By Lee Williams
Sarasota County (Florida) Sheriff’s Deputy Mubarak can’t use his full name, at least not now. He can’t mention the Afghan village where he was raised, or even the province. He can’t discuss the elite American special operations forces he operated with as an interpreter, or the missions they carried out.
If he does – if he violates operational security – people could die. The Taliban are currently going door-to-door searching for Afghans who cooperated with the U.S. Military – especially our special forces – and the Taliban are not exactly a forgiving bunch.
Mubarak, 39, spent years supporting special operations units in Afghanistan as a linguist and cultural advisor. He speaks five languages, three fluently.
He operated with these small teams armed with an AK-47 or an AK-74, a Makarov pistol, sometimes an RPG and later the M4 and other U.S weapons.
Few soldiers of any army have as much time behind a trigger.
“From the beginning to around 2003, we would engage platoon size or even company size elements. After 2005, it became more common to see smaller five-man fireteams or squads of nine or 10,” he said. “Sometimes it was at very close distances. There were occasions when we weren’t able to get air support because we were so close to the enemy. I’m talking about very close, less than 10 yards. Other times, we’d engage at 100 yards or much more – sometimes beyond the capabilities of our rifle – so we’d rely upon indirect fire weapons.”
Mubarak recalls one particular day when his helo took fire. “When our Blackhawk got shot, we had no choice but to land. We were stuck in the snow in the mountains. We couldn’t leave. The Taliban knew the place. We knew that if we were going to stay any longer, they would close in,” he said.
Not every day was as eventful. “After 2005, there were times when we didn’t have any action in the province – no explosions, no enemy fire, no rockets, no fighting, no IEDs, no one killed. For me, a happy day was one of those days.”
Although most of Mubarak’s experience has been against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, he said, are a true guerilla force.
“They are expert in knowing the geography, in knowing the culture, the traditions and they are excellent in guerilla warfare,” he said. “That makes them successful. If you know the Afghan culture and people, you know how to make them either get on your team or leave the AO.”
The soul of the Afghan
Mubarak was in middle school when a large, well-armed Taliban force drove into his village.
“They announced on loudspeakers, telling people to voluntarily give up their guns. They were very persistent. They would search the homes and the village. If you were caught with a gun … Some people had extra guns left over from the Soviet withdrawal. They would bring some out and turn them over. But each house tried to keep at least one or two. It was a systematic campaign by the Taliban,” Mubarak said. “The rifle is the main characteristic of a real and brave Afghan. Without a rifle, a man and his family look not secure, not complete, not confident. A rifle represents a lot for Afghans. Each house has to have at least one rifle to protect your house, your honor, your women, your family. Without a gun you can’t defend yourself and protect your honor. A rifle is the main characteristic of a man and also of a tribe. In the past, if something bad happened, a village elder would tell the men to come out. He wouldn’t have to say bring a rifle. Everyone knew what he meant.”
Mubarak is very concerned the Taliban are confiscating weapons once again.
“I think the average Afghan, those in rural areas, will not feel comfortable because guns are part of their lives. It’s their soul,” he said. “Taking them away is not only disarming them. It’s disrespecting them. They’re taking away arms knowing that someone could come to steal or harm or kill them.”
Mubarak is a strong proponent of an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, and does not want to see firearm confiscation anywhere, especially in his new country.
“Each family should have a gun and be able to protect themselves,” he said. “It states in the constitution that we have a right to bear arms.”
Experts agree.
“Remember when we were kids playing army and just abandoned the fort leaving our toy guns behind so the bad guys could have them?” asked SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “No, you don’t, because even little kids are not that stupid!”
Deputy Mubarak
Mubarak, his wife and their four children were granted full citizenship as a reward for the assistance he provided to our special operations forces. He moved to the United States 13 years ago and began teaching Department of Defense and other personnel at Fort Bragg, Quantico and several Marine Corps bases. He deployed back to Afghanistan from 2010-2011 as a civilian interpreter assigned to a Marine Corps regiment and reported directly to the regimental commander – a colonel.
