(Headline USA) The man accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington is one of about 76,000 Afghans brought to the United States after the chaotic withdrawal of the U.S. from their country as the Taliban took over, authorities said.
The program, called Operation Allies Welcome, was created after the 2021 decision to leave Afghanistan following 20 years of American intervention and billions of dollars of aid.
.Trump and many Republicans said the refugees were not properly vetted in a resettlement process they said was as chaotic and poorly planned as leaving the country to the Taliban.
“This individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here. Our citizens and servicemembers deserve far better than to endure the ongoing fallout from the Biden Administration’s catastrophic failures,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said.
The accused shooter, identified by law enforcement officials as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, worked with the CIA “as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,” Ratcliffe said in a statement Thursday. It didn’t specify what Lakanwal did for America’s spy agency.
The Kandahar region in southern Afghanistan was in the Taliban heartland of the country and saw fierce fighting between the Taliban and NATO forces after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 following the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11. The CIA relied on Afghan staff for translation, administrative and front-line fighting with their own paramilitary officers in the war.
Little is known about Lakanwal’s four years in the U.S. or why he drove across the country from his home in Bellingham, Washington, where a former landlord said he lived with his wife and five children.
Lakanwal was granted asylum in April under the Trump administration, according to #AfghanEvac, a group of veterans and others working to get Afghans who helped the U.S. out of the country in exchange for their help.
.After leaving Afghanistan, tens of thousands of those seeking resettlement ended up in sprawling air-conditioned tent villages at military bases like Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in central New Jersey, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin or at Fort Bliss in Texas.
After months of health screenings and background checks many were resettled in established Afghan communities in northern Virginia and the surrounding Washington area, as well as Northern California and Texas. States where between 1,000 and 3,000 have settled include Arizona, New York, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Nebraska and Pennsylvania, according to State Department data.
The president, who has described Afghanistan as “a hellhole on earth,” already planned to review every Afghan who entered the country under Operation Allies Welcome and reiterated that goal after Wednesday’s shooting.
“If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” Trump said in a message released on social media, adding that the shooting was “a crime against our entire nation.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
