The suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., had worked with an elite counterterrorism unit operated by the CIA, according to a veterans group.
Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, was arrested in connection with the killing of Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and the wounding of Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, two West Virginia Guardsmen who were posted to the city as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime.
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AfghanEvac, a veterans group that supports America’s former Afghan allies, said in a statement that Lakanwal was one of thousands of Afghans who worked alongside the U.S. military during the nearly 20-year war against the Taliban. It added that the unit received “direct U.S. intelligence and military support.”
His group was called the “03” unit, one of several so-called “Zero Units,” according to several Afghan and U.S. officials who spoke to the New York Times.
Here’s what we know about those groups.
Extrajudicial killings
These units worked as Afghan intelligence and paramilitary forces, aiding U.S. troops in their years-long battle against the Taliban.
These units were trained by American special operations soldiers and carried out some of the war’s most dangerous missions and night raids.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused these units of extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate airstrikes, and several violations of international humanitarian law in the 2010s. Known for their night raids and clandestine missions, HRW said the units were referred to as “death squads” by diplomats in the nation. The CIA and the U.S. government have denied these claims.
“I covered the War in Afghanistan for 17 years, and the Zero Units were cloaked in legend,” writes Kevin Maurer, a journalist who traveled with Special Forces in Afghanistan during the war, for Rolling Stone. “Zero Unit slots were coveted because of better pay, better training, and the chance to work alongside elite U.S. operators.”
Lakanwal’s particular unit “03”, as it’s described on his badge, was responsible for operations around the southern province of Kandahar and beyond. His badge also included the words “Firebase Gecko,” which was the name of the CIA and special forces’ base in the southern region where the 03 unit was located, previously the compound for Taliban-founder and Afghanistan’s first supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The CIA did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.
Operation Allies Welcome
Positions in these units were also coveted for their ability to help participants immigrate and resettle in the U.S. The Biden-era program, known initially as Operation Allies Welcome, was launched after the Taliban government returned to power in 2021 to help Afghan nationals and their families who aided the U.S. war effort to resettle in the U.S. without permanent resident status.
When Kabul fell to the Taliban, the scene was chaotic as the U.S. attempted to extricate itself after 20 years of military presence, and many of the Afghan nationals who aided the U.S. during that time feared they would be targeted by Taliban forces.
Under Operation Allies Welcome, later renamed Enduring Welcome, the program admitted nearly 200,000 Afghans to the United States. About 40 percent of those were granted Special Immigrant Visas.
Shawn VanDiver, president of nonprofit AfghanEvac, released a statement after the shooting calling Enduring Welcome was “the secure, deliberate, interagency pipeline built to continue relocating vetted Afghan wartime allies after the evacuation,” despite Trump’s claims that the program allowed in people that were not “vetted.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) archived page for the program says that all those admitted went through a “rigorous screening and vetting process,” that was “multi-layered and ongoing,” and included screenings from the DHS, the Department of Defense (DOD), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and more.
“It was the safest, most secure immigration pathway in U.S. history, combining multiple layers of vetting by DHS, DoD, FBI, and the intelligence community,” VanDiver said. “It allowed the U.S. to continue fulfilling promises to Afghan wartime allies and is supported by both Republican and Democratic Members of Congress.”
In response to the shooting, the Trump Administration announced that it would pause all asylum decisions and stop issuing visas to people from Afghanistan, a decision that VanDiver says is collective punishment based on one person’s actions.
The organization lamented the defunding or elimination of several Homeland Security programs it says were built to “identify threats, prevent radicalization, and support community-based interventions,” including the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs, and mental-health, trauma, and reintegration programs for immigrants.
TIME contacted the DHS for comment.
“The administration curtailed the programs that were designed to prevent individuals in crisis from becoming violent, while simultaneously using one tragic outlier to justify broad restrictions on Afghan families who have no connection to this case,” AfghanEvac wrote.
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