Alex Nowrasteh
Very little new information has been released since Rahmanullah Lakanwal murdered West Virginia National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom in Washington, DC, two weeks ago. He also shot and injured Andrew Wolfe, another National Guardsman, in the same attack. Prosecutors have since charged Lakanwal with murder, assault with intent to kill while armed, and possession of a firearm during a violent crime. Terrorism charges are absent because prosecutors do not yet know his motives. The FBI is conducting a terrorism investigation to discover those.
It’s unusual that we still don’t know whether his motive was terrorism. Terrorists usually announce their motives. Still, his target, background, and some of his actions during the attack suggest he was a terrorist who will soon be charged with a terrorism offense.
If Lakanwal is a terrorist, his murder of Beckstrom will mark him as the deadliest-ever Afghan-born terrorist on US soil. Terrorism is the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a nonstate actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through coercion, fear, or intimidation. Lakanwal’s attack was certainly illegal force conducted by a nonstate actor, since he left his Afghan Zero Unit after the Taliban takeover. But his motivation is unclear.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Lakanwal has been “radicalized since he’s been here in this country,” which signals she believes he is a terrorist. According to the affidavit, he also yelled “Allahu akbar” during the attack, which is notable evidence of a terrorist motive. He also drove across the United States from his home in Washington state, parked near the White House, and then attacked soldiers. There’s also evidence that Lakanwal was depressed, stopped attending mosque, struggled with war trauma, and became increasingly withdrawn. Still, prosecutors have not filed terrorism charges.
We should have heard something about Lakanwal’s motives by now, even if it’s just through leaks. Either the FBI and Department of Justice have prevented leaks, or there just isn’t enough evidence for a terrorism charge yet. Prosecutors will charge him with terrorism if there is any evidence to support it.
If Lakanwal is ultimately charged with terrorism, that would clarify the scale of the Afghan-origin terrorist threat. For clarity, the remainder of this post assumes he is a terrorist.
In the 51 years since 1975, Lakanwal is the only Afghan terrorist to have murdered somebody on US soil in an attack. Thus, the annual chance of being murdered in an Afghan terrorist attack is about 1 in 14.2 billion per year. The annual chance of being murdered in a normal homicide is about 1 in 14,000 per year, approximately one million times greater.
That’s no consolation to the victims who deserve justice, but Afghan terrorism on US soil is a rare and manageable threat.
Before Lakanwal, none of the six other Afghan terrorists murdered anyone. They were Najibullah Zazi, Zarein Ahmedzay, Ahmad Khan Rahimi, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan juvenile with the surname of Akhi whose name was withheld, and Farhad Shakeri. All were motivated by Islamism. Rahimi was the most serious earlier terrorist, as he injured 33 in a series of bombings in September 2016. Zazi and Ahmedzay entered as refugees, Tawhedi on parole, juvenile Akhi as a green card holder through SIV, Shakeri on a green card, and Rahimi as an asylum seeker.
Lakanwal was a vetted member of an Afghan Zero Unit that was equipped and trained in counterinsurgency. Lakanwal’s choice of weapon (revolver) and method of attack (shooting ambush on the street) were unusual. Lakanwal appears to have carried out an unsophisticated attack, possibly influenced by psychological instability.
The Trump administration is citing Lakanwal’s attack to justify halting the processing of visas for migrants who arrived after January 20, 2021, re-interviewing applicants from the 19 countries banned by the administration earlier this year for terrorism-related reasons, halting naturalizations of some immigrants, and imposing a host of restrictions on legal immigration. Among those 19 countries, only Afghanistan, Sudan, and Cuba have sent terrorists who murdered a total of seven people on US soil, with Cuba accounting for five of the victims.
Terrorists from those countries account for about 0.3 percent of murders by foreign-born terrorists on US soil since 1975. The annual chance of being murdered by a terrorist from those countries is about 1 in 2 billion per year.
In addition to the DC National Guard attack, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is further justifying additional immigration restrictions on claims that welfare fraud by some Somalis in Minnesota helped fund terrorists overseas, as reported in City Journal by Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe. The welfare fraud reported therein is real. The claimed link to terrorism is evidence-free so far. Despite having no fatal attacks on US soil and only 25 injuries, Somalia remains on the administration’s list. That shows the gap between the actual threat and the current policy.
Low-frequency, low-cost risks cannot justify high-cost restrictions. Punishing innocent people for crimes they did not commit does not deter terrorists. Any incidental reduction in terrorism from closing the border would come the way random arrests reduce crime, by imposing enormous harm on many more innocent people. Terrorism’s infrequency and the ineffectiveness of earlier immigration bans mean the chance of any positive effect is minuscule, but tens of thousands of people will be punished.
A statistically negligible risk does not justify policies that reliably harm tens of thousands of people. Lakanwal’s attack was a serious crime. The shooter deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Rare crimes committed by a small number of disturbed individuals do not justify broad government punishments of innocent people. Anti-terrorism policy in immigration should target actual offenders, not entire nationalities with no demonstrated connection to terrorism.