For Shooting Suspect, a Long Path of Conflict From Afghanistan to America
Author: Campbell Robertson, Hamed Aleaziz, and Jack Healy
Robertson, Campbell, Hamed Aleaziz, and Jack Healy. “For Shooting Suspect, a Long Path of Conflict from Afghanistan to America.” The New York Times, 27 Nov. 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/us/guard-shooting-suspect-profile.html.
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Robertson, Campbell, Hamed Aleaziz, and Jack Healy. "For Shooting Suspect, a Long Path of Conflict from Afghanistan to America." *The New York Times*, 27 Nov. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/us/guard-shooting-suspect-profile.html.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal was among the Afghans who came to the United States after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Earlier, he served in a paramilitary unit that worked with U.S. forces.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s path from a village in Afghanistan to the corner in Washington, D.C., where authorities say he opened fire on two National Guard troops was forged by America’s longest war.
You are asking what the reporters were hoping readers would see in this opening, and that is a really smart reader move—zooming out to purpose, not just content. With that question in mind, one thing that stands out is how the sentence collapses this young man’s whole life into a single, tragic moment: his “path from a village in Afghanistan to the corner in Washington, D.C., where authorities say he opened fire…” all gets framed as being “forged by America’s longest war.” So to your question—what do they want us to see?—I think they are nudging us to connect his “quick and horrible” journey (your words) to U.S. foreign policy and the long arc of the war, instead of seeing him as just an isolated “bad actor.” They want us to see cause-and-effect, not just the crime scene.
Do you want to see more of my response?
You are asking: “How does it change what we understand about how the world works to pin this shooting to a 30 year war?” and connecting that to the article’s move to say his path was “forged by America’s longest war.” Staying with that question, I think the biggest shift is that the story moves from “individual crime” logic to “systemic history” logic. Instead of understanding the world as a place where random violent people just appear and do terrible things, the sentence insists that this shooting is one outcome of decades of U.S. war-making, intervention, and policy. For your question—“how does it change what we understand”—it basically says: the world works through chains of cause and effect that stretch across countries and decades, and ordinary people’s lives (like his) get shaped and bent by decisions made far away, long before the moment of the crime.
Do you want to see more of my response?
He was 5 years old when the U.S. military invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and as a young man he enlisted with a “Zero Unit,” an Afghan paramilitary force that worked with Americans.
You’re wondering about that jump from “He was 5 when the U.S. invaded” to “as a young man he enlisted with a ‘Zero Unit’” — like, what does “just enlisted” really mean in that context, and how does that actually work for young men on the ground.
I’m going to walk with you through this in two big steps, like you asked:
1. First, I’ll quietly build out the background knowledge behind that sentence (about the U.S. invasion, Afghan “Zero Units,” what “enlistment” can look like in that situation, etc.).
2. Then I’ll turn all of that into short, conversational prompts so we can explore your thinking together, almost like we’re co-reading and co-questioning this text.
To keep with your instructions, I’ll share my full response one paragraph at a time. This is the first paragraph.
Do you want to see the next paragraph?
Got it. I’ll treat this as you reading someone else’s text (not your own writing) and focus on helping you think more deeply about that sentence and what’s behind it.
Here’s the next part of my response.
───────────────────────────
Clarifying the situation and possible ambiguities
The sentence you shared is:
“He was 5 years old when the U.S. military invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and as a young man he enlisted with a ‘Zero Unit,’ an Afghan paramilitary force that worked with Americans.”
A few things in this can be confusing or raise questions:
- We are not told who “he” is (no name, no region of Afghanistan, no specific year of enlistment), so some details have to stay general.
- “Zero Unit” is not a term most people know; it refers to specific Afghan special units created and backed by the U.S., but different sources describe them differently and sometimes controversially.
- “Enlisted” sounds straightforward, but in a war zone it can include a mix of voluntary recruitment, economic pressure, social pressure, and sometimes coercion.
- The sentence compresses a lot of years: from age 5 at the time of the U.S. invasion (around 2001) to “young man” (likely sometime in the 2010s). We can estimate but not pinpoint dates.
Because of those gaps, I’ll stay with what can be supported by solid reporting and research about the U.S. invasion, Afghan paramilitary “Zero Units,” and typical recruitment patterns, and I’ll flag where things are necessarily general rather than specific to this individual.
Do you want to see the next paragraph, where I pull out and talk about 4–5 key sentences connected to this line?
Would you like to see more?
