America’s forgotten fighters are not a new phenomenon. Pakistan has watched this cycle for more than forty years, and the story of Rahmanullah Lakanwal is only the latest chapter. He is not the anomaly people in Washington think he is. He is the outcome of a system that trains men for its wars, uses them until the mission ends, and forgets them the moment they step out of uniform.
Lakanwal was once considered a hero. He fought inside a CIA-backed Afghan counterterrorism unit, the kind of force American Marines trusted with their own lives. Then he came to the United States as an asylum seeker. A year later he was living in a darkened room, unable to function, shattered by PTSD that no one treated. And then came the shooting that turned him into a headline Americans could fear. A terrorist. A foreigner. A convenient symbol.
I once heard an old Afghan mechanic near Karachi’s Jauhar Morr talk about his cousin who served with American forces. A quiet man, hands trembling when he lit his cigarette, saying, “We helped them. Then the help ended.” His voice had that tired flatness you only hear in people who have been carrying something far too heavy, far too long.
The Pattern Pakistan Has Seen Before
America’s forgotten fighters did not begin in 2025. This story stretches back to the 1980s when Washington armed the Mujahideen against the Soviets. Once the war ended, those fighters were left to drift between Pakistan and Afghanistan with weapons, trauma, and no future. Some became warlords. Some became militants. Many became ghosts in their own homes. Pakistan ended up paying the price for decades.
The same pattern followed the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghan Commandos and CIA-trained units fought beside Americans for years. When the United States withdrew in 2021, many of them were executed by the Taliban. Others escaped and begged for asylum in the West. A few reached America. Then they disappeared into the machinery of daily survival, their trauma untreated, their names forgotten until one of them snapped.
Lakanwal fits this pattern exactly. He was America’s soldier when the fighting suited the empire. He became America’s burden when peace arrived.
My father once told me about a neighbour we had in Karachi in the mid-80s — a thin, polite Afghan man who barely spoke. He had fought in the Soviet war, arrived in Pakistan with nothing, and lived with a kind of haunted silence. He used to sit on the steps at night, staring at the road as if waiting for something that would not return. My father said, “War does not leave a man. Even when he leaves the war.”
The Collapse No One Wanted to See
The emails about Lakanwal’s mental health are chilling. They describe a man unable to speak to his family, unable to work, unable to sleep. A man who spent weeks in darkness. A man driving aimlessly through Washington state during manic episodes. And a system that watched it unfold and did nothing.
America calls this terrorism. But the story is simpler and sadder. A fighter shaped by America’s wars collapsed inside America’s borders, and no one picked him up.
This is exactly what happened to many Pakistani veterans too. Men who fought in proxy wars and returned home broken while the foreign powers that trained them vanished from the scene. Families picked up the pieces. Communities carried the shame.
I remember sitting at a chai dhaba near Hasan Square where an ex-soldier from Waziristan told me, almost casually, that he could not sleep without the fan humming loudly because silence reminded him of ambush nights. He stirred his tea slowly and said, “People think war ends. It does not. It just follows you home.”
Why Deporting His Family Is Another Act of Betrayal
No one denies that two National Guard members died. Their loss is real. Their families are grieving. But to deport Lakanwal’s wife and five children to a country where they could be persecuted for his work inside a CIA-run unit is a second punishment layered on top of the first. It shows the cold logic of a state that enjoys loyalty during war and discards the loyal when the war is over.
Pakistan knows how that feels. Afghan families who helped NATO forces found themselves hunted after the withdrawal. Many tried to flee to Pakistan. Some were welcomed. Many were not. The West made promises. Then it broke them.
This is what America’s forgotten fighters always leave behind: widows, children, communities living with the consequences of someone else’s strategic choices.
A few months after the 2021 Kabul collapse, I stood near a bakery in Saddar watching a newly arrived Afghan family — the mother, thin as a reed, clutching documents, the children gripping plastic bags of clothes. They were waiting for someone who never showed up. That helpless shuffle of feet on the pavement stays with me. Families pay for wars they never chose.
The Real Question: Who Made Him and Who Broke Him?
The tragedy is not that America misjudged him. The tragedy is that America made him. They trained him, deployed him, praised him, abandoned him, and finally labeled him. A hero in Kabul. A danger in Washington. The shift was political, not moral. And Pakistan has seen that shift too many times.
If Americans want accountability, they must look at the full chain. Who turned this man into a weapon. Who left him alone with the damage. Who ignored the emails. Who turned a broken fighter into a political slogan.
A society that recruits proxy fighters cannot pretend innocence when those fighters come home shattered.
Every few years Karachi absorbs another wave of people carrying someone else’s war on their backs. You can see it in their eyes in Empress Market, or in the way they sit quietly on the local bus, clutching their documents like fragile lifelines. Wars end on paper. Not in people.
Closing Thought
Lakanwal’s story is tragic, but it is not unique. He is part of a long line of men who fought for an empire and were forgotten by it. Pakistan watched this happen for decades. Perhaps this time, Americans will recognise the pattern before another family pays the price.
America’s forgotten fighters are not going away. They are a consequence of America’s wars, and consequences always return home.