Front Burner - National Guard shooting and the CIA’s secret Afghan army

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Last week, two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C. after they were ambushed by a lone shooter near the airport. One was killed and the other remains in serious condition. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was shot and is still in hospital facing murder charges. The picture emerging of Lakanwal is of an isolated, deeply troubled man struggling to support his wife and five kids. Lakanwal is a 29-year-old Afghan-national who had served as part of an elite CIA-trained and backed paramilitary group known as the Zero Units. Tasked with carrying out some of the most dangerous missions in the war on terror, the Zero Units have also been accused by rights groups of war crimes in their notorious night raids.Kevin Maurer is a best-selling author and longtime reporter who spent many years covering the war in Afghanistan. He talks about how this shooting fits into the broader legacy of the war on terrorism and the ripple effects it’s had abroad and closer to home.  For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Are your pipes ready for a deep freeze? You can take action to help protect your home from extreme weather. Discover prevention tips that can help you be climate ready at keep it intact.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Last week, two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C. Not far from the White House, both members were in uniform, police. One was killed and the other remains in serious condition.

The suspect, Ramanula Lackenwal, was shot and is still in hospital facing murder charges. He is a 29-year-old Afghan National who had served as part of an elite, CIA-trained, and backed paramilitary group, known as the zero units. tasked with carrying out some of the most dangerous missions in the war on terror. The zero units have also been accused by rights groups of war crimes and abuse in their notorious night rates. Now around 10,000 of them live in the U.S. after fleeing their home following the fall of Kabul and the Taliban takeover in 2021. And a lot of them have been struggling. The picture coming out about Lackenwal is of an isolated, deeply troubled man struggling to support his wife and five sons. Kevin Mauer is a best-selling author and longtime reporter who spent many years covering the war in Afghanistan.

He's recently spent some time looking at the zero units and what they've been dealing with since resettling in the U.S. We're going to talk about who they are and how the shooting fits into the broader legacy of the war on terror and the ripple effects. It's had a broad and closer to home. Kevin, hey, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You've described the Zero Units as the CIA secret Afghan army, this group of special Afghan paramilitary fighters you didn't really get to speak to or learn about when you were embedded with American forces, right? And why is that? And what do we know about the kinds of things that they did? Well, I mean, I saw them when I was embedded. I saw them at a special forces base. And then I was at one of their bases, but I wasn't really able to.

allowed out of my room and that's because they were a clandestine program i mean it's it's sort of crazy to think that rackcliff confirmed the existence of the zero units after this shooting before that they they never really acknowledged them publicly so um so for me they were ghosts they were they were people i saw but couldn't report on even when i talked to some of the soldiers nobody really wanted to go in depth but they were sort of a fascinating unit because of the fact that they were they had the highest speed gear you know they had the best trucks and they only They really only operated at night. It's the only time I ever saw.

And from your reporting and the reporting of many others, what do we know about the kinds of things that they were tasked with doing in Afghanistan? They're the classic commando unit. They were on the front foot. They were going after the most dangerous targets, the highest priority folks on the CIA list, mostly working at night, killer capture missions,

tracking terrorists, that sort of thing. And why did the CIA, lean on Afghan nationals to carry out some of these very dangerous missions there? You know, they were really well trained by some of, some of, you know, the coalition's best soldiers. They worked closely with Team 6 and the Rangers. But they, I mean, they didn't know the country. They were fighting for their country first, but they also knew the country. They, you know, the Afghans, as much as, I don't trust any Westerner who says they know Afghanistan well. For the most part, we don't. And, and it's,

It's no different than, say, someone in Canada or someone where I live in the United States, you know, we can pick up nuance, you can pick up accents, you kind of can place people. Same with the Afghans. They were really, you know, they were fighting for their country, but they also know their country much better than any kind of American transplant. So that's why they're so essential to hunting down terrorists. And just to be clear, unlike American soldiers who would be deployed for months or a year at a time, right? These guys were in active combat for something like 15, even 20 years, right? A lot of the guys I've met in the course of reporting both the Rolling Stone stories and then also another project. You know, they're decades, at least, of fighting.