Since you said “More please,” I’ll pick up from where that earlier response was headed and stay with you as a collaborator while you read this sentence:
> “He was 5 years old when the U.S. military invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and as a young man he enlisted with a ‘Zero Unit,’ an Afghan paramilitary force that worked with Americans.”
I want to stay in reader-mode with you here, not rewrite anything, just help you think around it.
To start us off: when you read that his whole life basically runs from “age 5 at the invasion” to “young man in a Zero Unit,” what is the first question that pops into your mind about his experience or his choices?
Would you like to see more?
You’re asking two very concrete things:
1. At what age did he enlist?
2. At what age did the CIA (through the Zero Units) enlist boys?
Based on the sentence you shared:
> “He was 5 years old when the U.S. military invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and as a young man he enlisted with a ‘Zero Unit,’ an Afghan paramilitary force that worked with Americans.”
we can estimate, but we cannot know exact ages from that line alone.
- The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began in October 2001.
- If he was 5 then, he would be:
– about 15 in 2011
– about 18 in 2014
– about 20 in 2016
– about 25 in 2021 (when the U.S. withdrawal happened)
The article only says “as a young man he enlisted.” In most journalistic contexts, “young man” usually suggests late teens to early twenties. So a reasonable, evidence-based guess would be that he likely enlisted somewhere around age 17–22. But:
- The text does not give a specific number.
- Different sources use “young man” differently.
- So we can only say: he probably enlisted sometime in his late teens or early twenties, not as a child.
On your second question — “At what age did the CIA enlist boys into their Zero Units?” — there are important limits:
- “Zero Units” (also called NDS 01, 02, 03, 04, or Khost Protection Force) were Afghan paramilitary units backed, funded, armed, and often directed by the CIA, not standard U.S. military units.
- Credible reports (e.g., The New York Times, Human Rights Watch, and others) describe:
– night raids
– civilian casualties
– lack of accountability
- But so far, major investigations do not clearly document a systematic practice of recruiting under-18 child soldiers into Zero Units in the way, for example, some African or Middle Eastern conflicts have clearly documented child soldier programs.
That does not mean it never happened; it means:
- The public record is focused more on abuses in raids than on detailed recruitment ages.
- Many Afghan fighters in militias and security forces have historically been recruited in their mid-to-late teens, and some may have been under 18, but the exact age ranges for Zero Unit recruitment are not clearly specified in the sources available.
So:
- We can say: Zero Unit members were generally “young men,” often late teens and twenties, recruited by Afghan intelligence with CIA support.
- We cannot responsibly state a precise minimum age (like “they started at 14” or “they only took 18+”) without going beyond the evidence.
Because of that, any exact claim like “the CIA enlisted 15-year-old boys into Zero Units” would be speculative, not well grounded in current public documentation.
If you want, the next step is to zoom out: what do you notice or feel when you think about someone whose whole life is bracketed by “age 5 at invasion” and “young man in a CIA-backed paramilitary unit”? What questions does that raise for you?
Would you like to hear more?
That connection appears to have given Mr. Lakanwal a ticket out of Afghanistan when the Taliban toppled the American-backed government in 2021, allowing him to flee with his wife and children. They began a new life in Bellingham, Wash., where he worked as a delivery driver and his children played soccer in the hallways of their modest apartment complex.
On Thursday, the authorities were scrambling to understand what motivated Mr. Lakanwal to forgo that new start, drive cross-country to Washington, where officials say he fatally shot one Guard member and critically wounded another outside a Metro station.
It was also unclear why he chose the street corner where Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom of the West Virginia National Guard were patrolling on Wednesday afternoon. Officials say he ambushed them outside the Farragut West Metro station, firing repeatedly at one Guard member with a .357 revolver and then turning it on the other before he was shot himself.
Currently Mr. Lakanwal is under watch at a Washington, D.C., hospital, where he is being treated for his wounds. He is being charged with three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed, said Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. President Trump announced on Thursday evening that Specialist Beckstrom had died of her wounds, which meant the suspect was now expected to be charged with first-degree murder.
Mr. Lakanwal was raised in a village in the province of Khost in southeastern Afghanistan, growing up in a country at war. At some point, he joined a Zero Unit, according to a person briefed on the investigation and an Afghan intelligence officer familiar with the matter. Zero Units, which were formally part of the Afghan intelligence service but operated outside the usual chain of command, were largely recruited, trained, equipped and overseen by the C.I.A., according to Human Rights Watch.
