Afghan commando radicalized in US before DC National Guard attack

Late final month, when former Afghan commando fighter Rahmanullah Lakanwal vanished with out warning from his house in Bellingham, Wash., his spouse, Khamila, known as his telephone, attempting to be taught the place he had gone, in response to folks aware of the matter. 

“The place are you?” she requested in a single name, talking of their native language of Pashto, in response to folks briefed on the communications. 

He informed her, “I’m busy with some associates.”

Hours later, she known as once more. This time, he allegedly answered in another way.

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“I’m with Tablighis.”

He continued, “I’m doing Tabligh,” in response to sources.

To his spouse, the phrase “Tablighi” had fast which means, household contacts mentioned, setting off alarm bells that she shared with Lakanwal’s older brother, Ismail Khosti. In Afghanistan, surnames might differ amongst members of the family as they select completely different tribal or geographical affiliations. The household is from Lakan district in Khost province.

Undated file picture of Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the suspect within the capturing of  two Nationwide Guard troopers in Washington, D.C., November 26, 2025. (Supplied by Division of Justice)

Tablighi is an Arabic phrase which means to “inform” or “convey” and it refers at the moment to Tablighi Jamaat, a world Islamic missionary motion established in 1926 in British India as a revivalist wing of the strict Deobandi non secular college of thought that at the moment fuels the tyrannical interpretation of Islam practiced by the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militant teams. Very like its sister group, the Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928, and different Muslim teams preaching the extremist Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam, counterterrorism specialists say it acts like a conveyor belt to extremism.

Tablighi Jamaat’s Muslim devotees supply Friday prayers alongside a highway in Dhaka on Nov. 15, 2024. (Photograph by Abdul Goni / AFP)

Based mostly in Pakistan and India, Tablighi Jamaat’s affect is transnational, with networks working in mosques and casual non secular circles in no less than 150 nations, together with the U.S. It denounces terrorism publicly, however a report, “Tablighi Jamaat and Its Position within the International Jihad,” by Brussels-based suppose tank the South Asia Democratic Discussion board warned the group serves as a “catalyst, gateway, springboard or antechamber” for Islamic radicalization. A number of Muslim nations, together with Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Iran, have banned Tabligi Jamaat, together with Russia, which disbanded a terror cell in 2020. In 2021, Saudi Arabia known as the group a “hazard to society.” Within the U.S., its missionaries function freely.

Fox New Digital has discovered that Lakanwal’s brother has shared particulars from the telephone calls, beforehand unreported, with FBI brokers. Now, FBI and Division of Homeland Safety investigators are scouring the nation to see if anybody tied to the Tablighi Jamaat community radicalized Lakanwal, facilitated his cross-country journey or provided help, encouragement or monetary help for his Thanksgiving eve ambush of West Virginia Nationwide Guard service members Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, as they quietly patrolled seventeenth Avenue NW, close to the White Home. Beckstrom died from her accidents. Wolfe stays critically injured.

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On Sunday, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem hinted at this new data, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “We imagine he was radicalized since he’s been right here on this nation. We do imagine it was by way of connections in his house neighborhood and state.”

Amid reviews that Lakanwal was remoted, depressed and psychologically distressed, counterterrorism specialists mentioned the brand new particulars add a crucial dimension to the investigation,  noting that untreated trauma, isolation and grievances can create psychological circumstances for extremist ideology to realize a foothold, creating “wound collectors,” a time period that retired FBI particular agent Joe Navarro coined to explain extremists, from Usama bin Laden to “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, who use perceived injustices to justify violence with “no statute of limitations on their struggling.”

Flashback: Tablighi to American Taliban

Whereas Tablighi Jamaat’s leaders say their motion is apolitical, targeted on dawah, an Arabic phrase for evangelizing or proselytizing, counterterrorism specialists have mentioned the motion’s insular missionary tradition has appeared alongside the early radicalization paths of some extremists, together with “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, a convert to Islam who attended Tablighi Jamaat retreats in northern California within the Nineteen Nineties, together with on the Santa Clara County fairgrounds.

After U.S. forces dropped bombs in Afghanistan after the 9/11 assaults, CIA paramilitary officers captured Lindh in a jail close to Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, amongst imprisoned Taliban militants who revolted, overpowering guards and killing CIA paramilitary officer Mike Spann, the primary U.S. casualty of the struggle. Convicted in 2002 for serving as a soldier for the Taliban, Lindh was free of jail in 2019 and is free on probation within the U.S. at the moment, tracked by the FBI.

John Walker Lindh, an American Taliban member who was captured by United States forces as an enemy combatant throughout the US’ invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. 

Whereas the Trump administration issued an govt order final month to designate a few of Muslim Brotherhood’s chapters as terrorist organizations, Tabligi Jamaat hasn’t been on its radar for motion.

