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.”
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.”