And denying that there’s a problem won’t help the Afghans who aren’t part of it.
In their story about how Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the alleged gunman who shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., became radicalized, reporters at the Wall Street Journal, as is their obligation, devoted the final paragraph to a voice representing what they believed was the other side of the story.
“Nothing about this case indicates a broader trend, coordinated activity, or national-security element,” said Shawn VanDiver, the executive director of AfghanEvac, a nonprofit Afghan refugee advocacy organization. “The only difference now is that, after the D.C. shooting, this otherwise routine local matter is being pulled into a larger narrative by people looking to politicize it.”
To their credit, the Journal’s reporters preemptively undermined VanDiver’s assertion by alerting their readers to another alleged terror plot linked to an Afghan national — an individual in Texas arrested for “threatening to blow up a building” — although the case is unrelated to the attack in Washington.
VanDiver’s reflexively defensive posture doesn’t advance his or his organization’s goals. It may be wrong to overgeneralize about the degree to which members of the Afghan diaspora are attracted to extremist ideologies. But it does those people no good to insist that the villains of this story are those who only noticed the radicalization going on under Americans’ noses. Indeed, the story of Lakanwal’s descent raises more questions than we can yet answer.
According to an Associated Press investigation, there were warning signs that preceded Lakanwal’s alleged attack. While the community advocates who worked with him were stunned by the accusations against him, they had previously communicated in emails that he “has not been functional as a person, father, and provider since March” of 2023 — nearly two years after his evacuation from Afghanistan.
The emails described a man who was struggling to assimilate, unable to hold a steady job or commit to his English courses while he alternated between “periods of dark isolation and reckless travel.” Sometimes, he spent weeks in his “darkened room, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife or older kids.” At one point in 2023, the family faced eviction after months of not paying rent.
The AP report claims that Lakanwal’s family resorted to communicating with him by sending his toddler sons into his darkened room with a phone or a message. Lakanwal would have “‘manic’ episodes” in which he would disappear for days on end. When his wife would travel, his children would be sent to school unbathed, in dirty clothes, and poorly fed. The school, too, “raised concerns about the situation.”
In response to these red flags, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants attempted to contact Lakanwal and his family in March of last year. The results of that encounter are left ambiguous. According to the AP’s community sources, though, it seemed likely that “Lakanwal refused their assistance.” One “Afghan unit mate” who spoke to Rolling Stone said he believed Lakanwal was struggling with “mental illness” and felt “abandoned by the United States government.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told NBC News over the weekend that she believes Lakanwal was “radicalized since he’s been here in this country” via “connections in his home community and state.” As Jim Geraghty observed, Lakanwal’s asylum application was processed last year and granted early this year, even though he had not yet received his green card. Although Noem was quick to blame the Biden administration for failing to vet the refugees it absorbed amid his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the AP timeline raises concerns about how community organizations and nonprofits — the organizations closest to the refugees that the feds are supposed to be vetting — are working together.
If your goal as an advocate is to reassure the American public that Lakanwal is not representative of the broader Afghan population in the United States, scoffing at those who are horrified by a terrorist attack that killed one and left another in critical condition isn’t productive. It’s more likely to leave skeptical Americans with the sense that the advocacy enterprise has something to hide. Acknowledging the reality of the problem Lakanwal represents, even while maintaining that the problem is limited and manageable, is at least a reasonable response to the November 26 attack. Ignoring the problem is not.