According to the sources, family members told authorities that the PTSD stemmed from the fighting Lakanwal did in Afghanistan, where he fought in a CIA-sponsored-and-trained unit of the Afghan special forces known as a Zero Unit.

Suspect struggled to assimilate

Lakanwal appeared to have been unraveling for years, unable to hold a job and flipping between long, lightless stretches of isolation and taking sudden weekslong cross-country drives, emails obtained by The Associated Press indicate. His behavior deteriorated so sharply that a community advocate reached out to a refugee organization for help, fearing he was becoming suicidal.

‘He was clean on all checks’

Lakanwal began working with the CIA around 2011, a senior US official told CNN. At the time, the CIA would have vetted him through a variety of databases, including the National Counterterrorism Center’s, to see whether he had any known ties to terrorist groups, the official said.

Lakanwal would have also been vetted after he applied for asylum in 2024. It was granted in April, during the Trump administration. Noem on Sunday told NBC, “The vetting process all happened under (former President) Joe Biden’s administration.”

The above quotes from the article were chosen by me to support this thesis:

The Trump administration is actively lying about this event to justify their illegal and reckless deployment of the national guard and to cover the fact that they have installed a military force to perform policing, ironically mirroring the tactical stance in Afghanistan that resulted in similar attacks.