Shawn VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based group AfghanEvac, a group that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the US during the war in Afghanistan, explained to the AP that many people in the Afghan refugee community that he knows are terrified by the tone which has been set by Trump after the shooting, afraid to leave their homes for fear of being snatched up by federal agents or otherwise targeted.
“They’re terrified. It’s insane,” VanDiver told AP. “People are acting xenophobic because of one deranged man. He doesn’t represent all Afghans. He represents himself.”
On Thursday, it was announced that Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, deployed with the National Guard under orders from Trump, had died from her injuries while Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remained in critical condition in a local hospital.
While heartbreak and mourning was widely shared for the victims of the shooting, Trump’s xenophobic response to the violent assault, including his racist social media posts on Truth Social that critics said echoed white nationalist rhetoric, proved for many observers once again his shortcomings as a national leader during times of crisis, but also as a human being.
“The perpetrator should face accountability but the entire Afghan community must not be punished due to the actions of one individual,” said Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, said Thursday. “That would be terribly unjust and complete nonsense. Cool heads must prevail.”
Arash Azizzada, co-director of Afghans For A Better Tomorrow, which long-opposed the US war in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 and continues to advocate on behalf of the Afghan-American community, condemned Trump for “using this tragedy as a pretext to demonize, criminalize, and target an entire community. Exploiting a single incident to cast suspicion on Afghans—people who have already endured decades of displacement and America’s forever wars—is both irresponsible and cruel.”
Azizzada also pointed out how the alleged gunman now in police custody, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, “worked alongside US Special Operations forces and served in a CIA-backed covert paramilitary group known as ‘Zero Units’ that functioned outside the purview of any accountability and have a documented history of widespread human rights abuses against Afghan civilians over two decades.”
“We both condemn the violence by one individual on the streets of Washington, DC as well as the violence perpetrated by the US in Afghanistan and elsewhere,” said Azizzada. “America must confront the decades of violence it inflicted on Afghanistan and acknowledge that its forever wars are a major reason why Afghans seek safety here. Blaming refugees for the consequences of those actions is unjust and we call for the promises to Afghans to be honored, not abandoned.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site News, put it this way: “The idea that we should freeze all migration because one of the CIA’s death squad recruits went on a rampage is absurd. Smarter would be to stop training death squads.”
Evacuate Our Allies, a group that advocates on behalf of Afghans who helped the US during the war and now seeking to resettle, expressed deep sympathies for the victims of the shooting and their families and condemned the “reprehensible attack.” The group also denounced the “alarming vilification of an entire community based on the actions of a lone individual.”
“No community, Afghan or otherwise, should be judge, demonized, or collectively punished for the behavior of one person,” the group said. “Such narratives cause real harm, inflame tensions, and overlook the truth: one individual does not represent millions. Collective blame is not only unjust but dangerous. It undermines the immense sacrifices our nation’s Afghan allies made, sacrifices that cost many their safety, their homes, their loved ones, and, in too many case, their lives.”
