I came to America as an interpreter. He came as a trained killer. We got the same resettlement plan 

I am an Afghan American, a former cultural adviser to the U.S. military, and the CEO of Rosalyn.ai, a tech company I built after arriving in America through the Special Immigrant Visa program. I represent what policymakers call a “success story” of refugee integration. But as details emerged about the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a former member of the CIA-backed Zero Units, I felt a familiar knot in my stomach. Not because I don’t understand the moral obligation to evacuate our allies. But because I know the difference between an ally who translates and an ally who kills for a living. And someone in our government decided those two things were the same. They are not.

In the rush to politicize this tragedy, leaders are calling for stricter vetting and immigration bans. But that misses the point entirely. Lakanwal was extensively vetted — first to join one of the most elite and secretive assassination squads America ever created, then again when the CIA evacuated him in 2021. We knew exactly who he was: a professional killer trained by the CIA for extreme violence. The question isn’t whether we vetted him properly. The question is: Why did we think it was acceptable to drop a trained assassin into suburban Washington state with no transition program, no mental health infrastructure, and no plan beyond “good luck”?

This wasn’t terrorism. This was a disaster we built with our own hands.

Let’s be honest about what the Zero Units actually were

There are effectively two cohorts of Afghan refugees in America, and the difference between them isn’t just professional — it’s existential.

The first cohort, mine, consisted of interpreters, cultural advisers, fixers, and embassy staff. We were educated, often urban, and many of us spoke English before we ever set foot on a military base. We were soft power assets: bridge-builders between cultures, navigators of bureaucracy, translators of not just language but intent. When we arrived in America, we came ready to build. We started businesses, earned graduate degrees, and bought homes. Integration, while never easy, was achievable because the skills that made us valuable in Kabul — communication, adaptability, education — had clear applications in American society.

Then there are the Zero Units. And we need to stop sanitizing what they were. These men were not “soldiers” in any conventional sense. They were members of CIA-funded paramilitary strike forces — the 01, 02, 03 units, the Khost Protection Force — that operated completely outside the Afghan military chain of command. They were recruited as teenagers, often from rural provinces, and trained to do one thing exceptionally well: kill people in the middle of the night.

They conducted targeted assassinations. They breached compounds, eliminated high-value targets, and disappeared before dawn. They were, by design, professional killers — arguably the most effective counterterrorism operators in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch didn’t call them “elite soldiers.” It documented them as participants in extrajudicial killings. The CIA didn’t train them for peacekeeping or community relations. They trained them to be lethal, efficient, and psychologically capable of killing on command.

And they were extraordinarily good at it. For two decades, these units protected American lives and hunted down terrorists with ruthless precision. They saved countless American soldiers. They deserve recognition for that. But let’s be very clear: They were human weapons. And we brought those weapons home without ever asking if we knew how to deactivate them.

The question no one wanted to ask

Here’s what I want to know: Who thought this was a good idea? Not the evacuation itself — we absolutely owed these men protection from Taliban retaliation. The moral debt was real. But protection doesn’t have to mean a direct flight to American suburbs. Protection could have meant a secure third-country transition facility. It could have meant a mandatory yearlong decompression program in a controlled environment where trained professionals help someone transition from “professional assassin” to “civilian” before releasing them into society.

Instead, we made a catastrophically naive choice: We assumed that loyalty to America and gratitude for rescue would somehow override years of psychological conditioning, combat trauma, and the deep neurological rewiring that happens when you’ve been trained to kill reflexively.

When an American Navy SEAL or Delta Force operator finishes his service, he doesn’t just get thanked for his service and handed an apartment lease in a random city. There are transition programs, mental health resources, veteran networks, and an entire infrastructure designed to help warriors decompress. Even with all of that support, designed specifically for American soldiers, in their native language, embedded in their own culture, we still lose 17 veterans a day to suicide. We still see PTSD rates above 20%. We still struggle to help them adjust.

