The suspected Afghan terrorist accused of gunning down National Guard troops just blocks from the White House struggled for years with the violence he saw as a part of a notorious CIA-backed paramilitary group in his home country, according to a longtime friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it,\u201d said a childhood friend of 29-year-old terror suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt put a lot of pressure on his mind,\u201d the friend\u00a0told the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rahmanullah Lakanwal struggled for years with the violence he committed as part of a CIA-backed \u201cZero Unit\u201d force in his home country. REUTERS<\/p>\n Lakanwal was part of an elite group of Afghan fighters<\/a> known as the \u201cZero Units\u201d \u2014 or alternatively, \u201cdeath squads\u201d \u2014 which battled the Taliban alongside US forces for over a decade.<\/p>\n The father of five settled in Bellingham, Washington, after he fled the Afghistan following the Biden Administration\u2019s disastrous 2021 pullout.<\/p>\n Lakanwal\u2019s role within the Zero Units remains unclear, but he reportedly joined as a security guard in 2012 when he would have been about 16 years old, one of his cousins told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n He remained in the group for nearly 10 years and was reportedly promoted to a team leader and a GPS specialist along the way, and only left the group in 2021 as US forces haphazardly pulled out of the country.<\/p>\n Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and Specialist Sarah Beckstrom were shot by Lakanwal just blocks from the White House. Beckstrom later died of her wounds. AP<\/p>\n But whatever he did in that time reportedly exacted a heavy toll.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure,\u201d Lakanwal\u2019s childhood friend told the Times.<\/p>\n Follow the latest on the National Guard shooting in Washington, DC: <\/p>\n Those pressures led to spiraling mental health, the friend said, with Lakanwal apparently trying to cope by abusing substances like marijuana.<\/p>\n Lakanwal was in such a state towards the end of his time with his Zero Unit in 2021 that he got married to his second wife and divorced her within days, the friend said.<\/p>\n National Guard members walk near a cordoned-off area after two National Guard members were reportedly shot near the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 26, 2025. REUTERS<\/p>\n Though Zero Units were part of the Afghan government\u2019s intelligence agency, they were trained, recruited, equipped \u2013 and even paid \u2013 by the CIA and US special operations forces,\u00a0Rolling Stone magazine reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n That meant they were fighting among the best of the best \u2014 and were trained to be deadly-effective in covert operations and high-stakes nighttime raids across Afghanistan\u2019s remote countryside.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n But the group also gained a reputation for extreme violence, with stories of family executions, torture and indiscriminate civilian killings following in their wake.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations \u2014 some amounting to war crimes \u2014 that extends to all provinces in Afghanistan where these paramilitary forces operate with impunity,\u201d Human Rights Watch wrote in a 2019 report.<\/p>\n Beckstrom ultimately died from the attack on Thursday. Facebook \/ Sarah Beckstrom<\/p>\n In one alleged incident, five members of a single family were executed at once. In another, one Zero Unit was accused of killing over 50 civilians across a series of raids, according to The Intercept.<\/p>\n Such stories earned the Zero Units a nickname, \u201cDeath Squads,\u201d with Human Rights Watch alleging they were behind numerous \u201cextrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances.\u201d<\/p>\n Follow The Post\u2019s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysis<\/a><\/p>\n