Who is National Guard shooting suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal

Afghan refugee and former CIA-linked Zero Unit fighter Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who resettled in the US through Operation Allies Welcome, is accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, DC.

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Dec 1, 2025 - 18:51

Who is National Guard shooting suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal

The Afghan man who allegedly shot two National Guard members in Washington, DC, last week went from being a US partner in Afghanistan to spending the last few years in Washington state with his family, where, according to reports and sources who spoke to CNN, he had a hard time assimilating and dealt with lingering PTSD.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal worked with the CIA for over a decade in Afghanistan before the US military withdrew from the country. That work with US forces in Afghanistan led him to come to the US in 2021.

The devastating attack near the White House last week left one National Guard member dead and another in critical condition. Lakanwal was wounded during the shooting and taken to the hospital, authorities said. His condition is unknown.

He faces at least one first-degree murder charge, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, told on Friday, adding, “There are certainly many more charges to come.”

As investigators work to establish a motive for the shooting, they have been piecing together details about Lakanwal’s life. The information that has emerged is largely related to the Afghan national’s interactions with the immigration process. Trump administration officials have criticized the Biden administration in the wake of the shooting, saying Lakanwal was not sufficiently vetted before entering the US.

Authorities have also learned in interviews with the suspect’s family that Lakanwal may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to the sources, family members told authorities that the PTSD stemmed from the fighting Lakanwal did in Afghanistan, where he fought in a CIA-sponsored-and-trained unit of the Afghan special forces known as a Zero Unit.

Suspect struggled to assimilate

Lakanwal appeared to have been unraveling for years, unable to hold a job and flipping between long, lightless stretches of isolation and taking sudden weekslong cross-country drives, emails obtained by The Associated Press indicate. His behavior deteriorated so sharply that a community advocate reached out to a refugee organization for help, fearing he was becoming suicidal.

The emails reveal mounting warnings about the asylum-seeker, whose erratic conduct raised alarms long before the attack that jolted the nation’s capital on Wednesday, the eve of Thanksgiving.

The previously unreported concerns offer the clearest picture yet of how he was struggling in his new life in the United States after arriving through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans after the American withdrawal.

Lakanwal lived in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife and five children, according to the Department of Homeland Security. A neighbor, who requested to remain anonymous to protect his privacy.

A community member shared with AP emails that had been sent to the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nonprofit group that provides services to refugees.

“Rahmanullah has not been functional as a person, father and provider since March of last year, 03/2023. He quit his job that month, and his behavior has changed greatly,” the person wrote in a January 2024 email.

The emails AP obtained described a man who was unable to hold a steady job or commit to his English courses while he alternated between “periods of dark isolation and reckless travel.” Sometimes, he spent weeks in his “darkened room, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife or older kids.” At one point in 2023, the family faced eviction after months of not paying rent.

Lakanwal’s work history in the US is not entirely clear, but Amazon confirms that a person with the suspect’s name was an independent contractor with the company for one month this summer, working for its Flex delivery service.

A couple of times, when Lakanwal’s wife left him with the kids for a week to travel to visit relatives, the children would not be bathed, their clothes would not be changed, and they would not eat well, the emails AP obtained show. Their school raised concerns about the situation.

But then, there were “interim” weeks where Lakanwal would try to make amends and “do the right things,” according to an email, reengaging with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services as was mandated by the terms of his entry into the US.

"But this quickly escalated into a week or two of 'manic' episodes, where he would get out in the family car and drive nonstop," the email stated. Once, he went to Chicago, and another time, to Arizona.

Piro said last week that Lakanwal drove from Bellingham, about 80 miles north of Seattle, to the nation's capital.

In an interview with the AP, a community member said they were concerned that Lakanwal was so depressed that he would harm himself. But they saw no indication that Lakanwal would commit violence against another person.

When the community member saw Lakanwal's name in the news as a suspect in the attack, they told the AP they were shocked, unable to reconcile the violence with the memory of seeing Lakanwal playing with his young sons. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to share unknown details while cooperating with the FBI investigation.

Lakanwal's neighbor said he knew him as a "simple and nice guy" who attended a local mosque, but he also said the suspect had "disappeared" and hadn't been to the mosque in over two weeks.

"He wasn't coming in... Someone said he was sick, someone else said he had gone somewhere," the neighbor said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that officials "believe he's been radicalized since he came to this country." She did not provide details about what that might involve.

"We believe it happened through his home community and connections in the state, and we'll continue to talk to people who interacted with him, who were members of his family," Noem said.

"He passed all the checks."

A senior US official said Lakanwal began working with the CIA around 2011. The official said that at that time, the CIA would have screened him against several databases, including the National Counterterrorism Center, to determine if he had any known ties to terrorist groups.

The NCTC would have re-screened him for any ties to terrorism before allowing him into the US as part of Operation Allies Welcome in 2021. Lakanwal was part of the priority group that was evacuated from Kabul after the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital. Because of his work for the US, which included serving in an elite Afghan counterterrorism unit, Lakanwal was considered a risk of retaliation after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

According to the senior US official, he was still clean and had not shown any ties to terrorist organizations.

"In terms of investigation, nothing came up," the official said. "He was clean in all investigations."

But NCTC Director Joe Kent said in a post on X on Friday that Lakanwal was vetted for his work with the US government in Afghanistan, but “not for his ability to come to the United States and live among us as a neighbor, integrate into our community, or ultimately become an American citizen.”

According to a source familiar with the matter, after Lakanwal was deported, several US government agencies conducted multiple levels of vetting, and then conducted regular vetting over the past few years while he was in the US.

A Justice Department audit, the results of which were released in June, found no systemic flaws in the processes designed to screen and vet Afghan evacuees.

But the audit acknowledged that “the normal processes required to determine whether individuals pose a threat to national security and public safety were overtaken by the need to quickly evacuate Afghans and save their lives, increasing the risk that bad actors could attempt to take advantage of the rapid evacuation.”

Afghan refugee and former CIA-linked Zero Unit fighter Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who resettled in the US through Operation Allies Welcome, is accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington,DC.