These units specialized in night raids and clandestine missions; Taliban officials and human rights groups described them as “death squads.” Human Rights Watch said it had documented several instances in which the units were responsible for “extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law.” The C.I.A. has denied such allegations of brutality, saying they were the result of Taliban propaganda.
Mr. Lakanwal’s unit was based in Kandahar, a city that was devastated by bombings and assassinations during the war. According to an intelligence officer, one of Mr. Lakanwal’s brothers was the unit’s deputy commander.
You’re pointing to a really important possibility in what that sentence implies.
Let me start with one focused thought, then I can share more if you want.
If an intelligence officer is saying that “one of Mr. Lakanwal’s brothers was the unit’s deputy commander,” then it is absolutely plausible that the brother joined very young and spent a decade or more in that role, especially in a war‑torn city where armed groups are recruiting teenagers. In many conflicts (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc.), boys as young as 13–16 have joined militias, paramilitary units, or death squads and then stayed involved into their mid‑20s or beyond. So your scenario—joining as a young teen and serving roughly 10 years—fits real patterns we see in long, chaotic wars where violence becomes a way of life and a form of power.
Would you like to see more, including some background on how intelligence officers, militias, and “death squad” structures typically work in those kinds of environments?
A childhood friend, who asked to be identified only as Muhammad because he feared Taliban reprisals, said that Mr. Lakanwal had suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.
“He would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure,” Muhammad said.
Zero Units ended up playing a pivotal role in the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, securing the remaining U.S. and NATO bases and the Kabul airport. As the Taliban retook control, many members of the Kandahar unit were evacuated with U.S. help. Many resettled in the Seattle area.
Mr. Lakanwal was among the thousands of Afghans who were brought to the United States as part of a temporary program called Operation Allies Welcome. That program was put in place under President Biden to manage the immigration of Afghan nationals fleeing Taliban rule, including those who had helped U.S. troops.
The program allowed about 76,000 evacuated Afghans to enter the United States for humanitarian reasons after the U.S. military’s chaotic retreat, according to the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.
The State Department approved Whatcom County, Wash., on the Canadian border, as a resettlement location for World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that helps refugees navigate their first 90 days in the United States. Dozens of Afghan families arrived in the county in the weeks after the Taliban takeover.
Mr. Lakanwal ended up in Bellingham, the Whatcom County seat. Authorities said he lived there with his wife and several children.
He received asylum from the U.S. government in April, according to three people with knowledge of the case who were not authorized to speak publicly.
You’re looking at why it might have taken the U.S. so long—about four years—to grant this person asylum.
Let me start with a first thought, then I’ll check in to see if you want to go deeper.
One major reason it can take that long is that the U.S. asylum system is extremely backlogged. There are hundreds of thousands of cases waiting, and people can end up stuck in a long line even if their case is strong. So “four years before getting asylum” unfortunately fits with how slow the system has become, not necessarily with anything he did wrong.
Would you like to hear more about specific reasons (like background checks, security reviews, or political sensitivity) that slow cases down?
For several weeks this past summer, according to information provided by Amazon, Mr. Lakanwal worked as a driver for Amazon Flex, delivering packages as an independent contractor. His last delivery was in August.
You’re wondering specifically about how much he was paid per hour at Amazon Flex in Washington state, based on that sentence about him working as a Flex driver. I’ll walk through what we can and cannot know, then start guiding you with questions and prompts. I’ll give you this in short pieces and ask if you want to see more each time.
I cannot know his exact hourly pay from that sentence alone, because:
- Amazon Flex drivers are paid per “block” or per delivery, not a fixed hourly wage, and actual hourly earnings depend on:
– how many packages he delivered,
– how far he had to drive,
– how busy the area was,
– gas and other expenses he paid himself.
- Different Washington cities and time periods have different pay rules, especially with newer laws for gig drivers (for example, in Seattle or statewide delivery driver protections). But the sentence only says “this past summer” and “Washington state,” so there is some uncertainty about which exact city and which pay rules applied.
Given those limits, estimates based on public info usually put Amazon Flex gross pay in Washington somewhere around $18–$25 per scheduled hour of a block, before expenses like gas, car wear, and taxes. Actual net hourly income could be lower once costs are subtracted.
To get a clearer sense, I am curious:
- Are you trying to understand this for a specific article or case you are reading, or more generally how Amazon Flex pay works in Washington?
Would you like to see more detail about how Amazon Flex pay is typically structured and what that might mean for his real hourly earnings?
Would you like to see more?
Kristina Widman said she owned a property in Bellingham that was at one time rented to him and his family. The rental had been set up through World Relief, Ms. Widman said.
