As an Afghan-born American Citizen, I Urge President Trump to Honor American Values

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Innocent Afghans in the U.S. Shouldn’t Pay the Price for One Shooter

By Wahab Raofi

A double shock unfolded this week: one in Washington, D.C., when a man named Amanullah Lakanwal shot two National Guard service members — killing one and injuring the other — and another in the hearts and minds of thousands of Afghan evacuees across the United States who now fear collective punishment for crimes they did not commit.

The misfortune has triggered a predictable but overly simplistic political reaction. President Donald Trump called for mass reinvestigations of Afghan refugees, using the attack to question their loyalty. “If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” he declared.

The Trump campaign also announced a pause on processing immigration applications from Afghanistan, and Mr. TM  it would be a grave mistake to let one individual’s crime become an excuse for punishing an entire community. This heinous act must not be used to justify prejudice against Afghan evacuees. Collective punishment is not an American value.

The suspect entered the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that evacuated and resettled roughly 76,000 Afghans following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many of these individuals had worked alongside U.S. troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators, including me. While the program has faced scrutiny from Trump, congressional Republicans and some watchdogs over gaps in vetting and the speed of admissions note that it provided a vital lifeline to people at risk of Taliban reprisals.

But it was disingenuous for the president to use a moment of national trauma to draw parallels between new Afghan arrivals and the fraud being perpetrated by Somali immigrants in Minnesota, where nearly 80 people were charged with pocketing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars intended to feed needy children.

The motive is still unknown, officials are calling it a terror attack, yet the CIA said the man had been part of a CIA-backed Afghan “partner force” in Kandahar province, one of the most dangerous places during the war. As such, he was a Taliban target and thus he and his family were candidates for evacuation after the chaotic U.S. retreat from Afghanistan in 2021.

Understanding this trauma is essential as the U.S. continues to welcome Afghan evacuees. We should respond with compassion, not suspicion. The actions of one individual cannot define an entire community, and American values demand that we treat newcomers with fairness, empathy and humanity.

Some will say this means the U.S. should never admit such refugees, but the alternative is abandoning allies who assisted Americans in war to the retribution of our enemies. The fate of Afghan men and women who worked with the U.S. has often been brutal. You can be sure Americans will fight overseas again, and our troops will need allies on the ground to succeed. How many will assist us if they believe there will be no exit for them if the U.S. leaves with the enemy triumphant?

The Trump Administration said it has paused processing immigration applications from Afghanistan. Trump said the attack justifies his mass deportation policy. But it would be a shame if this single act of betrayal became the excuse for deporting all Afghan refugees in the U.S.

One week after Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush visited a Washington D.C. mosque to explain that Islam was not America’s enemy, and the religion wasn’t represented by the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those attacks prompted the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

That became the country’s longest war, and it continues to have a long tail. Neither of Wednesday’s victims was alive on 9/11. This tragedy deserves full investigation and sober policy fixes, but it must not become a pretext for collective suspicion or mass deportations.

Afghan evacuees came to the United States because they stood with us at a moment of extraordinary danger, and many still carry the scars of that war. Abandoning them now would not make America safer — it would betray the very values that inspired them to help us in the first place. The measure of a nation is how it responds when fear collides with principle. At this moment, the United States should choose principle.

Mr. Trump, you know what will happen. Sending thousands of Afghan evacuees back under Taliban rule would be like throwing them to the wolves. The Taliban’s record of human-rights abuses is well documented. I am not pleading on behalf of any individual who poses a security threat; those cases should be handled to the full extent of U.S. law. I am appealing to you to honor American values and protect those who risked their lives for us. I urge you to reconsider this approach, just as you have reversed course on major decisions in the past.

 

 

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