First let’s clear-up misconceptions about what the Zero Units are and what the D.C. shooter, Lakanwal’s role was on his Zero Unit team. I used the term Assassination Unit in my last article because that is what most accurately describes the role that these units played. This doesn’t mean that the D.C. shooter was a Jason Bourne character.
Zero Units were the Afghan version of US Special Operations. They performed in a role similar to what Navy SEALs and Army Rangers perform in the US Army but with less oversight and looser rules of engagement. Zero Units were elite light infantry units whose job was to close with and destroy the enemy(or whoever the CIA pointed them to). The US military called their missions “Night Raids.” Sanitized military jargon that covers up their true, bloody nature.
Lakanwal was recruited to the 03 Zero Unit at fifteen and served for a decade with the secretive force. He rose to the rank of a team leader before his evacuation in 2021. He must have seen countless night raids, almost certainly killed and saw friends die on a regular basis. We don’t know that he personally was party to war-crimes, but it’s a safe assumption that anyone who served in such a unit for a decade would at minimum have known that Zero Units were committing murders and war-crimes.
Listen to Seth Harp’s description of the Zero Units here starting from 1:24:
The boat strikes off the coast of Venezuela where 83 people have been murdered is an extension of the same policy of the night raids in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were modeled after a Vietnam era assassination program called the Phoenix Program. The program, which lasted from 1968 to 1972, was designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong (VC) via infiltration, assassination, torture, capture, counter-terrorism, and interrogation.
Throughout the program, Phoenix “neutralized” 81,740 people suspected of VC membership, of whom 26,369 were killed, and the rest surrendered or were captured.
The Phoenix Program was heavily criticized on various grounds, including the number of neutral civilians killed, the nature of the program (which critics have labelled as a “civilian assassination program,”[7]) the use of torture and other coercive methods, and the program being exploited for personal politics. -Wikipedia
In 1967, the CIA’s Phoenix Program famously used kill-capture raids against the Viet Cong insurgency in south Vietnam, creating an intense public blowback. William Colby, then-CIA executive director and former chief of the Saigon station, conceded to Congress in 1971 that it wasn’t possible to differentiate with certainty between enemy insurgents or people who were neutral or even allies.
Despite the program’s ignominious reputation — a 1971 Pentagon study found only 3% of those killed or captured were full or probationary Viet Cong members above the district level — it appears to have served as a blueprint for future night raid operations. - ProPublica
The Afghan Zero Units were stood up in 2008 during the period where the U.S. shifted its counterinsurgency strategy from winning hearts and minds to killing “high value targets.” This kill-capture strategy is what fueled the controversial drone-strikes of the Obama era and led to a large ramp-up of Zero Unit and US Special Operations night raids under Trump’s first presidency.
I’ve personally spoken with Special Operations veterans who were deployed to Syria and Iraq during trump’s first presidency. They loved the freedom that trump’s admin gave them. They were able to get more missions approved, with less oversight, and looser rules of engagement. To quote one conversation, “we killed a lot of bad guys over there.”
…several of President-elect Trump’s top advisers were generals who had served under Obama and chafed at these operational oversight processes. Almost immediately in the Trump era, reports emerged of a quicker operational approval process and greater delegation of authorities to the Department of Defense.
Last week, a combined U.S.-Somali special operations raid reportedly killed up to 10 civilians, including up to three children.
In January, U.S. forces conducted a raid against an al-Qaeda compound in Yemen that killed a Navy SEAL and reportedly more than a dozen civilians.
In June, reports emerged that our Emirati partners have been operating a prison in Yemen and that widespread abuses have been reported at the facility.
Reports indicate that the White House has substantially loosened rules of engagement for drone strikes and other lethal operations in parts of Yemen and Somalia. -Just Security
The American public largely ignored the horrors of this kill-capture(assassination) program because it was shrouded in the fog of war and committed to people in the Middle East.
It’s clear from the reporting that the Zero Units and their American CIA and Special Operations advisors committed war crimes. The people killed on their missions often weren’t killed in firefights, but executed after they’d been detained, hooded, and zip-tied. A common theme is that every “military aged male” on a target would be murdered. Just like in Vietnam, just like the boat strikes, and just like Israel claims every male they kill in Gaza was a terrorist.
It is illegal under U.S. law, international law, and the Geneva convention to execute prisoners. The U.S. used the CIA-led Zero Units as a loophole to avoid technically breaking our laws(because what a partner force does doesn’t fall under U.S. law) and to avoid oversight and accountability from Congress.
Mahzala watched as the gunmen questioned Safiullah, 28, and 20-year-old Sabir, before roughly pinning them against a courtyard wall. Then, ignoring their frantic protests of innocence, the masked men put guns to the back of her sons’ heads. One shot. Two. Then a third. Her youngest, “the quiet, gentle one,” was still alive after the first bullet, Mahzala told me, so they shot him again. -ProPublica
The Human Rights Watch article quoted below lists case after case of extrajudicial executions performed by Zero Unit teams in cooperation with CIA and US Special Operations forces.
