administration initiated a program, first named Operation Allies Welcome, to assist Afghan citizens and their relatives who had supported the U.S. war efforts in relocating to the U.S. without initially obtaining permanent resident status.
The collapse of Kabul to the Taliban created a tumultuous situation as the U.S. sought to withdraw after two decades of military presence, prompting fears among numerous Afghan nationals who had assisted the U.S. that they would face retaliation from Taliban forces.
Through Operation Allies Welcome, subsequently renamed Enduring Welcome, approximately 200,000 Afghans were admitted into the United States. Roughly 40 percent of these individuals received Special Immigrant Visas.
Following the shooting, Shawn VanDiver, president of the nonprofit AfghanEvac, issued a statement describing Enduring Welcome as “a secure, deliberate, interagency system established to continue the relocation of thoroughly vetted Afghan wartime partners after the initial evacuation,” countering Trump’s assertions that the program permitted unvetted individuals into the country.
The archived page for the program on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) website states that all admitted individuals underwent a “stringent screening and vetting procedure” which was “multi-layered and continuous,” involving checks by the DHS, Department of Defense (DOD), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), among other agencies.
VanDiver asserted, “This represented the most secure and safest immigration route in U.S. history, integrating several levels of scrutiny from DHS, DoD, FBI, and the intelligence community.” He added, “It enabled the U.S. to uphold its commitments to Afghan allies from the war and enjoys bipartisan backing from Republican and Democratic members of Congress.”
Following the incident, the Trump Administration declared its intention to halt decisions and the issuance of visas to Afghan citizens, a move VanDiver criticizes as collective punishment attributed to the actions of a single individual.
The organization expressed regret over the defunding or termination of several Homeland Security initiatives, which it claims were designed to “detect threats, avert radicalization, and facilitate community-level interventions,” encompassing Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs, alongside mental health, trauma support, and reintegration services for immigrants.
TIME reached out to the DHS for a statement.
AfghanEvac commented, “The administration reduced funding for programs intended to prevent at-risk individuals from turning violent, yet concurrently leveraged a single unfortunate anomaly to sanction sweeping limitations on Afghan families completely unrelated to this incident.”
