The day before Thanksgiving, Americans were shocked by the tragic shooting of two members of the National Guard by an Afghan asylum seeker allowed into the United States by the Biden Administration. According to the AP:
“The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting near the White House that killed Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and critically wounded Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, both of the West Virginia National Guard, is facing charges … Rahmanullah Lakanwal is a 29-year-old Afghan national who had been living in Bellingham, Washington … He worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan War.”
This killer left his five children in Washington state to drive to DC to ambush Sarah Beckstrom with shots from a .357 pistol, then grabbed Beckstrom’s weapon and mortally wounded her with a shot to the head. He then shot Wolf multiple times, and “When Lakanwal paused to reload, a National Guard major leapt from cover and turned the ambush back on the attacker — stabbing the alleged terrorist in the head multiple times and bringing him to the ground. During the initial attack, the major allegedly heard Lakanwal yelling ‘Allahu Akbar,'” the New York Post reported.
Many wonder how Lakanwal could go from seeming an American ally in Afghanistan to this. I’d like to offer some perspective from what I have learned of Lakanwal and my experiences with Afghans in Afghanistan.
First, we know now that when Lakanwal worked with the CIA as an “allied partner,” he was based at FOB Gecko outside Kandahar starting in 2007. Gecko had been Afghan militant leader Mullah Omar’s compound before the U.S. invasion. When I was deployed to Afghanistan from 2007 to 2008 to advise the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), I began my tour near Kandahar with some subordinate forces stationed at Camp Gecko (before I went to take over the advisory mission in nearby Helmand Province). In Afghanistan, the Southern Region, including Kandahar, was the most violent and most infested with the Taliban. This means Lakanwal would have been involved in substantial combat while working with the CIA, and I can attest that things were quite violent there. It also means he would have been a prime recruiting target of the enemy.
According to former CIA agent and bestselling author Sarah Adams, “ISIS channels were the first to praise the (National Guard shooting) largely because Lakanwal’s half-brother had been a recruiter for the Islamic State–Khorasan Province (ISKP).” Additionally, Adams noted: “After the fall of Kabul in 2021, Lakanwal’s unit the Kandahar Protection Force and the Khost Protection Force (KPF) became prime targets for both the Haqqani Network and ISKP, which sought either to blackmail or recruit former KPF members.”
Part of the blackmail scheme involved threats of killing family members in Afghanistan. Lakanwal may have been vetted for CIA missions in Afghanistan, but clearly wasn’t vetted for resettlement in the U.S. under these circumstances.
The botched withdrawal is most to blame for what happened in D.C. Former President Biden announced his withdrawal at the worst possible time: the start of the Taliban Spring/Summer offensive. His State Department compounded the problem by utter incompetence with regard to Special Immigration Visas (SIV). It wasn’t until months after the withdrawal announcement, when the Taliban were overrunning the country, that meaningful efforts at SIV vetting and processing began. The State Department basically lost control: “One reason for why so many SIVs remain in Afghanistan, the official noted, is ‘every credential we tried to provide electronically was immediately disseminated to the widest possible pool. And so it was no longer a viable credential to differentiate among populations, and we simply did not have the people for that time to be able to try to sift through that crowd of people demanding access.’”
When it was clear the optics of the withdrawal were politically damaging, the Biden administration decided to attempt to find a political silver lining. They directed airlifting of as many Afghans as possible to create the alleged greatest airlift in history. While some American citizens were left behind, tens of thousands of unvetted military-aged males were let loose on America.
I had a unique experience of being associated with an Afghan Christian interpreter while in Helmand on various missions. Christianity there was extremely rare (he’s the only Afghan Christian I knew about), and this man had to leave Afghanistan due to the threats on his life from being an “apostate” from Islam. I remember him telling me of several ANSF who were quite close with us American advisors, talking (in Pashtu among themselves) about how we were infidels and how they would eventually have to fight us as the enemy.
Lakanwal was likely either recruited by ISKP before he left, blackmailed by threats, or became radicalized against Christian “infidels”. It is noteworthy that this attack came after Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and five other seditionist congressmen published the video insinuating American military members were, or would be, ordered to commit war crimes. This may have been the final nudge.
Americans have the right and duty to decide who we allow within our nation. Nationality is about commonalities, including language and religious belief. In our case, the Bible, and as Psalm 33:12 tells us, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage.” Pray for our fallen and wounded. May God bless them for protecting the nation they served.
Bill Connor, a retired Army Infantry colonel, author and Orangeburg attorney, has deployed multiple times to the Middle East. Connor was the senior U.S. military adviser to Afghan forces in Helmand Province, where he received the Bronze Star. A Citadel graduate with a JD from USC, he is also a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Army War College, earning his master of strategic studies. He is the author of the book Articles from War.