In March 2018, Afghan paramilitary forces raided the home of a staff member of an Afghan nongovernmental organization (NGO). The forces arrived late at night at the family compound and separated the women from the men. They singled out the staff member’s brother and took him to another part of the house. They shot him, leaving the body, and left with another male family member, whom the government later denied holding.
In October 2018, an Afghan paramilitary force unit raided a home in the Rodat district of Nangarhar province, shooting dead five civilian members of one family, including an elderly woman and child.
In December 2018, the Khost Protection Force fatally shot six civilians during a night search operation in Paktia province. They shot Naim Faruqi, a 60-year-old tribal elder and provincial peace council member, in the eye, and his nephew, a student in his 20s, in the mouth.
A number of US military officials have sought to retain these Afghan paramilitary forces in Afghanistan as a bulwark against Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). These troops include Afghan strike forces who have been responsible for extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war. - Human Rights Watch
There is a practical, Machiavellian logic to assassinations, or “targeted killings.” If your intelligence is correct then killing the bad guy could be the most expedient method to solve your problems. This “kill them all” attitude is prevalent within the U.S. Special Operations community. Operators chafe at rules of engagement and believe that if the politicians would just unleash them on the enemy, then they could end the war overnight by killing every enemy.
The problem is that the intelligence is often wrong. You don’t know who’s the enemy and who’s a school teacher. Completely innocent people are murdered based on false reports, wrong addresses, and flawed signals intelligence. You don’t know what ulterior motives your informants have when they tell you that a compound is full of insurgents. Zero Units were used as enforcers for Afghan warlords and their heroin empires. They were used to kill landowners in order to steal their property. They were used to settle grudges and feuds.
It was 4 a.m. when the echo of gunfire finally subsided. As the first hints of dawn crept over the nearby mountains, the soldiers moved door to door searching for the raid’s targets. The suspected Taliban militants were nowhere to be found. But in a nearby doorway, four bodies lay on the ground — a man, a teenage girl and two children.
Baseer and Hadi looked at me angrily. “The militants were not in the target house,” Baseer said. “They were not even inside the village. They had changed location and started firing on us from behind,” he said. He paused and locked eyes with Hadi.
“These deaths happened at our hands. I have participated in many raids,” Hadi said, his voice thin and raspy, “and there have been hundreds of raids where someone is killed and they are not Taliban or ISIS, and where no militants are present at all.” -Firsthand account from a Zero Unit member, ProPublica
Context for 2025
Understanding the history of night raids helps us understand our situation in 2025. It helps us understand why our Secretary of Defense would be so comfortable in committing war-crimes and ordering the execution of civilians in boats. The [top] lawyer at U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the operations against alleged drug-smuggling boats near Venezuela, disagreed that the strikes are legal and was overruled, according to six sources.
It puts Israel’s genocide in Gaza in context. The Israeli Army used an AI program called Lavender that “marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘means, intent and ability’ in Gaza,” Vilk says. “No soldier ever mentions ‘means, intent, and ability’. It’s just: a suspicion of walking where it’s not allowed. A man aged between 20 and 40.”
In those circumstances, the designation of who is an enemy or terrorist becomes arbitrary, Eli says in the documentary. “If they’re walking too fast, they’re suspicious. If they’re walking too slow, they’re suspicious. They’re plotting something. If three men are walking and one of them lags behind, it’s a two-to-one infantry formation – it’s a military formation,” he says.
Eli describes an incident in which a senior officer ordered a tank to demolish a building in an area designated as safe for civilians. “A man was standing on the roof, hanging laundry, and the officer decided that he was a spotter. He’s not a spotter. He’s hanging his laundry. You can see that he’s hanging laundry,” he says.
“Now, it’s not as if this man had binoculars or weapons. The closest military force was 600-700 metres away. So unless he had eagle eyes, how could he possibly be a spotter? And the tank fired a shell. The building half collapsed. And the result was many dead and wounded.” -The Guardian
During the GWOT the U.S. showed the world that you can murder people with impunity if you label them as a terrorist. The regime calls those killed in the boat strikes “narco-terrorists.” They’re labeling anti-ICE protestors as “Antifa terrorists.” The word terrorist is now a blank check to murder without due process, accountability, or oversight and people like Stephen Miller are chomping at the bit to use that justification to kill Americans who hold dissenting political beliefs.
The shooting at the capitol. The boat strikes. The deployment of troops into US cities. The dystopian surveillance state where Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns. This is all GWOT chickens coming home to roost. And you know what’s so ironic? Right wingers were rightfully vocal about the dangers of the Patriot Act. They were warning about FEMA death camps and troops in the streets because of Jade Helm. But now that the events they hoarded their guns for are actually coming to pass we find out that their racism actually overshadows their desire to live in a free society.
