LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
The suspect in last week's shooting of two National Guard members is an Afghan national. He also had high-level military training - training that he received from the U.S. government, specifically the CIA. For more on this, we're joined now by Steve Coll, senior editor at The Economist and author of multiple books about Afghanistan and the intelligence community. Welcome to the program.
STEVE COLL: Oh, thanks for having me.
FRAYER: So this suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was allegedly part of one of the so-called Zero Units. What can you tell us about those units?
COLL: Well, they evolved out of the CIA's role in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Of course, the principal reason that the U.S. went into Afghanistan was to attack and disrupt al-Qaida, the stateless terrorist group that was based in Afghanistan and that carried out the 9/11 assaults. And to do that, once they got on the ground, the CIA recruited local militias to fight al-Qaida units and their allies in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan, primarily, also in the south of Afghanistan.
So these groups evolved into something called, formally, the counterterrorist pursuit teams. They were militias. They were recruited on the basis of tribal or social identity, extended family. They were trained, armed and paid directly by the CIA. They never became part of the Afghan government that evolved after the U.S. invasion, and they operated in alliance with that government but under CIA advice and with CIA support. They became called the Zero Units because over time, their mission evolved and their size grew, and some of the units were designated as zero-three, zero-two and so forth.
FRAYER: And what kind of reputation did they have? Some human rights groups have called them death squads, though the CIA, I think, has disputed that characterization.
COLL: Yes. I mean, they were lethal. They were trained to attack specific terrorist targets for the most part. They started out focused on al-Qaida. As the war changed, their mission changed, and they became involved in the war against the Taliban. When the Taliban - the guerrilla movement that was overthrown by the United States - in late 2001, it revived itself, of course, and by 2007 or so, it was waging a full-scale insurgency. And at that stage, a lot of the war was being carried by American troops that came in, their Afghan allies in the formal army that were being trained up. But these Zero Units were kind of the sharp edge of the spear.
Human rights groups did report on atrocities that were attributed to these groups. The CIA often said that this was just Taliban propaganda. But what we do know is that they were highly effective and cohesive, and the Taliban feared them more than any other unit in the war. And indeed, at the end of the war, during the evacuation, the Taliban wanted these units, which now numbered about 10 to 12,000 men under arms. So they were not small in size. They wanted them out of Afghanistan because while they could absorb a lot of the Afghan army and incorporate it into a new Taliban regime, they didn't think that they could digest these groups that they had been fighting so viciously for so long.
FRAYER: And in August 2021, as you mentioned, the Taliban retook Afghanistan. You know, I remember those chaotic scenes of the U.S. pulling out. So what did happen to these elite Afghan units that were left behind?
COLL: Well, they weren't left behind. They ended up being evacuated. So as you'll recall, in that chaotic spring and summer, a lot of the Afghan army and even some of its elite units dissolved. They defected. They left the country. They went home. They turned tail and - I mean, they turned sides and fought for the Taliban. The Zero Units and some other commando units were about the only part of the Afghan armed forces that held together right to the end. And so some of these Zero Units during the last days were evacuated from their forward bases in the east and the south to Hamid Karzai International Airport, the scene of the chaotic evacuation. And they were put to work providing security.
First, they cleared the airfield of civilians who were charging through the fences, and then they provided perimeter security down to the last days of the evacuation. At - the Biden administration made a decision somewhat late to put them on the planes and to evacuate them. And so they were allowed also to bring family members. The typical figure that's given for the total evacuation of Afghans from that August chaos is about 120,000 thereabouts. And what we now know is that tens of thousands of that number was made up of these Zero Units and people that they had brought in as their relatives.
FRAYER: Could or should the U.S. have handled that differently?
COLL: Well, it was a - these were the closest allies that the United States had among them. They faced retribution if they stayed in Afghanistan. The Taliban had made clear they wanted them to leave, so it was a decision that was made late. They weren't brought directly to the United States. They were brought to other countries, then vetted, and many of them were then admitted to the United States.
FRAYER: That's journalist Steve Coll of The Economist. Thank you.
COLL: Glad to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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