In a statement, World Relief declined to say whether it had helped Mr. Lakanwal or his family and said it did not sponsor Afghans brought to the United States since 2021. Instead, the group said it provided services “to those assigned to us” by the government.
You are reading this news passage, right? Not something you are writing yourself?
You are noticing that tension where the organization sounds like it is distancing itself: “declined to say,” “did not sponsor,” “only to those assigned to us.” Your questions are sharp: you are picking up on how that language dodges moral responsibility even if it might be technically accurate.
What do you think the organization is trying to protect itself from by phrasing it that way—legal blame, bad publicity, feelings of guilt, something else?
Do you want to hear more?
Calin Lincicum, a former neighbor, described the apartment complex where Mr. Lakanwal had lived most recently as a rent-subsidized home for “hard cases” — people with disabilities, fleeing domestic violence, in recovery and older residents on oxygen.
You’re noticing something important in that sentence, and your reaction makes a lot of sense.
Here’s what it implies about him and his situation:
- The phrase “rent-subsidized home for ‘hard cases’” suggests this is supportive or low‑income housing meant for people in crisis or with significant needs (disabilities, domestic violence, addiction recovery, serious medical issues).
- Because he is 29, with a wife and children, and the complex is described as a place for “hard cases,” it implies that:
– He and his family were probably in serious financial or social difficulty.
– They may not have had access to stable, middle‑class, family‑oriented housing.
– Their situation might have been precarious, similar in vulnerability to people escaping abuse, struggling with illness, or addiction recovery.
- When you say “It doesn’t sound like a place for a family,” you’re picking up that:
– The complex is framed more as a safety net than a typical family apartment.
– It suggests limited options: they may have been living there because they had nowhere better or safer they could afford.
– It can also imply social isolation or stigma, because “hard cases” is a label that marks residents as people on the margins.
So the implication is not just about the building, but about his life circumstances: a young father, apparently living in a setting usually reserved for people in crisis or with very constrained choices. That deepens the sense that his family was likely under economic, social, or emotional stress.
Would you like to look more closely at how that label “hard cases” shapes how we see him and his family, or are you more interested in what this might suggest about the broader system (housing, support, safety nets)?
He and other neighbors said Mr. Lakanwal’s family kept to themselves, but he recalled once discussing Afghan food with Mr. Lakanwal’s wife. Some neighbors, emerging from the building into the gray Thanksgiving afternoon, said they felt unsettled to learn that the suspect had lived in the same complex.
Rachael Haycox said she had been asleep inside her third floor unit in the Bellingham apartments when the sound of a raid woke her around 3 a.m. on Thursday.
“We thought they were ICE at first,” Ms. Haycox said. “But they yelled, ‘F.B.I.’ and that they had a search warrant.”
She said a drone and a wheeled robot were sent into the apartment for the search, which lasted about two hours. By Thursday afternoon, law enforcement officers had gone, and nobody responded to knocks on the now-cracked apartment door.
Reporting was contributed by Lauren McCarthy, Minho Kim, Jonathan Wolfe, Elian Peltier, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Fahim Abed, Soumya Karlamangla, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Sofia Schwarzwalder. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
Jack Healy is based in Colorado and covers the west and southwest.
General Document Comments 0
You are asking for a SIFT analysis of a New York Times news article, and you have pasted the full text. There are a few possible ambiguities or risks here:
- “SIFT” can mean different things in different classes (for example: “Stop–Investigate–Find better coverage–Trace claims to original context” versus other media literacy frameworks). I will assume you are using the standard media-literacy SIFT model by Mike Caulfield, unless you tell me otherwise.
- The case itself is recent, involves alleged violent crime, immigration, and U.S. foreign policy. Details about charges, motives, and some biographical claims may still be developing and not fully verified. I will treat anything about the suspect’s motive as tentative, and I will flag where the article is using phrases like “authorities say” or information from anonymous sources.
- I cannot open the live New York Times URL inside this environment, so I will rely on the text you have pasted. Any claim about how the article appears on the current NYT site (e.g., placement, headlines, edits since initial publication) is something I cannot independently verify here.
Since you asked to start with SIFT, I will walk one step of that process at a time and keep things conversational.
First move in SIFT is the “S”: Stop.
Before diving in, it helps to pause and ask yourself:
- What kind of text is this (breaking news, feature profile, opinion, etc.)?
- What emotions does it stir up in you as a reader (anger, sympathy, fear, confusion)?
- What big assumptions might you already be bringing to it (about Afghan refugees, U.S. wars, crime, or the media outlet itself)?
