Brother of Marine Killed During Chaotic US Afghan Exit Reportedly Committed Suicide at Memorial

On 26 August 2021, 13 American service members were killed in a suicide bomb attack outside Kabul International airport as the US and other western countries raced to evacuate their citizens and allies from Afghanistan amid the hasty American withdrawal from the country that had been overrun days earlier by the Taliban.

The brother of an American serviceman killed during the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 reportedly committed suicide during a memorial service for him.

Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, aged 20, from California, was one of 13 US troops who died on 26 August in a suicide bomb attack blamed on an Afghan offshoot of Daesh*.

An explosive device had been detonated by a single bomber on the approach to Kabul International Airport, where a frantic airlift operation was taking place after the emboldened Taliban* Islamist group had regained full control of the capital.

Besides the 11 Marines, one Army soldier and one member of the Navy, estimates put the civilian death toll from the suicide blast at around 170 as crowds of Americans and Afghan allies sought to flee the city.

Nearly a year later, the murdered Marine’s older brother, Dakota Halverson, 28, died on 9 August, according to a press release from the Riverside County Sheriff’s department in California.

Mike Waltz, a Republican Representative from Florida, lamented Halverson’s death in a Twitter post on Saturday, adding: “There must be accountability for this continued carnage."

The older brother of one of the 13 KIA in Kabul recently killed himself at his little brother’s memorial. Please pray for his family. There MUST be accountability for this continued carnage. https://t.co/7nPjpoqR4H

— Rep. Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) August 13, 2022

The Florida Congressman’s tweet was in reply to a Twitter post by a reporter for new website Townhall, Julio Rosas, who had shared a link to a GoFundMe page. Rosas wrote that Shana Chappell, who had already lost one son on that fateful day in 2021, had announced the death of her son Dakota.

The reporter’s tweet included the hashtag #SuicideAwareness.

Both Chappell and the fallen Marine’s father, Steve Nikoui, have been vocal critics of the decisions made by the Joe Biden administration that led to the botched withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan after a 20-year deployment. The hasty pull-out resulted in the swift collapse of the western-backed coalition government of then-president then-president Ashraf Ghani, and the eventual return to power of the Taliban* Islamist group. None of the US intelligence assessments at the time had predicted such a swift collapse.

Biden’s administration has faced criticism from all sides for the Afghan withdrawal. According to a new report from Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Washington left key decisions on how to evacuate civilians from Kabul until the final hours before the city fell to Taliban.

President Biden has since acknowledged that his administration had not anticipated Kabul’s swift fall, although he insisted that "we planned for every contingency".

*Daesh, also known as ISIS/IS/Islamic State, is a terrorist group banned in Russia.

*The Taliban is an organization under UN sanctions over terrorist activities