The broad daylight ambush of two National Guard soldiers just steps from the White House has left America shaken. In Washington, the alleged perpetrator is a man once seen as a US partner: Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan evacuee brought to America during the 2021 Kabul airlift. He had served alongside US Special Forces for years, fighting the Taliban shoulder-to-shoulder with American troops. Now he stands accused of turning his US-issued handgun on soldiers in the capital, critically wounding two young men in what authorities are treating as a targeted attack. It is a nightmarish turn–an ex-comrade becoming an assailant–and a grim reminder that the aftershocks of foreign wars wander far from the battlefield.
President Donald Trump swiftly called the shooting “an act of terror an act of evil” and vowed retribution. The administration’s response went further. Trump implied that an entire category of Afghans posed a threat, declaring that Lakanwal “entered our country from Afghanistan” on what he called “infamous flights.” Within hours, the government froze immigration processing for Afghan nationals. Lost in the political theatre was a simple fact: Lakanwal’s asylum claim had been approved earlier this year under Trump’s own watch.
From Pakistan, the spectacle feels uncomfortably familiar. We, too, are confronting violence involving Afghan nationals, and the temptation to draw broad conclusions is strong. Recent incidents–from the attack on the Frontier Corps headquarters in Peshawar to armed attempts in South Waziristan–show that Afghan-linked groups continue to exploit our vulnerabilities. Islamabad has pressed Kabul to ensure its soil is not used against Pakistan. The frustration is real. The security imperative cannot be stressed enough. No state can ignore a pattern of cross-border violence that keeps resurfacing in its tribal belt and cities.
The harder task is to separate necessary action from reactionary impulse. The United States will need to examine how a vetted ally slipped through its filters; even its own oversight bodies have acknowledged that dozens of evacuees were flagged during the chaotic 2021 airlift. Pakistan’s leadership, meanwhile, must reinforce border management and pursue infiltrators without collapsing the distinction between militants and refugees. Intelligence-led policing, and not collective suspicion, is what separates security policy from political theatre.
Washington has suffered a tragedy and a betrayal. Pakistan knows that terrain too well. Both states now face a moment shaped by decisions made in the long tail of the Afghan war. The choice is the same on both sides of the world: respond with clarity or let fear redraw the map of who belongs. *