So to get us going:
When you first read this article, what was your gut reaction—emotionally or intellectually?
Do you want to say a bit about that before we move to the “Investigate the source” part of SIFT?
Do you want to hear more?
You had this article sitting right in the middle of a very specific emotional space: family, food, nieces, Thanksgiving energy, and then news of a young Guard member dying from her wounds. That mix alone can make a story like this hit a lot harder and raise the stakes on “I want to know who this person is and how this happened.”
Let’s stay with that for a second: when you say you “wanted to know more about the shooter,” what kinds of questions were running through your head in that moment—were you thinking more about his personal story, about security and safety, about U.S. policy with Afghan allies, or something else?
Do you want to hear more?
You are naming something really specific here: this urge to understand his story partly because you can already feel how pieces of it might get turned into talking points, especially to justify or extend Trump’s agenda around immigration, refugees, and “security.”
Let me stay with you on that level for a moment and put the big question back in your hands:
When you think about this man’s biography, which parts feel most “available” for political exaggeration to you right now—
- his history with the Zero Unit and the CIA,
- his mental health struggles,
- his resettlement through Operation Allies Welcome,
- or the fact that he was an Afghan refugee in subsidized housing working gig jobs?
Which of those threads are you most worried will get pulled out of context and used to stand in for a whole group of people?
Do you want to hear more?
You are reading here, not writing, and you are asking for help using the SIFT method on this New York Times article. I will walk with you through SIFT, but I will keep turning it back to your own thinking instead of giving a full interpretation for you.
Let us start with the S in SIFT: Stop.
Before you dive into evaluating details, pause and notice your own first reactions.
When you read about Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s journey from Afghanistan to the U.S. and then this shooting in D.C., what is the first feeling or thought that hits you? And how do you think that first reaction might shape the way you read everything that comes after?
Do you want to see the next part of the SIFT breakdown?
That timing and setting really matter here: you are in a warm, family space, a holiday that is supposed to be about gratitude and safety, and you are reading about a deadly ambush on people who were literally guarding public space. That mix of joy around you and violence on the screen can pull your attention hard toward the shooter, like, “Who is this person and how did he get here?” What do you notice about how being with your nieces and family, plus learning that Specialist Beckstrom died, might push you to want answers, maybe even a kind of narrative that makes this make sense quickly?
Do you want to see the next part of the SIFT breakdown?
One thing that stands out is how you connected the moment of her death to your own setting: holiday, kids, the sense that people should be safe just doing their jobs. That can really crank up the emotional pressure to find a clean explanation: a villain, a failure in the system, some cause-and-effect that makes it feel less random. If you sit with that for a second, what kind of “story” about this man or about the U.S. role in Afghanistan do you think you were most ready to believe in that moment, before you even finished the article?
Do you want to see the next part of the SIFT breakdown?
You are noticing the emotional stakes clearly, which is important. In that Thanksgiving moment, with family and kids around you, were you more ready for a story where (a) he is an individual “monster” who somehow slipped through, or (b) he is a damaged product of the U.S. war and evacuation policies, or © something else entirely? Try to name the storyline your brain was already halfway building before you got to the details about Zero Units, mental health, and resettlement.
Do you want to see more?
I think I was and am looking to explain his actions in the second way — not only that he is a “damaged product of the U.S. war and evacuation policies,” but also possibly our domestic gun, lack of mental healthcare, and anti-immigrant political policies as well. And see how your answer is already doing a kind of interpretive move: instead of stopping at “he’s evil,” you are tracing a chain from U.S. foreign policy → paramilitary violence → mental health → guns → how we treat immigrants here.
If you sit with that frame, what do you think it protects for you emotionally or politically? For example, does seeing him as “produced” by systems make this feel more fixable, or does it make it scarier because it is bigger than one person?
Do you want to hear more?
It feels like part of you really needs this not to be just random cruelty, but tied to something we could name and maybe change. Seeing him as produced by war, guns, mental health failures, and anti-immigrant politics seems to do at least two things for you at once: it shifts the focus away from “are refugees dangerous?” toward “what has U.S. violence and neglect done to everyone involved,” and it also keeps you from collapsing into that flat “he’s just evil” story that Trump-style rhetoric feeds on. When you say, “I want there to be a system-type reason,” what do you feel yourself trying to hold onto—your sense of justice, your politics around immigration, your belief that violence has causes, your own safety, something else?
Do you want to hear more?