Now imagine trying to do that transition with zero infrastructure, in a foreign language, in a culture you don’t understand, while working a gig economy job that pays a fraction of what you need to support a family. And instead of a Navy SEAL with a high school education from Ohio, the government is working with someone who was recruited at 16 from a village in Khost Province, whose entire adult identity is built around being an elite killer, and who has no frame of reference for American civilian life.

What did we think was going to happen?

We didn’t just fail Lakanwal. We failed his victims

Beckstrom was 20. Wolfe is 24 and fighting for his recovery. They are the real victims of this policy failure — not Lakanwal, and not the abstract concept of refugee resettlement.

Here’s the truth: This shooting was preventable. Not through better vetting — Lakanwal was already one of the most thoroughly vetted people to ever enter this country. It was preventable through better planning.

Reports indicate Lakanwal had been struggling financially, growing isolated, and showing signs of a mental health crisis in recent months. These are textbook precursors to violence in any population, but especially in combat veterans. Yet because the Zero Unit members exist in a bureaucratic gray zone, not quite military veterans, not quite traditional refugees, they fell through every crack in our system.

The resettlement agencies that handled his case were built to help families fleeing persecution, not to deprogram professional killers. They had no protocol for this, no mental health screeners trained in combat trauma, no case managers who understood moral injury, and no plan for what to do when a man trained to solve problems with violence encounters an American society that feels chaotic, incomprehensible, and hostile to his very existence.

We took a professional assassin, gave him the same welcome packet we’d give an accountant fleeing political persecution, and called it integration. That’s not compassion. That’s negligence.

What should have happened — and what must happen now

The right answer wasn’t to ban these men from entering the United States. But it also wasn’t to treat them like regular refugees. The right answer was a secure transition program, ideally in a third country or on a U.S. military base, where Zero Unit veterans could spend 12 to 24 months in a structured decompression environment. Intensive trauma therapy. Vocational retraining. Cultural orientation. Peer support from American special operations veterans who understand the psychological transition from warrior to civilian. And most importantly: graduated reintegration, not a cold drop into an apartment complex in Bellingham, Washington.

Only after demonstrating psychological stability and acquiring the tools to manage trauma should someone trained as an elite killer be cleared for unsupervised civilian life. Not because they’re criminals, but because they’re carrying weapons-grade trauma that we created.

But that didn’t happen. And now we have to deal with the consequences.

For the Zero Unit veterans already in the U.S., we need immediate intervention: Mandatory, ongoing mental health screening by providers trained in both combat trauma and cross-cultural psychology. Supervised transition programs that provide structure, purpose, and community — not just a visa and a voucher. Career pathways that match their skills appropriately, whether that’s security consulting with proper oversight or entirely new vocations with real training. Financial stability programs so that desperation doesn’t compound trauma. Honest risk assessment that acknowledges some people may never be safe for full civilian integration and need long-term support in controlled environments.

This isn’t about punishment. It’s about reality. We don’t hand someone a pilot’s license without extensive training and evaluation. Why would we hand someone trained as a professional killer unrestricted freedom without ensuring they can safely exist in civilian society?

Gratitude isn’t enough

We owed the Zero Units protection. We delivered it. But we also owed them, and the American public, a responsible transition plan. We failed on that second obligation, and two young National Guard members paid the price.

Don’t blame vetting. Don’t blame Afghan culture. And don’t blame the refugee resettlement system, which was never designed for this population.

SUSPECT ACCUSED OF SHOOTING NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS PLEADS NOT GUILTY

Blame the policymakers who thought loyalty and gratitude were sufficient safeguards against the reality of combat trauma. Blame the agencies that treated trained killers like displaced accountants. Blame the system that assumed professional assassins would simply integrate into American suburbs with no special consideration.

We cannot undo this tragedy. But we can prevent the next one if we finally have the courage to be honest about what we brought home and what we failed to prepare for.

Noor Akbari is the founder and CEO of Rosalyn.ai and a former cultural adviser to the U.S. military in Afghanistan.