At about 2:15 on Wednesday afternoon, November 26, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, age 29, who came to this country from Afghanistan in September 2021, under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome (OAW), open fired without warning on two members of the West Virginia National Guard who were on patrol at the Washington D.C. metro station at Farragut Square, two blocks from the White House. Staff Sargent Andrew Wolf, age 24, and Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, age 20, were both shot in the head, execution style, with a .357 Magnum revolver.
The next day, President Donald Trump announced that Beckstrom had died of her wounds. The president also asked the public to pray for the recovery of Wolfe, who remained hospitalized in critical condition, and was “fighting for his life.”
Lakanwal was also wounded in a subsequent gun battle with nearby members of the National Guard, in which a total of 10-15 shots were fired. Lakanwal is currently hospitalized under heavy guard, but he is expected to recover enough to stand trial. According to an announcement by U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, Lakanwal will be charged with first-degree murder and other serious criminal charges for staging the ambush-style attack.
While living in Afghanistan, Lakanwal served for eight years in a CIA-organized paramilitary “Zero Unit” that participated with U.S. troops in night raids and other combat missions to kill or capture members of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist groups that were active in Kandahar province. Lakanwal joined the Zero Unit at the age of 16 and gradually worked his way up from the lowly post of security guard to team leader and GPS specialist.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe also confirmed in an interview with Fox News that Lakanwal had been a “member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation.” Ratcliffe also said that “the Biden administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including CIA,” but he also has insisted that Lakanwal “should have never been allowed to come here.”
In the wake of the ambush attack, Trump ordered 500 more members of the National Guard to be sent to Washington, D.C. They will reinforce the roughly 2,000 troops already deployed there, who have already succeeded in helping local police to sharply reduce the district’s violent crime rate.
TRUMP BLAMES BIDEN FOR FAILING TO PROPERLY CHECK AFGHAN REFUGEES
Meanwhile, Trump blamed the ambush attack on Beckstrom and Wolfe on the Biden administration, accusing it of failing to properly vet the more than 70,000 Afghan nationals, including Lakanwal, whom it brought into the United States as part of the badly botched U.S. military’s withdrawal ordered by President Biden during the summer of 2021.
In a series of social media posts, Trump said that he would “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility,” end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens, and deport any foreign national “who is a public charge, security risk, or incompatible with Western Civilization.”
After Trump threatened to “permanently pause” legal migration from “all Third World countries,” the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) announced that it had stopped processing all immigration, visa, and green card requests from Afghan nationals “pending further review of security and vetting protocols. The protection and safety of our homeland and of the American people remains our singular focus and mission.”
In response to that announcement, the Alliance of Afghan Communities in the United States issued a statement saying, “We urge the American public not to judge thousands of innocent Afghans based on the actions of a single person.” It also described Lakanwal’s fatal shooting “as an individual act of moral deviation, not the reflection of a nation.”
Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland predictably condemned Trump’s move to temporarily shut down the processing of immigration requests from Afghan nationals as discriminatory “collective punishment [for] these individuals who worked side by side with America in the fight against the Taliban. And if they were sent back now [to Afghanistan], the Taliban may likely kill them.”
Democrat Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona went even further by claiming that the Trump administration was sending a racist message with its reaction to the attack on the National Guard members. “They don’t want brown people coming to the United States,” Kelly said.
However, the Arizona Democrat also said that he agreed with Homeland Security Secretary Noem when she said that government officials “did not do enough vetting before they gave [Lakanwal] his asylum claim. She talked about changing the vetting process. I think that’s a good idea,” Kelly conceded.
In an interview with Fox News, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that the problem with both legal and illegal immigration policies has become “a civilizational issue for [all of] us here in the West.”
AMERICANS HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF FAILED IMMIGRATION POLICIES
Schmitt said, “The American people have had enough of it. It’s one of the big reasons they sent President Trump back to the Oval Office. He campaigned on this.
“So this mass migration we’ve seen needs to be met with mass deportations. . .
“They’re dealing with it in Europe. It’s had tragic consequences there, and I think if we get ahead of this in this country, we’ll be OK. But the Left is [committed to] this open-borders policy. And then if you come here illegally, you’re never ever supposed to leave. It’s ridiculous.”
He also said that all the political left wants to do is to “create controversy, create chaos, make it look like the ICE agents are the bad guys in all this. . . [when they are merely] picking up bad folks, and sending them back [to] where they belong, [which is] not in the United States of America.”
Lakanwal formally applied for political asylum in the United States last year, and his request was granted by the Trump administration this past April, based on the fact that, as an Afghan national who collaborated with the CIA and the U.S. military, he and his family are high on the list for retaliation by the Taliban, who are now in control of Afghanistan.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in an interview with ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl that the inadequate vetting process, which led to Lakanwal’s initial admission to the United States and the later grant of political asylum by the Trump administration, were carried out by Biden administration officials and based upon the information that the Bush officials had gathered.
TRUMP HAS FIXED THE BROKEN U.S. ASYLUM APPLICATION PROCESS
Noem also said that the asylum application process “has been completely fixed, and new metrics and new processes have been added under President Trump.”
