A United Nations Security Council report released February 4 found that the global terrorist threat is “multipolar and increasingly complex,” with Afghanistan providing what it called a “permissive environment” for more than twenty terrorist organizations. Three months before the report’s release, an Afghan national shot two National Guard members near the White House. Federal prosecutors have not filed terrorism charges.
The UN Monitoring Team’s thirty-seventh report, designated S/2026/44, found that Al-Qaida “continued to enjoy the patronage” of the Taliban and acted as “a service provider and multiplier for other terrorist groups in Afghanistan.” The Monitoring Team’s December 2025 report on the 1988 Afghanistan sanctions regime described the Taliban denial of any terrorist presence as “not credible.”
Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent maintains its leadership in Kabul. Its emir, Osama Mahmoud, and his deputy, Yahya Ghauri, operate under Haqqani Network protection. The Monitoring Team found AQIS increasingly focused on external operations — attacks that would likely go unclaimed so as “not to create difficulties for the Taliban as hosts.”
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is asserting operational leadership of the worldwide network, its shura council discussing external attacks, a maritime operations cell, and liquid explosives. JNIM blockaded the capital of Mali and collected a single ransom payment of approximately $50 million. ISIL infiltrated Syria’s new security forces and acquired anti-tank missiles, artillery, and anti-aircraft systems after the Assad government collapsed.
The report documented attacks across Western countries. An ISIL-inspired assault on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney killed sixteen in December. A man attacked a Manchester synagogue in October, killing three and claiming it for ISIL during the attack. Federal agents disrupted a mass shooting plot in Michigan, seizing semi-automatic weapons and more than 1,600 rounds of ammunition.
The Monitoring Team assessed that most Western plots were “self-initiated” with “minimal contact with terrorist groups overseas.” Attackers’ ideological motivations were often “confused or unclear.”
That is the unresolved question in the case of Rahmanullah Lakanwal.
On November 26, Lakanwal drove from Bellingham, Washington, to the Farragut West Metro station in downtown D.C. Court documents show he shot Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe in the back of the head with a stolen .357 revolver, screaming “Allahu Akbar” as they fell. Beckstrom died on Thanksgiving Day at twenty years old. Wolfe survived and faces skull reconstruction surgery in March.
Lakanwal spent a decade in a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” of Afghan special forces, conducting nighttime raids against the Taliban in Kandahar. He entered the United States in September 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome. The Trump administration granted his asylum in April 2025.
The National Counterterrorism Center vetted him when he began working with the CIA. It vetted him again before his entry to the United States. He cleared both times.
The FBI opened an international terrorism investigation the day after the shooting. Director Kash Patel said agents searched properties in Washington state and San Diego and were examining Lakanwal’s associates at home and abroad. Investigators probed a possible connection to Tablighi Jamaat, a Deobandi missionary movement, based on Lakanwal’s final phone call to his wife. Three months later, no terrorist organization link has been publicly established.
A federal indictment unsealed in January contained nine criminal counts: first-degree murder, assault with intent to kill, and firearms offenses. Prosecutors told Judge Amit Mehta at the February arraignment that they are pursuing “death-eligible charges” in a possible superseding indictment. Attorney General Pam Bondi promised the death penalty. President Trump called the shooting “an act of terror.”
The Pentagon awarded both soldiers the Purple Heart on February 9. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called them victims of “a radical.”
The UN report documents a threat environment where terrorist groups operate from Afghan soil under Taliban patronage and where, according to the Monitoring Team, individual attackers act with motivations that are difficult to categorize. Whether Lakanwal acted as a directed operative, a self-radicalized attacker, or a veteran in psychological crisis is the question the FBI opened three months ago and hasn’t closed.
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