Lakanwal was a Child Soldier
Lakanwal was recruited by the CIA at just fifteen years old and served on their death squad for a decade. He was relocated with his wife and five children to Bellingham, Washington after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. As a collaborator who participated in the murders of his own countrymen he would have faced certain death at the hands of the Taliban.
I feel empathy toward Lakanwal and other Zero Unit members. The CIA’s Zero Unit was one of the only high paying jobs available in war-torn Afghanistan to young, uneducated men. It came with the promise of protection from the U.S. government and resettlement opportunities. If I were a dirt-poor kid in Afghanistan, I might have taken that same offer.
Slots in the Zero Units were coveted because of better pay, better training, and the chance to work alongside elite U.S. operators. In later years, there were also opportunities to immigrate and resettle in the U.S. after at least one year of service and U.S. government approval. -Rolling Stones
I feel empathy toward these men but that doesn’t change the reality of what they did. They were death squads. They committed war crimes. They murdered civilians. They did it all for the U.S. government, against their own countrymen.
And now 10,000 former members of Zero Units have been relocated inside the U.S. and they’re not receiving the government support they need to survive. Support that their CIA handlers promised to them in order to induce them to commit atrocities against their own citizens on behalf of the U.S. government.
Lakanwal Couldn’t Feed His Family
Fellow Unit Member Says Alleged D.C. Shooter Felt Abandoned by CIA
Lakanwal was fired from his job at a laundromat because he lacked a work authorization card despite being approved for asylum and authorized to work by the Trump administration, according to his former unit mate, who fought alongside him for more than a decade.
About a month ago, Lakanwal told his unit mate that his inability to work due to missing immigration paperwork meant his family couldn’t afford rent or food. He resorted to borrowing money from friends and former unit members, and during the conversation, he broke down in tears from frustration and desperation, his unit mate said.
“Every time, like looking [for] somebody [to] help for documents, somebody [to] help for pay the rent, he’s not going to work,” the Afghan unit mate said.
His unit mate said Lakanwal sought help in June from a CIA program designed to aid Zero Unit veterans with immigration issues. Rolling Stone reviewed a screenshot of the group chat in June where Zero Unit veterans shared information with a CIA representative about ongoing issues. Lakanwal posted messages asking for help. His last post went unanswered and was deleted by the chat’s administrator. -Rolling Stones
According to reporting from NBC news members of Zero Units relocated to the U.S. had their legal work permits expire in 2023. Lakanwal was described as being depressed and would isolate himself for weeks at a time. Are we surprised that the stress of not being able to feed his wife and five small children would drive a man who spent ten years assassinating targets for the CIA to commit more violence?
Struggling Combat Veterans
But since arriving in the United States, thousands of these Afghan veterans have lived in a legal limbo without work permits, struggling to feed their families, according to refugee advocates. Their former CIA and military colleagues appealed to both the Biden and Trump administrations and to Congress to take action to resolve their legal status, warning that the lack of progress was driving some veterans into despair, the advocates said.
Like their American counterparts in special operations forces, they continue to grapple with the effects of their wartime trauma. Their legal difficulties in the U.S. have only aggravated their mental health challenges, according to former intelligence officers and military veterans.
“If you bring people here and you don’t let them feel like there is any hope, you’re leaving them in a very troubling situation,” said a spokesperson for the nonprofit 1208 Foundation, which provides assistance to Afghans who worked with U.S. Special Forces.
“Americans are looking at these people like they’re pariahs now, but in reality they potentially offer a major advantage to the U.S. if we use them correctly,” he said, referring to how valuable the Zero Force veterans could be in security jobs.
As of July, about 3,000 members of the Zero Units still had no work permits and no certainty about their legal status, according to advocates who work with the veterans. Returning to Afghanistan is not an option for them, advocates say, because of the threat of being hunted down by the Taliban for working with Americans. -NBC
U.S. combat veterans are afforded healthcare and mental-health care. When they’re unable to work due to their physical and mental trauma we provide them disability pensions so that they can feed their families. Still, each year thousands of veterans take their own lives and a few commit mass shootings. In 2023 a U.S. Army reservist killed 18 in Maine. In September of 2025 two Iraq war vets committed separate mass shootings in North Carolina and Michigan.
The former Zero Unit members who have been relocated to the U.S. don’t have access to VA healthcare or mental-health treatments. They aren’t eligible for disability pensions when their physical or mental trauma makes it impossible for them to hold a job.
As of July, 3,000 members of the Zero Units still didn’t have legal work permits and faced uncertainty about their legal status.
Can you imagine that level of stress? It’s hard enough to survive in the U.S. without the trauma of war. Now add on-top the difficulties of navigating our hostile immigration system and the stress of not having a legal work permit. Then they have to worry about being kidnapped by ICE and deported to face execution in Afghanistan!