Vice President JD Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel also said that Lakanwal and thousands of other Afghan refugees like him were improperly allowed to enter the U.S. “unvetted.”
However, former Biden administration officials have insisted that when Lakanwal arrived in the U.S., he had already passed a rigorous “screening and vetting” process involving the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center, like all of the other Afghan citizens who had been working with American forces in Afghanistan, before being approved for admission on a two-year-long parole under the OAW program. They also said that once they were in the U.S., Lakanwal and his family would have undergone additional vetting before being assigned to a government-approved relocation agency and destination.
For about a year before last week’s attack, Lakanwal and his family, consisting of a wife and five children, were living in an apartment whose rent was being paid by the federal OAW refugee program in the town of Bellingham, about 90 miles north of Seattle, Washington. It has been established that Lakanwal drove across the country from Bellingham to Washington, D.C., in his Hyundai sedan to carry out the attack.
One of their neighbors, Mohammed Sherzad, who is also from Afghanistan, said that he and Lakanwal attended services at the same mosque and that their children attend the same elementary school. His other neighbors said that they had little contact with Mr. Lakanwal but described him as “polite.”
WHAT MOTIVATED THE AMBUSH ATTACK?
There has been much media speculation about Lakanwal’s motivation for attacking the two National Guard soldiers. Homeland Secretary Noem speculated that he had probably been “radicalized since he’s been here in this country. . . [and] we do believe it was through connections in his home community and state.” She also expressed confidence that the ongoing investigations by the FBI and the Justice Department will eventually “reveal all of the sources of [Lakanwal’s] motivation.”
According to an Associated Press report, emails from a member of the community of Afghan refugees in Washington state, who claimed that he had been working with Lakanwal, the shooter’s mental health had been deteriorating in recent years and that he had been struggling to hold down a job as a delivery driver to support his family.
According to an email dated January 11, 2024, written by a case worker for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Lakanwal had not been employed for a year, and his family was facing eviction from its apartment. “Rahmanullah [Lakanwal] has not been functional as a person, father, and provider since March of last year [2023]. He quit his job that month, and his behavior has changed greatly,” the email said.
In another email sent 20 days later, the same case worker wrote that Lakanwal spends “most of his time, for weeks on end, in his darkened bedroom, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife and older kids.”
The emails said that “Lakanwal’s family members often resorted to sending his toddler sons into his room to bring him the phone or messages because he would not respond to anyone else.”
The emails paint a picture of Lakanwal’s erratic behavior. While they indicate that he was not able to take care of his children when his wife left home for a week to visit relatives, there were also times when Lakanwal would try to “do the right things,” such as making contact with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services as he was required to do by the terms of his 2021 entry into the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome.
But then, according to the emails, Lakanwal would relapse into “manic” behavior lasting one or two weeks at a time, during which he would get into the family car and drive non-stop cross-country to Chicago, Illinois, at one time, and to Arizona on another occasion.
WAS THE ATTACK AN ISOLATED INCIDENT BY AN UNSTABLE INDIVIDUAL?
However, at least initially, none of the email descriptions of Lakanwal’s disturbed mental state and erratic behavior have been confirmed by the federal law enforcement agencies investigating the attack. This suggests the possibility that the refugee and immigrant rights group providing the email messages could be trying to use them to manage the public’s image of the Afghan refugee community by portraying the attack on the National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C. as an isolated incident carried out by an unstable individual acting alone.
Alternatively, the reporting of the email narrative could be a liberal media effort to exonerate the Biden administration from responsibility for the tragic consequences of its failure to properly screen the Afghan beneficiaries of the OAW program who were permitted to enter the United States.
General Sayed Sami Sadat, who was Deputy Chief of the Afghan Army in 2021, told CBS News that Lakanwal was a “responsible and professional” member of his Zero Unit, which was also known as the Kandahar Strike Force or the “03” unit. Sadat also said that it was “the most active and professional [of the] forces, trained and equipped by the CIA. All [of] their operations were conducted under the CIA’s command.”
Former General Sadat, who is now the chairman of the Afghanistan United Front, which is leading the opposition to the current Taliban government of Afghanistan, said during his years in Zero Unit, Lakanwal was known for his “strong anti-Taliban views.” But he then added that, “While we could not establish any connection between him and any terrorist organization, we also cannot completely rule it out.”
Sadat said that while Lakanwal was an active member of his Zero Unit, he moved his family from their native Khost province, where they were vulnerable to the threat of Taliban retaliation, to the capital city of Kabul, which was firmly under the control, at that time, of the pro-U.S. Afghan government.
WAS LAKANWAL SUFFERING FROM PTSD?
Sadat also told CBS News that when Lakanwal was living in the U.S., he was “generally calm and maintained a clean record, though he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
The New York Post reported that Lakanwal “struggled for years” to deal with the violence of the combat he witnessed and participated in as a member of the Zero Unit. Similarly, the New York Times quoted a childhood friend named Muhammad, who claimed that Lakanwal had told him he could not tolerate the sight of the blood, bodies, and the wounded he encountered.