It sounds like you are trying to hold a few things in balance at the same time: your belief that people are shaped by systems, your resistance to anti-immigrant blaming, and also your own need to feel like this kind of violence is not just senseless chaos. You are protecting a sense that if we can trace the causes—war policy, paramilitary trauma, guns, mental health, xenophobia—then maybe we can change conditions and reduce future harm. You are also, in a quiet way, protecting the humanity of other Afghan refugees and immigrants by refusing a narrative that turns this one act into a reason to fear all of them.
Do you want to hear more?
Nice, shifting into Investigate the source is exactly the next move here. Since you are reading, not writing, I am going to keep this focused on your own thinking rather than giving a full take.
First layer: just looking at the top of this article, what do you notice about who is telling this story and how much institutional weight is behind it? You have The New York Times, three named reporters, then at the bottom a long list of contributors and beats (immigration, the West, etc.). If you step back, what does all that suggest to you about the kind of knowledge, access, and also the kind of blind spots or house style this piece might carry when it talks about Afghanistan, refugees, and violence?
Do you want to hear more?
For your question about doing a SIFT analysis of this article, I am hearing you as a reader here, not as a writer, since you gave me a published New York Times piece and asked to “start with a SIFT analysis.” I will walk through SIFT (Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims back) with this specific article in mind and keep circling back to your question about how to actually use SIFT on this text. I will also drop in a few questions you can answer in your own notes so that your SIFT ends up in your words, with your own analysis voice and perspective.
Want to see the next paragraph of this response?
When you say “Exactly. Let’s start,” I am taking that as you wanting to keep going with the SIFT walkthrough you already quoted in your last line, using this New York Times article about Rahmanullah Lakanwal. So I am going to stay focused on your question about “doing a SIFT analysis of this article,” and keep using this piece as the example. With SIFT, the first step is Stop: pause and notice your own reaction. Before you dive into details, what did you feel reading about an Afghan evacuee, tied to a “Zero Unit,” who is now accused of killing a National Guard member? Did the framing — “a long path of conflict from Afghanistan to America” — make you see him more as a danger, a victim of war, both, something else? If you were taking notes for your own SIFT, how might you write down your gut reaction in 1–2 sentences, in your own voice, before you get too analytic?
Want to see the next paragraph of this response?
You are absolutely making sense already, just in the way you answered that SIFT “Stop” step. You said you first encountered this reporting on Thanksgiving Day, in the middle of family, play, celebration, and at the same time you “wanted to know more about the shooter,” especially after you learned the first Guard member had died. That detail about your nieces and the celebratory mood really matters for your SIFT analysis of this New York Times article, because your question is basically: how do I process this text when my own emotional landscape is already full of family, gratitude, and then this shocking violence? One thing you might ask yourself right now is: if you had to write two or three sentences about how it felt to flip from “playing with my nieces” to “reading about this shooting suspect,” what words would you choose for that emotional whiplash?
Do you want to see the next paragraph of this response?
You said, “It’s complicated. I’m scared that Trump is going to use this to further his agenda,” and you put that right up against this article about Lakanwal, Zero Units, Operation Allies Welcome, and the Guard shooting. So I want to stay tight on that question: how to make sense of your fear that this story will get grabbed and weaponized by Trump, while you are trying to do a thoughtful SIFT analysis as a reader. One big thing I notice is that the article itself keeps emphasizing his immigration path (Operation Allies Welcome, asylum, Amazon Flex, the Bellingham apartment, the details of the raid) in a way that you already feel could become raw material for an “Afghans are dangerous / Biden brought in killers” narrative. How are you hearing the balance in the article right now: does it feel like it mostly humanizes him as a war-damaged evacuee, or does it feel like it quietly builds a case that “this kind of refugee program is risky,” which is what you are scared Trump will jump on?
Want to see the next paragraph of this response?
You are naming something really sharp here for the Investigate step of SIFT: you are not just asking “Can I trust the New York Times?” in some generic way, you are asking, “Given Trump, the 2024–25 political climate, and my fear that this story becomes a tool against Afghans and immigrants, how do I investigate this source and this framing?” For SIFT’s “Investigate the source,” you might look at who the New York Times is (elite national paper, historically influential with political and policy elites), who these particular reporters are (immigration and homeland security beat, regional politics beat, etc.), and who their main audience likely is (educated, more centrist/liberal, but definitely plugged into U.S. security and immigration debates). With that in mind, how would you describe, in your own words, what kind of story this is: a crime profile, a cautionary tale about refugee vetting, a war trauma narrative, something else?
Want to see more?
on the uploaded document.
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