10 things about Khost’s Rahmanullah Lakanwal 

Rahmanullah Lakanwal entered the United States through Operation Allies Welcome, an immigration program to resettle Afghans who helped the U.S. during the war and feared reprisal from Taliban forces who seized control after the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. More than 8,000 people from Afghanistan were also granted deportation relief under a separate program called temporary protected status, which Joe Biden extended in 2023 and Donald Trump ended in 2025.

BIOGRAPHY

Lakanwal is an Afghan global positioning system (GPS) tracker specialist. He is originally from Khost, Afghanistan.

While in Afghanistan, Lakanwal worked with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which is based in Langley, Virginia, USA. Here are 10 more things about him:

1. He and his family fled Taliban threats in Khost and relocated to Kabul, Afghanistan.
2. From Kabul, he moved to Bellingham, Washington, USA where he lived with his wife and their five children.
3. He was born in 1996.
4. In 2011, he started working with the CIA.
5. In 2016, he was recruited to Unit 03 of the Kandahar Strike Force in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
6. During the war in Afghanistan, he worked with the U.S. government as a member of a partner force in Kandahar that ended in 2021.
7. In 2021, he was paroled into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds.
8. At one point in 2023, he and his family faced eviction in Bellingham after months of not paying rent.
9. In 2024, he applied for asylum with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
10. In 2025, his asylum application was granted while his request for a green card was still pending and before the year ended, he was accused of shooting National Guard members using a revolved belonged to a deceased Washington resident and not registered to him.

TIMELINE

Lakanwal led a team in the former Afghan national armed forces that worked directly with U.S. and British forces. From September 2021 to November 2025, he no documented record of traveling in or out of the U.S.

2021

• On September 8, 2021, he was paroled into the U.S.

2023

• In March 2023, he quit his job in Bellingham.

2024

• In December 2024, he applied for asylum in the U.S.

2025

• In February 2025, he imported a shipment of household goods from Afghanistan.
• On April 23, 2025, his asylum application in the U.S. was approved.
• On November 27, 2025, he drove from Bellingham to Washington, D.C., USA. That day, he allegedly shot National Guard members Andrew Wolfe, then 24, and Sarah Beckstrom, 20, just blocks away from the White House in the Washington, D.C. After being National Guard members and law enforcement officers subdued him at the scene of the shooting, he was arrested, sedated and placed on a ventilator. Beckstrom died while Wolfe was in critical condition after undergoing surgery.