US President Donald Trump said that one of two West Virginia National Guard members who were wounded in the shooting by an Afghan civilian near the White House has died. He called the attacker, who had worked with the US intelligence agency CIA in Afghanistan, a “brutal monster”.
Speaking to American troops on the occasion of ‘Thanksgiving’, Trump said that he had just learned that 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom has died, while 24-year-old Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe is fighting for his life. He said, “She (Sarah) is no longer with us… She is watching us from the sky.”
Trump described the incident as a “terrorist attack” and criticized the policy of former President Joe Biden’s administration to allow entry into the United States to Afghan citizens who helped American forces during the war in Afghanistan. Trump has deployed National Guard members across the country to assist in his administration’s mass deportation efforts.
He said the attacker might have become mentally unstable after the war and leaving Afghanistan. The attacker was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, who had served in a CIA-backed special unit of the Afghan army, two sources said.
This extraordinary incident of attack on National Guard soldiers on American soil came amid questions being raised about the large-scale deployment of the National Guard by the Trump administration in the name of crime control. About 2,200 troops are currently deployed in Washington.
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the suspect in police custody was also shot, but his injury was said to be not life-threatening. A relative of Lakanwal in Afghanistan said he was from Khost province and had served in a CIA-backed Afghan paramilitary force called “Zero Unit.”
These units played a key role in the security of Kabul airport during the fight against the Taliban and the US withdrawal in 2021. His relative, who did not wish to be named, said Lakanwal had joined the unit as a security guard in 2012 and was later promoted to become a ‘team leader’ and ‘GPS’ specialist. According to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Lakhanwal’s relationship with the US government ended soon after the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.