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Paradoxically, Deobandi Islam is the non secular ideology of the Taliban fighters that Lakanwal and his brother battled for years as members of the “Zero Items,” covert forces inside the Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the Nationwide Directorate of Safety, funded, skilled and supported by the CIA’s secret “Particular Actions Division” to struggle the Taliban. 

Whereas these Afghan fighters battled extremist interpretations of Islam in Afghanistan over the previous 24 years, following the 9/11 assaults, counterterrorism specialists observe that organizations and mosques established by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood and Tablighi Jamaat have unfold worldwide. Tablighi Jamaat representatives in Pakistan and India didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.

A Brother’s Disgrace

The irony shouldn’t be misplaced on Lakanwal’s brother, Khosti, a former firm commander in NDS-03, generally known as the Kandahar Strike Power, the place his brother labored as a paramilitary officer, former colleagues mentioned. Over the previous a number of days, he has informed former Afghan navy and intelligence veterans that he’s “ashamed” of his brother’s murderous rampage and he desires the complete reality to emerge of how he ended up on seventeenth Avenue NW, turning his weapon on the very troops he had spent years defending. 

Actually translated, Lakanwal’s brother mentioned, “This was a improper motion,” utilizing the Pashto phrase ghalat to explain one thing that’s improper to do.

He informed his former colleagues, “I’m ashamed of this motion,” utilizing the phrase sharmezham, a spinoff of the Pashto phrase for disgrace, a robust dynamic within the honor tradition of Pashtunwali wherein most of the males grew up.

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Afghan Lt. Gen. Haibatullah Alizai, 40, the final commander of the Nationwide Protection and Safety Forces after the president and protection minister fled Afghanistan in mid-August 2021, informed Fox Information Digital that he was sickened by the information of the assault and fixing the thriller of Lakanwal’s path to extremism is now a private quest.

“It’s a severe query how Rahmanullah Lakanwal turned radicalized in the US,” Alizai mentioned. “I really feel accountability for this. I used to be general commander of the Afghan armed forces. We should resolve this as a result of we can not permit this type of violence in America or wherever. We fought Islamic extremism every single day in opposition to the Taliban. It’s our obligation as Afghans to assist America get justice.”

It’s understood Lakanwal’s spouse has since moved along with her 5 sons into the house of her brother-in-law and sister-in-law within the San Diego space.

Countering social media rumors, Lakanwal’s brother additionally informed former colleagues that his solely different brother, Mohammed Rasul Khan, shouldn’t be working for the terrorist Haqqani community and died of a coronary heart assault in 2021 in Dubai.

A makeshift memorial of flags, flowers and different objects is seen Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025, exterior of the Farragut West Station, close to the location the place two Nationwide Guard members had been shot in Washington.  (AP Photograph/Jose Luis Magana; U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace )

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Now, as federal investigators zero in on Lakanwal’s ultimate phrases to his spouse about being with the “Tablighi,” they’re inspecting his life within the U.S. over the previous 4 years. 

In current days, media reviews have pointed to 2 emails shared by a volunteer caseworker working with Laknawal to spotlight potential psychological points Lakanwal might need confronted, together with post-traumatic stress dysfunction and melancholy. After receiving the 2 emails from the case employee, Shawn VanDiver, president of a nonprofit, Afghan Evac, mentioned he shared them with journalists to spotlight unmet wants amongst Afghan navy and intelligence veterans who labored beside U.S. forces.

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Secretive ‘Manic’ Street Journeys 

The emails, shared with Fox Information Digital on situation they not be revealed totally, reveal one thing else: eight references to “manic” highway journeys and durations when Lakanwal vanished for days with little communication. Whereas investigators haven’t but established a direct hyperlink between the journey and any non secular exercise, analysts observe that Tablighi work requires males to take small-group mission journeys, known as khuruj, lasting from a number of days to a number of months, to mosques and communities.

In accordance with the emails, after U.S. forces flew Afghan fighters from the “Zero Items” out on Aug. 15, 2021, Lakanwal and his household had been moved to the furthest nook of the continental U.S. in Bellingham, a small seaside city, in January 2022. By March 2023, a volunteer case supervisor wrote within the emails that Lakanwal had misplaced his job, and he began participating in “reckless journey,” “manic” bursts, the place “he’ll take off within the household automotive and drive non cease to A. Chicago B. Arizona this time.” 

In an e-mail on Jan. 11, 2024, she lamented, “My Afghan households, now in WA nearly two vears aren’t thriving.” She added, “Regardless of what number of Pashto interpreters we use, and interventions, they’re steering their households in ways in which within the USA will result in disaster.’

She famous, “They’ve 3 of us White, American ladies volunteers attempting to patch advantages collectively and chase [Department of Social and Human Services] necessities and English courses that none of them attend.”

