CONFLICTED: “The CIA’s Zero Units in Afghanistan”

Message Heard | Feb 10, 2026
Hosts: Aimen Dean & (likely) Jake Warren

Episode Overview

This episode of CONFLICTED dives deep into the murky history, operational reality, and aftermath of the CIA’s “Zero Units”—elite Afghan paramilitary teams created, funded, and directed by the American intelligence services during the war in Afghanistan. Hosts Aimen Dean (former Al Qaeda jihadi turned MI6 asset) and his co-host (possibly Jake Warren) blend personal experience with rigorous analysis, unpacking a painful legacy: the psychological toll, moral ambiguities, and real-world consequences for both Afghans and Americans. The discussion is sparked by a recent shooting in Washington, D.C., involving a former Zero Unit member, and uses that tragedy as a prism for understanding the roots and repercussions of these clandestine operations.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The DC Shooting: A Tragic Catalyst

• [06:01] The episode opens with a detailed recounting of a shooting incident in Washington, D.C. (Nov 26, 2025), where Rahmanullah Lakhinwal, a 29-year-old former operative from the Kandahar Strike Force (Unit 303, one of the Zero Units), killed a National Guard member and severely wounded another.
• Lakhinwal entered the U.S. under “Operation Allies Welcome,” a humanitarian parole program in 2021 and was later granted asylum.
• Hosts — notably, Aimen — stress the importance of avoiding broad-brush demonization based on this individual tragedy but use it to spotlight the psychic trauma and complicated legacy of U.S. proxies.

Aimen Dean [08:30]: “You can't train people to be killers, especially within the Afghan context … if you train these people to be killers from young age … it means he killed high value people.”

2. The Psychological Toll: From Killers to Refugees

• [09:28] - [12:27] In-depth discussion about the deep psychological “baggage” these operatives carry:
  • Many young men, raised in a war-haunted society, were then sharpened into tools of assassination and clandestine violence.
  • Lack of meaningful psychological support or psychiatric evaluation when transitioning to civilian life in the West.

Aimen Dean [12:27]: “It would have been kinder … if they have established just a psychiatric facility in a very nice place near Munich … for psychiatric treatment … you broke them into killers and assassins. You fix them.”

• The transition for these men—from the adrenaline-fueled violence of night raids to the mundane anxieties of Western life—was poorly managed.

3. Why Join? Motives Behind Afghan Recruits

• [17:00] Hosts challenge the idealistic narrative that all Zero Unit members were motivated by patriotism or hopes for modernity in Afghanistan.
  • Financial desperation and limited economic opportunity were the key drivers.
  • Even those with better intentions became disillusioned by America's fumbling and eventual abandonment.

Aimen Dean [17:00]: “Afghanistan was a shithole and still is … the idea that they were serving their country … many of them were in it for the money, let's be honest about it.”

• Feelings of betrayal were acute when the U.S. departed, leaving their associates to uncertainty.

4. The CIA’s Long Presence in Afghanistan

• [19:00] - [23:07] The CIA’s involvement predated even the Soviet invasion, stretching back to the 1970s, via alliances with tribal and anti-communist militias.
• Over decades, CIA-backed groups evolved from the Mujahideen to anti-Taliban factions to the formal Zero Units.
• The CIA’s insistence on maintaining these militias, often against the wishes of nation-building coalitions, set up later conflicts and controversies.

Podcast Host [23:07]: “Originally, these black ops teams … did involve US servicemen directly … but from around 2009 onwards, the targets … increasingly focused on a resurgent Taliban.”

5. The Structure & Geography of the “Zero Units”

• [27:52] Breakdown of the main CIA-backed units:
  • Unit 1: Kabul & Central Region (fighting mainline Taliban)
  • Unit 2: Nangarhar & Eastern Region (Pakistani Taliban, ISKP)
  • Unit 3 (Kandahar Strike Force): Southern Afghanistan (Kandahar, Helmand; Pashtun heartland; Lakhinwal’s unit)
  • Unit 4: Nuristan, Kunar, Northeastern Provinces (ISIS)
  • Khost Protection Force: AFPAK border (Haqqani Network)

Aimen Dean [30:11]: “The CIA were blind without them. I mean, you can't navigate Afghanistan without Afghan navigators.”