Mubarak earned a Master’s degree in Central Eurasian Studies and became a graduate teaching assistant, but decided he needed to contribute more to his community, so he became a cop. Last year, Mubarak moved to Sarasota, Florida, and attended a state law enforcement academy, where he graduated top of his class in academics and physical fitness.
“He missed the top-shooter award by one round,” said Mubarak’s new boss, Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman. The Sheriff sees a future for his new deputy in either his agency’s intelligence unit or SWAT team.
“One of my firearms guys asked Mubarak what he was used to shooting,” Hoffman said. “He told them RPGs.”
Click here to listen to an interview with Sheriff Hoffman and Mubarak on Armed American Radio.
Hoffman had heard of Mubarak long before he was sworn in as one of his deputies.
Mubarak served alongside Hoffman’s cousin, retired Marine Col. Randy Hoffman, who served seven tours in Afghanistan as a Marine officer assigned to a government agency.
“My cousin credits Mubarak with saving his life and the lives of other special forces operators on at least 10 different occasions,” Sheriff Hoffman said. “Randy likely wouldn’t be here today were it not for him.”
Mubarak chose law enforcement because it’s a “noble profession.” He chose the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office because of its reputation and history of successfully fighting crime.
“I come from a village where there is a tradition of helping people. This deputy position gives me that opportunity to help the public. At the end of the day, if I’m able to help just one person that means a lot, and it makes the whole family happy.”
Last plane out
Just before Joe Biden’s self-imposed Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline expired, Mubarak and many others arranged for 33 of his family members to get seats on one of the last planes out of the country, with nothing but the clothes on their back. Unfortunately, his father didn’t make it out. He died of an apparent heart attack during their frenzied evacuation nightmare.
“My family was in Kabul. They told me it was impossible to get through the crowd at the airport and that they wouldn’t be able to make it out. We encouraged them. We told them to be patient, to stay there,” Mubarak said.
Getting 33 people out of the country required a lot of effort and assistance, from Sheriff Hoffman, the Army, the Marine Corps, the State Department, Florida Senator Rick Scott and a few other sources.
His family members are currently being processed at Ft. Bliss, but the loss of his father, who was so close to making it out, hit Mubarak hard.
“My father was the hero of my story. He was the one who encouraged and insisted on us going to school and getting an education,” Mubarak said. “He told us not to be a burden, but to be an active member of the community and to contribute and help others.”
Sheriff Hoffman has established a GoFundMe page for Mubarak’s 33 family members. Donors can also send checks payable to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.
Said Hoffman: “Thirty-three of his family members, including nearly two dozen women and children, have now safely made their way to America, free from Taliban control and free to go to school, work, and do all the things we take for granted. This fund has been created to help the family of a courageous Afghan interpreter who has worked side-by-side with our military, relocate his family to Florida.”
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.
Thats awesome 👌
His background that is
“sometimes beyond the capabilities of our rifles”…not exactly a ringing endorsement of the M-4….
My average initial engagement distance during my first Afghanistan your was 400 meters. That’s near the edge of the issued M4’s capability, and we were all issued zero magnification red dots.
Our opponents were using some AKs, but at those distances mostly RPKs, PKMs, and RPGs. The M4 may have been great for Iraq, but it was the wrong tool for Afghanistan.
“Can’t use his full name…” but hey! Here’s a couple of photos of him! 🤦♂️🙄
My wife and I spent 4 years in the middle east after 4 in the military this guy is truly a patriot including his family
the Afghans had the guns…and a whole lot more…but they chose not to use them….
What an amazing story about an amazing human being! I would imagine that experiences like Deputy Mubarak’s make the freedoms we enjoy here in the USA that much sweeter. It’s a shame that so many Americans take our rights and comparatively easy lifestyle for granted. When people who live under oppressive regimes are able to escape and deeply cherish their newly respected rights, particularly the 1A and 2A, it makes you wonder how people who have had them all along can be so flippant.
We’ll take this guy and his family. In return Afghanistan can have chris mallory and dacian.
Hopefully they’ll be returned. Via parcel post. Small packet rate.
“In return Afghanistan can have chris mallory and dacian.”
No, no, no, they gotta take my pathetic little-boy troll as well.
My shoes are getting a bit beat up, as many times as I’ve had to kick him square in his (most likely) green teeth.