The Washington Post reports that the federal officials have been looking into the suggestion that Lakanwal was suffering from PTSD due to his combat experiences with the CIA-supported Zero Unit in Afghanistan. But those officials are said to be skeptical of the claim that Lakanwal’s mental health problems were the primary motivating factor that caused his attack.
HONORING THE MEMORY OF TWO “COURAGEOUS” FALLEN HEROES
At a Saturday night candlelight vigil held in memory of Sarah Beckstrom in the gym of the high school in Summersville, West Virginia, from which she graduated in 2023, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey described both Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe as courageous. He also noted that Beckstrom was known for her big heart and spirit, and that Wolfe, who grew up in Martinsburg, West Virginia, came from a family long dedicated to public service and had followed that tradition when he joined the National Guard in 2019.
Beckstrom’s former principal said that she “carried herself with quiet strength, a contagious smile, and a positive energy that lifted people around her.”
According to another friend, Beckstrom was initially reluctant to be deployed in Washington, D.C. and nervous about leaving her family, but she also believed in Trump’s mission of reducing crime in D.C. and wanted to be a part of it.
In a separate interview with Fox News over the weekend, Governor Morrisey, who agreed in August to Trump’s request to send his state’s National Guard troops to restore law and order in Washington, D.C., noted that, “There is a proud tradition of West Virginians who step up for military service, so when something like this happens, it’s really a gut punch to the communities.” He blamed the Biden administration for the “loopholes” in the vetting process that permitted Lakanwal to enter the country, and added that, “first and foremost, we need justice to be served.”
On Monday, Governor Morrisey reported the first encouraging signs of improvement in Andrew Wolfe’s very serious medical condition, when he responded to one of his nurses who asked him if he could hear her by giving a thumbs-up. He was also able to wiggle his toes.
DANGEROUS DEMOCRAT RHETORIC ENCOURAGING POLITICAL VIOLENCE
Ironically, the vicious ambush attack on the two members of the National Guard came just three days after Michigan Democrat Senator Elissa Sorkin predicted the opposite scenario, “that we’re about to see people in law enforcement, people in uniformed military, get nervous, get stressed, shoot at American civilians.”
Now some conservatives are suggesting that the Washington D.C. ambush may have been triggered by Senator Slotkin’s provocative prediction, as well as comments by her Democrat colleagues suggesting that President Trump’s National Guard deployments in other crime-ridden American cities, such as Chicago, amount to an “invasion” by a dangerously “authoritarian” president who is using the military to target innocent, everyday Americans.
Furthermore, Democrat elected officials around the country continue to use inflammatory rhetoric to condemn Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in other American cities. Such provocative talk could easily incite other violence-prone, unstable individuals to engage in more deadly attacks on American soldiers following the orders of their commander-in-chief.
For example, JB Pritzker, the Democrat governor of Illinois, who reportedly has intentions to run for president in 2028, has repeatedly used the word “invasion” to describe Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago. Oregon Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley has written that “Trump troops [in Portland] are deliberately attacking peaceful protesters to incite violence.” California Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who urged her followers during Trump’s first term to harass members of his administration whenever they appeared in public, recently wrote that “would-be dictator” Trump is “just itching to invoke martial law, and yes, even push for civil war.”
SIX DEMOCRAT SENATORS URGE U.S. SOLDIERS TO VIOLATE THEIR ORDERS
Even worse, half a dozen Democrat U.S. senators, including Ellisa Slotkin, Mark Kelly, Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio deeply angered President Trump and his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, by placing a video message last month on social media directed at National Guard and active duty American soldiers titled “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” which suggested that they should disobey orders issued by President Trump, their commander-in-chief, because they are likely to be illegal.
Trump’s angry reaction was to post a message on his Truth Social media account calling the six Democrat senators “traitors to our country should be arrested and put on trial,” and added in a second post that they were guilty of “seditious behavior punishable by death.”
While Trump’s threat was an exercise in hyperbole, Secretary Hegseth was able to threaten Senator Kelly with a possible court-martial. That is because, as a retired Navy combat pilot, Kelly is the only one of the six Democrat senators in the offending video who is still subject to a court-martial for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which requires service members to presume that orders issued by their commander-in-chief are lawful and to obey them.
Kelly responded to Hegseth’s threat defiantly, declaring, “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work.”
RECKLESS RHETORIC THREATENING THE FABRIC OF AMERICAN SOCIETY
However, in addition to Trump and Hegseth, more than a dozen current and former Republican legislators from Kelly’s home state of Arizona complained about the video in a letter to Kelly saying, “The decision to use military service members as political props in a video implying that the Commander-in-Chief may issue illegal orders crosses a line that should have never been approached, [and poses a threat to] the integrity and stability of our armed forces. . .
“The unmistakable implication is that President Donald J. Trump is preparing to issue illegal commands,” the Arizona legislators wrote. “That insinuation is false. Worse, it encourages doubt in the chain of command itself – a foundational threat to military discipline and national readiness.”
But what is also clear is that the Democrats who are urging American soldiers to cross that line by disobeying their orders, both due to their intense animosity towards Trump and in the spirit of political opportunism, are recklessly threatening the very fabric of American society and traditions of mutual goodwill that have been holding our democracy together.