Overwhelmed, she questioned, “Maybe is there a Pashto talking Afghan male chief or advisor or useful resource that we are able to carry to those males to assist them collectively and individually make higher decisions for his or her households ?”

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By Jan. 31, 2024, the caseworker wrote a sequence of bullet factors, together with this: “He drives day and night time, and sends map pins to one of many volunteer sponsors, and we are able to seize images from Instagram tales, however no different communication. His household usually doesn’t know the place he’s or when he shall be again.”

She added, “So far as we are able to inform, these journeys aren’t for any productive goal.” She mentioned he paid for gasoline with the EBT stipend he obtained from the federal government.

She continued: “The final time he got here house from a visit, (chicago) he demanded that his spouse divorce him, (in entrance of sponsors who witnessed this).” He apparently deployed a Thabligi interpretation of Islam that claims husbands can say, “I divorce you,” 3 times to finish a wedding.

Her final bullet level was: “Proper now, since he’s off on a manic journey that has taken him from Bellingham to Phoenix to Indianapolis, his spouse, Khamila, has been house with the boys in a interval of relative stability.”

Khosti now tells Afghan associates that he wonders how his brother financed the two,800-mile one-way journey from Bellingham to Washington, D.C., and the way he obtained a firearm. 

A Firm Commander’s Grief

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When Lakanwal’s firm commander, Mohammad Iqbal Selanee, discovered the information of the capturing, he was on the job as a janitor in a San Diego-area resort. He wasn’t embarking on life-or-death missions, like he’d been doing beside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, however he was grateful to America for the reward of a brand new, secure begin for his household. 

Trying on the images of the Nationwide Guard troopers shot by Lakanwal, he mentioned he recalled the faces of U.S. servicemembers he’d fought beside. He additionally considered his daughter, 11, as he targeted on the picture of Beckstrom, the younger girl from West Virginia murdered. Unfold throughout the U.S. at far-flung posts, he was tons of of miles away from Lakanwal as his former cost had fled his house for secret highway journeys. 

Now, he has spent the previous a number of days piecing collectively Lakanwal’s alleged descent within the U.S. into a brand new military of zealotry with the Tablighi Jamaat.

“He’s been with Tablighi Jamaat,” within the U.S., he mentioned. “He remoted himself. He was away from his family and friends. Some folks damage themselves. He damage the entire nation.”

“I’m not a commander anymore within the navy, however as a human being, that is my accountability to uncover what occurred to Rahmanullah, for the protection of everybody. It is a large tragedy. For 20 years, we now have fought beside Individuals like brothers, and Rahmanullah betrayed that friendship. It’s inhumane what he did.”

Lakanwal attended the Bellingham Masjid, operated by the Islamic Heart of Whatcom County, blocks from his house, mosque officers confirmed. In a press release issued on Saturday, mosque officers said Lakanwal was “not an built-in a part of our neighborhood.”

‘A Cowl for Jihadists’ 

For Ismail Royer, this investigation hits house on one other degree. A convert to Islam, Royer went to Pakistan within the Nineteen Nineties after embracing an extremist interpretation of Islam and joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. He later pleaded responsible to weapons costs associated to violating U.S. neutrality legal guidelines and served 14 years in a most safety jail. Whereas behind bars, he crossed paths with Muslims convicted of terrorism costs, together with Richard Reid, who tried to explode a airplane over the Atlantic by lighting explosives in his shoe, and Lindh, the “American Taliban.” 

Working now to counter extremism, Royer mentioned Tablighi Jamaat can serve “as a canopy for jihadists” and it may be “a waystation, a stage within the path of somebody from irreligious to non secular,” after which, generally, violent extremism.

Ismail Royer, 44, program assistant at Heart for Islam and Spiritual Freedom,  group. (Photograph by Salwan Georges/The Washington Put up)

Alizai, the ultimate commander of Afghan navy forces, mentioned he fears that non secular fundamentalists stoked Lakanwal’s frustrations and urged him to lash out with violence.

“Lakanwal was not a terrorist in Afghanistan. He was preventing terrorism in Afghanistan. We all know how these mosques and these Tablighis can play a task to radicalize anyone.”

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A simple path could be to disgrace an Afghan navy veteran, he mentioned, by saying, “You labored with the U.S.? You had been a soldier? So, you killed the Afghans? You killed Muslims? Now they’ve introduced you right here. You haven’t any job. You don’t have anything. You have to restore your honor. They act like well-wishers, however they’re really your enemy.”

After searching Taliban extremists in Afghanistan with American troopers, Alizai mentioned he and fellow Afghan veterans, together with Lakanwal’s brother, his firm commander, Selanee, and members of the NDS-03 unit are on a brand new quest.

“We’re on a mission to uncover the reality that led to the tragedy on the streets of Washington, D.C.,” he mentioned, one West Virginia household in America’s rural hinterland grieving and the opposite holding vigil by a hospital bedside.