The shooting of two National Guard members in Washington last week has taken a jarring new turn, and the emerging theory about the gunman’s motive points to a far deeper national security threat.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the 29-year-old Afghan national accused of killing Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and critically wounding Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, had served alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan before Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal. If you’ve been wondering why someone who once helped American troops would suddenly target National Guardsmen, you’re not the only one asking that question. Federal investigators now believe the Taliban may have blackmailed Lakanwal into carrying out the attack.
“U.S. intelligence is investigating information that a Taliban hit squad threatened to murder Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s family in Afghanistan unless he opened fire on American troops in the nation’s capital,” reports the Daily Beast. “But investigators are asking themselves why a man who was vetted by two administrations, and with no criminal record and no history of extremism, should drive across the country on an apparent suicide mission to shoot at heavily armed U.S. military personnel with a revolver.”
One line of inquiry they are seriously pursuing, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation, is that Lakanwal was made an offer he could not refuse. Either he accepted the mission, or his family in Afghanistan would be beaten, murdered, and possibly beheaded.
Lakanwal was a member of the Afghan Scorpion Forces working closely with the CIA as a GPS tracking specialist. He helped the U.S. military escape from Kabul in the shambolic retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021. Between August 14 and 30, more than 123,000 people were airlifted from Kabul Airport. The Afghan fighter joined one of the last flights because he served the United States and due to the danger he would be in if he were left behind.
About 700 Scorpion Forces members are understood to be detained in Afghanistan because they worked with America and its allies.
According to the report, the fallout from Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is still unfolding. In the five years since the pullout, a Taliban military unit known as Yarmouk 60 has been hunting down—and in many cases killing—Afghans who worked with the United States and its allies. Earlier this year, a member of the “Afghan Triples,” an elite special forces unit created and backed by the U.K. to fight the Taliban, escaped to Germany in hopes of bringing his family to safety. Yarmouk 60 responded by murdering his wife and father, along with four of his children, including two young girls who were beheaded.
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“It is by no means our only line of inquiry,” said an intelligence source who has been working with authorities to help Afghans marked for death for helping the West. “People in this country have no idea about the level of stress these people are under. Most of them have families back home, and if the Taliban cannot get to them, they are making it very clear that they will go after their families.”
According to a report from the New York Post, over 5,000 Afghans admitted under Biden were flagged as national security risks.
The troubling part of this theory is what it suggests about our security vulnerabilities. Lakanwal had no criminal record or history of extremism and was vetted repeatedly before arriving in the United States under Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration’s chaotic resettlement program that brought roughly 76,000 Afghans here after the Taliban takeover. Yet suppose the Taliban blackmail theory is correct. In that case, it exposes a nightmare scenario: even thoroughly screened allies with no ties to terrorism can be coerced through threats against family members still trapped under Taliban rule. Biden’s disastrous withdrawal didn’t just return Afghanistan to the Taliban. It created a pressure point that can turn trusted partners into potential weapons—and there’s no reliable way to screen for that kind of vulnerability.
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