Repeatedly, and then a few more times, for good measure… 😉
When trying to make sense of GTP’s nonsensical musings, it’s useful to remember that he barely qualifies as a man and also has never been with a woman.
They can have all our soy and pajama boys. Throw in the Antifa and BLM savages for good measure. Afghanistan would suit them. Abd these critters will love the sheep.
True badass right there.
Nice article, Lee, thanks for sharing.
But you still owe Luis a gigantic apology for last week.
“But you (Lee Williams) still owe Luis a gigantic apology for last week.”
Preach it… 🙁
if he violates operational security – people could die. The Taliban are currently going door-to-door searching for Afghans who cooperated with the U.S. Military
BUT we CAN tell the fucking Taliban that he works for the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office AND toss them a photo or two… Bunch of backwards goat herders and child molesters they probably don’t have any agents in the US and no way in HELL they could ever figure out that Sarasota is in FL, never mind how to get there… Whoever thought THAT little jewel made sense has about the same intellectual capacity as our most prolific resident Trolls.. Good job, “Joe Braindead” could not have possibly done any better…
valid point…
The article insulates that there should be no gun control in the U.S. to keep your freedoms. That is asinine on several points. We cannot compare Afghanistan to the U.S. as they are two different countries with two different cultures and problems.
Remember the Taliban took over without firing a shot in only a couple of days while the Afghan army that was 10 times their number and armed to the teeth with not only small arms but heavy armament as well simply ran away. No, being armed did not help them keep their freedom at all.
Afghanistan is a country that has been at war with itself for generations and with bordering countries that are often sympathetic to one warring tribe or another the flow of illegal arms is never ending. This would not happen in the U.S. because we have no sympathetic countries to the north or south of us that would finance and arm groups that were trying to overthrow the U.S. government.
If anything the amount of illegal arms in Afghanistan proves quite the opposite of what the article was trying to prove as well as the attempted glorification of one man who lived there. Out of control arms possession amongst tribes of people who hate each other has not done the people of Afghanistan any good and I must say the Trump years in the U.S. produced a split between the right and left in the U.S. that makes out of control arms possession a recipe for the same disaster that has befallen Afghanistan i.e. warring political and ethnic groups all armed to the teeth.
I will not attempt to solve Afghanistan’s ethnic endless wars but being an American I am well aware that more arms in the U.S. without strict controls on who has them and what kind of arms they are possessing is not good for the future of the U.S. both politically and socially. The current rivers of blood flowing in U.S. streets certainly prove it is not getting better with the big rush to arm up after Biden was elected rather it has gotten far worse as the horrific statistics have shown. As Robert Reich said and was correct the rise in gun ownership is always followed by more violence and mayhem and we are now in a major epidemic of gun violence. This is the only connection to Afghanistan that is very apparent.
Violent crime has bern trending downward for many years. It is a simple search of FBI statistics that will show that. So easy to find I am sure you can find it.
Last year’s violence is an anomaly that can be explained. It is not because of increased firearm ownership that was also rising as violent crime trended down, it was more to do with the release of violent criminals and increased gang violence.
It would be most interesting for you to explain how the release of these violent people has not had a impact on violent crime rates. I am sure you will attempt it. Or has Robert Reich already explained that?
And I am sure you will also have lame excuses for the explosion in road rage incidents with little children being shot right next to their mothers on the way to school, there are so many lately I have lost track of them all as they seem to start to all blend together its that horrific.
Or the nut case that shot a young woman when she attempted to get on an off ramp and cut off a gun nut who then blew her brains out.
I could give you pages of other tragic road rage cold blooded murders but you would of course ignore them all with a wave of the far right hand claiming “loses can never be too high” Hitler was fond of that saying too.
And husbands killing wives do not fall neatly into your “blame it all on ex-cons” either. Remember many people have “armed up” for the 1st time and then the 1st time that there is a domestic argument the husband has the convince of a loaded gun nearby with the obvious results. It happens every day in the U.S. proving that yes you are indeed way more likely to be killed by someone you know, especially a relative. It will be interesting to view the stats at the end of this year for domestic violence with guns because now with “arming up” there are many more households that now have them. The Ok Corral shoot out never became history it just moved to the suburbs.