6. Moral Ambiguity & Human Rights

• [33:15] - [36:19] Both hosts underline that the conflict was not a simplistic “good vs. evil” picture. The US and its proxies were complicit in corruption, drug trafficking, and violence, as were the Taliban.
• Zero Units: accused by Human Rights Watch of “extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes ...”
• Americans increasingly outsourced the dirtiest tasks to Afghan hands, a strategy critiqued for its underlying cynicism and the toll it took on those recruited.

Aimen Dean [36:19]: “You recruit equally vicious people to go and take them out because you don't want your nice white hands to get blood on them.”

7. The Aftermath: Abandonment, Processing, and “Halfway House” Solutions

• [39:27] - [47:08]
  • The Doha Agreement made no mention of America’s Afghan allies, public or secret.
  • CIA attempted to retain a regional network even after withdrawal.
  • Many evacuees were processed through third-country facilities (notably a highly functional camp in Bavaria, Germany), where they received psychological and logistics support.
  • Rejections for asylum were often rationalized as lack of “points” or insufficient service, or suspected Taliban links. Some who were rejected were resettled elsewhere; others offered cash to return.

Aimen Dean [44:04]: “Many of the Afghans who left then to the US said that those six to 12 weeks they were spending in that camp were the best of their lives.”

8. The Cost of Betrayal: America’s Reputation and War’s Sordid Logic

• [47:12 - 49:26] The question of American honor—do they owe loyalty to those who fought at their side, and what are the consequences for future alliances if that loyalty is not honored?
  • Aimen is fatalistic: the U.S. may have a reputation for betrayal, but poverty will always push desperate people to align with foreign powers.
  • The real problem is the enduring, systemic destructiveness of war itself.

Aimen Dean [48:48]: “I'm sorry, it's a depressing and disgusting world, but that's the reality. … as long as we humans glorify war … there will always be people who will take whatever paycheck that will come their way because they need it.”

Notable & Memorable Quotes

• Aimen Dean [08:30]: “You can't train people to be killers … and then expect that basically when you bring them into a western environment, that everything will be fine, you know?”
• Podcast Host [23:07]: “It’s really like Zero Dark Thirty kind of stuff. … bursting into a compound, guns blazing, you know, trying to find that bomb maker that you’ve tracked down.”
• Aimen Dean [36:19]: “When you send them there into the field, pumped, adrenaline completely overtaking their senses, fear is what dictates their judgment … there will be civilian casualties, inevitably.”
• Aimen Dean [48:22]: “First of all, already America's reputation have been tattered … since they sold their allies in Vietnam down the Mekong river … but yet they will always find allies. Do you know why? Poverty.”

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------|---------------| | DC Shooting & Zero Units Introduction | 06:00 – 10:28 | | Psychological Toll & Vetting Failure | 10:28 – 15:19 | | Motives for Fighting | 17:00 – 19:00 | | CIA’s Early Involvement | 19:00 – 23:07 | | Evolution of Zero Units | 27:52 – 33:15 | | Human Rights & Moral Complexity | 33:15 – 38:55 | | Doha Agreement & American Withdrawal | 38:55 – 41:14 | | German “Halfway House” Experience | 41:49 – 45:57 | | America’s Reputation & War’s Logic | 47:12 – 49:26 |

Tone & Language

• Bluntly honest, informed, and unsentimental, especially from Aimen Dean, who doesn’t shy from calling Afghanistan “a shithole” or critiquing both American and Taliban actors.
• Darkly humorous at moments (“If there is a young lady basically, and her family name is Handel and her name is Rachel, does that mean I can call her Ms. Handel?” – [41:04])
• Empathetic but unsparing in depicting the psychological carnage and moral entanglements, refusing to romanticize any side.

Summary Takeaways

• The Zero Units were at once America’s deadliest weapon and a cause for profound moral reckoning in Afghanistan.
• Their members, often recruited by circumstance as much as by ideology, were left adrift—psychologically shattered and politically vulnerable—by America’s chaotic withdrawal.
• The legacy: a cycle of betrayal, trauma, and ambiguity, set in motion by great power interventions in a land of endless war and scarce hope.
• The episode calls for confronting the human cost of clandestine geopolitics and the despairing logic of war.

For further depth on Afghan war legacies and clandestine interventions, look for the hosts’ forthcoming exploration of Boko Haram in West Africa.