The recent shooting near the White House, in which two members of the U.S. National Guard were targeted, has once again pushed debates around immigration, security, and media narratives to the forefront. Rahmanullah Lakhanwal, the attacker, was initially described by many U.S. outlets as “an Afghan refugee,” a label that may seem simple but is deeply misleading. It is a narrative that diverts attention from the central questions, shifting responsibility away from America’s political and security institutions and placing it instead on “immigration,” even though the real story lies elsewhere.
Violence, at any level, by any individual or group, is unjustifiable and must be unequivocally condemned. Violence takes lives, erodes security, and damages public trust. Preventing such incidents requires informed, deliberate, and preventive strategies that ensure no one, whether in Washington or anywhere else in the world, falls victim to violence.
What the media concealed, and continues to obscure, is that Lakhanwal was not an ordinary refugee. He was trained within the U.S. security apparatus. According to Sarah Adams, a former CIA officer, Lakhanwal entered the counterterrorism base known as Eagle in 2007, where he underwent intensive training before joining the “Zero Units” of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, units that nominally operated under the Afghan government but were fully commanded and directed by the CIA. For years, Lakhanwal played an active role in tracking and suppressing terrorist networks and participated in operations in Kandahar against the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
After the fall of Kabul in August 2021, members of the Zero Units, along with operatives from the Khost and Kandahar strike forces, became direct targets for retaliation by the Haibatullah network, ISIS-K, and al-Qaeda. Many entered the evacuation process under false identities, but Lakhanwal’s was one of the few identities fully verified by the United States. This background makes one thing clear: Lakhanwal was a product of the U.S. security structure, a system that trains fighters but, once the war ends, releases them without any plan for rehabilitation, psychological evaluation, or structural support. This gap is both dangerous and long overlooked.
Lakhanwal’s familial connection to Muawiya Khorasani, a slain ISIS-K member, adds complexity to the narrative, but it does not explain the act of violence, just as having a criminal relative does not alter the responsibility of any individual. The real issue lies in psychological strain, post-war trauma, and the ongoing threats that combat personnel face long after their missions end.
Another important layer in this incident is the role of Western media in constructing and reproducing narratives. Mainstream outlets, knowingly or unknowingly, amplified exactly the storyline sought by the Trump campaign and right-wing factions: the reductionist framing of “an Afghan refugee,” implying that “immigration” is America’s core problem. This mirrors the post–September 11 narrative playbook, one that ties individual acts of violence to the collective identity of Muslims and immigrants. Within this framework, the perpetrator is a “migrant,” not a trauma-affected former operative, not a product of an American-run security structure, and not the outcome of failed integration policies. Yet the legal and ethical principles remain clear: responsibility for a crime is individual, not ethnic, not religious, and not cultural.
The double standard in this narrative construction becomes even clearer when compared with the attack on Charlie Kirk. In that incident, the assailant was a white American, yet none of the major news outlets dwelled on his “whiteness,” nor did any political figure link the attack to a supposed “white crisis.” Even today, the event has almost vanished from the media’s collective memory. The contrast is telling: when the perpetrator is white, the violence is framed as an “individual act,” but when the attacker is an immigrant or a Muslim, it is suddenly treated as a “collective threat.”
These narratives carry heavy human consequences. Tens of thousands of Afghans in the United States live in uncertain legal conditions, fearful that immigration police or ICE might detain and deport them to Afghanistan, where the Taliban and affiliated terrorist networks pose an immediate threat to their lives. Thousands more have been stranded for more than three years in the UAE, Pakistan, Albania, and other countries. Every incident that is politically framed as the work of an “Afghan refugee” drastically reduces their chances of relocation and fair processing.
In this context, one ethical principle must be emphasized: no injury and no political anger can justify violence. Individual, structural, state, or ideological violence must all be condemned. Every drop of blood shed in Washington, Kabul, or anywhere else signals the collapse of reason, ethics, and politics. Condemnation of violence must be unconditional.
Preventing the recurrence of such incidents requires confronting the root causes: postwar psychological pressures, the absence of support systems for combat personnel, weak social integration, and the distortions created by misleading narratives. Only by addressing these underlying factors can we find ways to ensure that no human being, soldier, refugee, or ordinary citizen, becomes a victim of violence.
The Washington incident is the consequence of war, not of migration; the product of twenty years of tension, night raids, psychological strain, flawed evaluations, and postwar abandonment. Presenting Lakanwal as an “Afghan refugee” distorts reality and shifts attention away from the primary sources of responsibility. If the institutions that train such forces and then abandon them are not held accountable, the recurrence of such events will not be an exception but part of a continuing cycle of violence and structural failure.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