Almost all of them have been wounded. Almost all of them have lost, you know, brothers, not just unit mates, but they're actual brothers. I know one soldier's lost, tossed two of his brothers. So, no, these guys paid a huge price in this. fight. I know you that you've spoken to many of them who have since resettled in the United States. And what have they told you about why they wanted to be in these units and part of the American war effort in general? Like what was in it for them? Most of them were true believers. Most of them believed and they were creating a better Afghanistan. Most of them believed in that

mission. And then practically, it was just a better unit. It was well, well run. They were well taken care of. Their equipment was good. They were well paid. You know, it was it was a good position to have in the military. And how would you get into this unit that was so elite that was backed by the CIA where you were working alongside and being trained by SEAL Team 6? Like, how do you get in it? Well, this is kind of the interesting part because the administration has made a big deal of saying this guy wasn't vetted.

They don't know who he is, you know, it's just patly nuts. That's false. They knew exactly who he was because you couldn't just join the zero unit. most most all of the guys were referred so your brother was in the zero unit and then you know he would refer you and then once you got in you went through a probationary period you you know you didn't just go immediately on these missions you stayed it stayed behind you trained and you worked your way up so you know they it was a difficult unit to get into which is why it was so well paid and such a coveted spot

So you've talked about how they're really responsible for a lot of these capture and kill, capture kill missions, fighting ISIS, fighting the Taliban, that they would often happen at night. The zero units have also been accused of war crimes, right? by civilians and also groups like Human Rights Watch, especially when it comes to these night raids. And can you take me through some of the things that have been reported on the civilian deaths and impact from these special operations? Sure. I mean, look, there's been some amazing reporting on some of the activities of the zero units of ProPublica New York Times, but did excellent stories on this. The CIA, I'll tell you, it was a Taliban propaganda campaign, that they couldn't be the zero units on the ground. So they started to do a campaign to discredit them amongst the Afghan people and that the CIA couldn't fight that propaganda campaign because they were a clandestine unit. There's some truth to that.

There's also some truth of the fact that, you know, you kick in someone's door at three in the morning and bring in, you know, and you arrive with machine guns and all this other stuff. It's jarring. It's dangerous. And so I, because I was never on the ground with them, I can't say for sure they are war criminals or they're not. I can say this, though, I've been around a lot of tier one units, commando units. It's a very dangerous and an ugly business. War is an ugly business. I think Afghanistan got really, really, if you look at some of the reporting,

even with American units and Australian units, it was 20 years of dark war. And I think some bad things have happened. But I can't speak to these because I wasn't there. But I've asked the question. And the answer I always get was that. the zero units never operated without American escorts. They never went unilateral. Yeah, I remember, I think it was ProPublica, that 2022 quite extensive investigation that found that the zero units operations led to hundreds of Afghan civilian deaths and that the raids

were frequently carried out in these remote villages where many innocent civilians were caught in the cross-fowler, right? And the secrecy around these units and their CIA affiliation is why some have said they were able to carry out these kind of abuses, right? Or why they weren't investigated more. And what do you make of that? I make that the CIA denies it. I make that the guys that I went with deny that they did any war crimes. They don't deny, though, that they got to do a lot of fights and killed a lot of people.

It's a shadow that hangs over these units. And I think, and I think it's, it's, it's hard for me to decisively say either they are, you know, they are war criminals or they're not. I guess at the end of the day, it's probably somewhere in the middle and like all war, it's gray and gross and hard to, to, you know, hard to parse out that easily. Are your pipes ready for a deep freeze? You can take action to help protect your home from extreme weather. Discover prevention tips that can help you be climate ready at keep it intact.ca. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often.

You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000. and doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough, defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca. So let's go to August 2021. The capital Kabul falls to the Taliban and America pulls out of Afghanistan. I'm here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan in the

end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third country nationals, and vulnerable Afghans. And with them, they take 81,000 immigrants, and almost 10,000 of them are members of these zero units, along with their families. And this is all part of this Biden-era Operation Allies welcome to resettle Afghans who are vulnerable under Taliban rule because they worked with the Americans. No country in history has done more to airlift out. the residents of another country than we have done.

It will continue to work to help more people leave the country who are at risk. And Ramanula Lackenwal, the suspect in the D.C. National Guard shooting, is one of them. And what sorts of challenges did the zero unit members generally face after they resettled in the U.S.? You spent so much time with them? I'll start with that they were instrumental in the evacuation. They all left their bases. They got around the airport there, and they helped hold the airport and did a lot of missions leaving the airport to go get Americans and can bring them to the airport for evacuation. Once they got here, though, they were sort of jettisoned into this system.