The Grand Conspiracy
Two foundational government pathways for the resettlement of Afghan allies and refugees would be terminated under executive branch plans shared with Congress last week.
The White House’s proposed 2026 budget, shared May 30, dealt another blow to relocation efforts by recommending to strike down Operation Enduring Welcome, a program facilitated by CARE that relocates Afghan nationals who are endangered because of their involvement with U.S. war efforts in the region.
“The Department will shut down the Enduring Welcome program by the end of FY 2025,” the fiscal year 2026 budget appendix states. “Consequently, the Budget includes no funding for the Enduring Welcome Administrative Expenses account.”
“The CARE Office was established to fix the failures of the U.S. withdrawal. Eliminating it — without public explanation, transition planning or reaffirmation of mission — is a profound betrayal of American values and promises,” AfghanEvac said in a public statement. - Military Times
This regime has cut the few government programs in-place to help these Afghan refugees. So now the burden of helping Afghan refugees find jobs, navigate the immigration process, find housing, and feed their families will fall to state and local governments and non-profit organizations.
I don’t think there was a grand CIA conspiracy to get Lakanwal to go shoot those National Guard troops in the capitol. I don’t think a conspiracy was needed.
I think people within the trump regime knew full-well that we had thousands of traumatized Afghan combat vets in the U.S. who weren’t being taken care of. And I think they knew that all they had to do was withhold help and threaten their legal status to break these veterans.
It was only a matter of time. And then when someone like Lakanwal breaks and goes on to commit a horrific act you have a perfect anti-asylum, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rallying cry to use to further your fascist agenda.
We have a 22 year old in charge of domestic anti-terrorism. DHS is focused on abducting street vendors and landscapers. They’ve pulled FBI, U.S. Marshalls, ATF, and DEA off their normal duties to go chase immigrants.
Homeland security agents investigating sexual crimes against children, for instance, have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown for weeks at a time, hampering their pursuit of child predators.
And federal efforts to combat human smuggling and sex trafficking have languished with investigators reassigned to help staff deportation efforts.
One of D.H.S.’s major functions is distributing intelligence reports about terrorism, active shooter incidents and other threats across government, an attempt to fill the gap in information sharing exposed by the 2001 terrorist attacks.
But employees at D.H.S.’s intelligence office have been increasingly directed to focus more on supporting immigration enforcement than on other security issues, according to people familiar with its operations. That shift in emphasis has affected the daily intelligence briefings that go to top officials, according to these people. -NYT
Our capability to detect terrorism and mass shooting threats is at its lowest point since September 11th, 2001. All of us are less safe from real threats because of this regime’s immigration agenda.
Remember this the next time an attack like this happens. Don’t blame the immigrant who was pushed beyond his breaking point. Blame the government who recruited him as a child and turned him into a killer. Blame the government who destroyed his country and then abandoned him. Blame the government who left him with no legal status and no legal avenue to work and feed his family.
We need immigration reform. We need oversight and accountability of the CIA and Special Operations. We need a social safety net. We need to keep the promises we made to the Afghans who fought for us.
Thank you for putting a human face on this man. What he did was horrific and those 2 young guard soldiers were not responsible for his trauma, but they paid the price of it. It seems his desperation fueled the regimes anti immigrant agenda, which I’m sure wasn’t his intent. Being made into a killer at 15 means he’s probably mentally stuck at that age where his trauma occurred so his long term reasoning wasn’t ever developed. our govt has done some terrible things and they are planning even more to inflict on Americans who dissent. We can’t allow this to stand.
Your ability to uncover and put together vital info is unprecedentedand welcomed.
I listened to the interview from the YouTube video you linked, and while shocking, it confirms in me what's meant by the phrase "On a gut level I knew."
From an anecdotal view, many years ago, I was part of a talk therapy group that had one female soldier. Due to the circumstances, people from all walks of life were in this group, all of whom had suffered from severe trauma.
One of the things she shared included the atrocities spoken about in the YouTube interview, only in graphic detail. The type of detail you might see in a horror film- children and animals included.
It's not a stretch to feel deeply sympathetic to these soldiers trained and assigned to this aspect of war, nor is it a stretch to feel outrage at our government for its treatment in the "everyday life" of our stateside veterans post war, our children, women, elderly, homeless, and other deeply disenfranchised people.
With the manifestation of two Trump terms now exposed in broad daylight, myself and many others are forced to look at the lies our country is built on, but more specifically, what the Reagan administration kicked off, and what the Bush administrations put into high gear.
It's a hard concept to get ones head around, but necessary if we're to get to the root and kill it before it spreads any farther. All is NOT fair in love and war, and the better part of humans must be voted in to our politics, policies, and every day life of the American people who dream and long for what we were promised.