Because they were a clandestine unit, they had trouble getting paperwork to prove that they were actually employed by the CIA. There's a really good organization named Famil that has done great work on really trying to help them overcome some of these obstacles. But like every one of those 81,000 Afghans, they face the same thing. Culture shock, language barriers, educational barriers, and then being able to legally work and support their families. All of that pressure was immediately upon them. Did any of them consider staying in Afghanistan? All of them would tell you they'd stay. They just weren't.

They were ordered to get on the plane. And they arrived with almost nothing. But they all would go back in a heartbeat. Most of the guys I talked to would go back in a heartbeat to kind of. continue the fight for Afghanistan. When they got to the United States, like, what kind of support did they receive from the CIA or other government departments to help ease that transition? You know, based on my reporting, the support from the CIA was slow coming.

I think they built some of the support structure at this point, but it's not never been that robust. Most of the support they initially got was from this kind of fledgling nonprofit. Gita Bakshi set up this nonprofit almost from scratch. It started out just really helping get food and moving guys around, and it's really evolved into helping them move through the immigration system. But, you know, I don't think we can sleep on the fact that it was such a jarring evacuation and the fact that these soldiers fought 10, 15 years for a country that no longer exists. And I think that weighs on them, too, that failure of not being able to defend their country, I think it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on them. What did they say to you when you talked to them about that kind of stuff? You know, I imagine that they must have so much trauma from all this time in Afghanistan.

I mean, they have considerable trauma. I mean, I think, and I think that the trauma is almost compounded because of the fact that, you know, they all have the Afghan, the old Afghan flag up in their, in their apartments. A lot of them have a tattooed on their bodies. And it's a flag that doesn't exist. It doesn't represent that country anymore. And that's, I think, the amount of regret and guilt they feel is palpable. Lock and Wolle himself, we do know now that he had been having a difficult time since moving here

and that he was feeling abandoned by the CIA after serving them for over a decade, not to excuse the actions, but what kind of things did you learn in your reporting, especially talking to other unit members that knew him about him and his experience in the U.S.? All of them condemn what he did. It almost goes against what their training was and what their mission was. But the friends of his that I've spoken with talked about how hard he was having. He was deeply depressed. He would have these manic episodes.

He was desperate to get out of Bellingham, Washington. He wanted to move to a bigger Afghan community. He was having trouble getting over the language barrier. He lost his job over some immigration paperwork. It was trying to make ends meet. The portrait they paint as a guy who's under tremendous pressure and is not handling it well and was starting to break down. And in September, am I right to say his nephew tried to help him find housing somewhere

with more of an Afghan community because he wasn't feeling safe where he and his family were settled in Bellingham, Washington? That's right. I reviewed an application that his nephew had submitted around that. Allegedly, he was also assaulted by someone. He felt like his life was in danger, the paranoia. And I was in that compounded some of the other issues. And he had sought help from other zero unit vets to you, right?

Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, I mean, he was part of a, he was on a group chat that the CIA had set out. The CIA has a program that is supposed to help, help these guys in the transition. And he had reached out for help on that program and hadn't really received the support he needed. And so, you know, this looks like a, you know, without putting all the pieces together, The initial portrait is of a guy who was breaking down that slipped through the cracks. The AP had a pretty extensive piece on him as well, right? They talked about sometimes how he would spend weeks in his darkened room, not speaking to anyone,

not even his wife or his kids or a couple of times when his wife left him with the kids for a week to travel to visit relatives. The children would not be bathed or clothes would not be changed. They would not eat well. Their school had raised concerns about the situation. So not a good, not a good situation. You know, authorities are still trying to figure out what Lackenwal's motive was. However, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson sent NBC this statement on Saturday, putting the blame on the previous administration, saying this animal would have never been here,

if not for Joe Biden's dangerous policies, which allowed countless unvetted criminals to invade our country and harm the American people. We talked about the kind of vetting required for something. You know, you talked about this a little bit already. But I wonder if you could just elaborate on this for me a little bit more in like the kind of process that he would have to undergo to be granted a special visa to move to the U.S. I mean, he was vetted, you know, by the administration. One, he was vetted by the CIA to join.

Now, I've seen people push back on that and say, well, it's different to vet somebody, you know, who is going to fight for you versus someone who is going to, you know, come into the country. But he was vetted multiple times before he received asylum. You know, that's a permanent designation, you know, and it's reviewed by FBI, DHS, you know, the CIA, they did biometrics, fingerprints, all that stuff. So this narrative that somehow he slipped, you know, he was unvetted and came here is it's just not accurate. It's propaganda.

They're trying to paint this in a way. using terms like animal, you know, I just, it's demeaning and it's, it's not true. I think they know, and I know from my sources, official sources, they know they vetted him. They know that, that he got the asylum because they checked him out and he didn't have any kind of derogatory record. So I pushed back firmly on this idea that he wasn't vetted. He was vetted. They knew who he was. People have been talking about how this isn't like a completely isolated incident. Like while he wasn't a zero unit member, Jamal Wally, an Afghan national and former interpreter for the U.S. military, was killed after shooting at two police officers during a traffic stop in Fairfax, Virginia earlier this year.

And the whole thing was captured on body cam. And he goes on this rant essentially in this video where he talks about how much he's been struggling to make a life here after sacrificing the one that he had back home in Afghanistan. You people brought me to this goddamn country and I'm dying every single day and I have four children and we wholly survive because you're a racist people. Okay. Yeah, because I can't get a job. I can't get a disability. What kind of risk do you think these veterans pose, especially if they continued to feel isolated and unsupported by the country that they chose to help? I don't think they pose a massive risk. I mean, if you look at the numbers, they're, you're going to have, what is it, the 10% rule?

10% of anything is not, is not great or is bad. I think it's, I don't think they pose a risk. I think, though, that I think we don't understand. the level of how high the hurdle is to assimilate. You know, this isn't, they're not assimilating to another, you know, they're not assimilating to another country that even is remotely like Afghanistan. They're going to a completely different culture, a different language, different values. I just think we have to be open to the idea that we have to, you have to build systems

to help these, these Afghans resettle and build a life. Since the shooting, the Trump administration has introduced a bunch of sweeping immigration restrictions, including pausing asylum decisions. How long does your administration plan to pause asylum into the U.S.? I think a long time? Can you give any kind of time? We don't want them. We don't want those people. We have enough problems.

We don't want those people. Is that a year, two years? No time limit. Reexamining green card applications for people from countries, quote, of concern, and halt. visas for Afghans who assisted the U.S. war effort. And what could this mean for the thousands that are living in the U.S.? Who worked with American forces in the war on terror and are still waiting for their visas? I mean, it's going to, it's going to create already a very arduous process is now going to be longer for people who are waiting. And for those who have been

granted, either special immigrant visas or asylum, you know, they're just going to get revetted again. We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden. I understand the move, I guess. I guess my question to the officials is this move wouldn't have found, you know, Lock and Wall. He would have passed the, because he passed the vetting already. So I'm not sure how this makes it safer, but it's, you know, it's an action, I guess. Yeah.

Do you think this is also going to make it harder? for those who have their visas and who are trying to make this new relationship with their new home? I mean, that's a fear. That's a fear with some of the folks I've talked to who are concerned about being under the microscope again. I think there's some resentment to one guy and this action, painting everybody with a pretty broad brush and putting them all under scrutiny that they probably don't deserve the majority of them. Thinking about the big picture here, what do you think this shooting and everything that we've talked about today tells us about the ways the impact of America's war on terror and foreign policy in general can eventually be felt closer to home? I think this is just another data point in, I think, the tragedy of that 20-year war. And I think if you look at, and I said this in the Rolling Stone, in my second piece on Rolling Stone,

the one that came out on Monday, it's just part of the legacy of foreign policy. Like, we have a long history of the United States of abandoning allies. And this seems to be, Radcliffe's comments in particular seem to be on par with, you know, the abandonment of the Kurds, the abandonment of the mountain yards. As I wrote, it feels to me like American loyalty as an expiration date.

And sooner or later, we get, we, we, we, we, is the Americans find something else to go and we get angry with the, with the allies. It's a tragedy and it's another tragedy in a 20-year, you know, war that ended in tragedy. Kevin, thank you very much for this. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

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