And many of the 1st time gun buyers are leaving loaded guns laying around the house and children of course are being shot. It will be interesting to see if at the conclusion of this year that we top the usual 1,300 children killed with handguns laying around the house unattended.
Interesting. Now show these incidents you speak of could be shown?
How many of these children were victims of gang violence? What age range do you consider children? 0-12, 0-15, 0-25? Facts matter.
The highway shootings? How many were perpetrated by someone ineligible under current law to possess a firearm? How about the type of firearm used? Any under 21 using a handgun to shoot these people?
Domestic violence, were are your statistics to support your claim husbands are killing their wives?
Cold hard facts and data. Show your claims are in fact true.
Yet you can’t explain away how violent criminals released from prison has hurt society and has helped the increase of the violence.
If you are too much of a coward to possess a weapon or too lazy to figure out how to use and keep it safely then that’s your problem. Maybe if you’re so afraid of accidents you should also give up cars, alcohol, electricity, swimming, ladders and power tools. I’ve heard there’s a lot of incidents of medical malpractice every year too, so stay away from doctors.
As for a dirt bag that would point a gun at a spouse in an argument, they could just as easily grab a steak knife. So do you want those gone too before the streets run red?
Tell us all Mr. D are more children killed with firearms or:
a-in swimming pools
b-bicycle accidents
-in common falls
You really are aas derranged and crazed as Biden or merely a well paid Soros mercenary. I suspect both. You like Soros appear to be the kind of man who’d work with the Nazis to hunt down jews, although Soros was a jew, to save his own skin.
Cut from the same reptilians skin.
So you think you know better than Deputy Mubarak, an immigrant that knows five languages, has a masters degree in Middle East Culture, grew up under the threat of the Taliban, deployed with the military and has become a police officer?
That’s kinda racist.
Not really its the ability to see propaganda when I read it. Its called critical thinking. The assumption that just because he believes everyone is better off armed to the teeth and that will save you your freedoms real or imagined is the same old right wing baloney we hear from the Far Right every day in the U.S. and our safety on the streets has proved otherwise with a large jump in gun crime and killings and of course the usual daily mass murder by assault rifle. You can worship so called super hero’s (the far right has always had this obsession) but I am more practical, cynical, and quite capable of seeing propaganda when I read it especially when it goes counter to reality and experience and the horrific statistics no matter what country we are speaking of.
Yes, you would know propaganda, you post it constantly.
Dacian wouldn’t understand or grasp critical thinking if it ran over him. That’s why it has 99 cenders uses the pronouns it/eeeew/and piglet.
Only a true believer believes that one must be open to the mercies of Gods like Dacian. Right smuck. Left wing lunatics always need helpless people and leave mass graves in their wakes. This is what we see in cities with gun controls.
But the soyboy knows. He’s a true believer and has 99 cats to prove it.
SS Schutze dacian a racist? Say it ain’t so.
You expect a commie to respect Afghans?
We’ve already suffered incremental losses of civil rights since 9/11, so onerous restrictions on gun ownership would make a bad situation already worse.
Who would enforce those laws? how would they be enforced? and what impact would they have on working class and poor population groups?
Arm the proletariat!
much as there…one side is “soft”…and one side isn’t….trusting politicians is a fools game…
Dacian spews:
Yet you and your ilk are always trying to compare these United States of America with other gun-free utopian countries in Europe and elsewhere. Or is it just Afghanistan that can’t be compared? Is that because you consider Middle-East countries to be third-world shitholes?
Dacian needs to pull his pants up, his racism is showing.
Comrade Dacian can’t be racist since he is a God. The voices in his head tell him so.
Comrade Dacian can’t be racist since he is a God. The voices in his head tell him so.
Dacian once again proves that faculty lounges are the refuges of the lobotomy’s post op failures. The absence of logic, reason and evidence is damning. But when you live in the Soyboy Twilight Zone you can bray like Biden on a bad day and say that the Taliban seized the country without a shot. Vomiting forth Soros paid words and his Politburo master’s scripts gets to be laughable, sort of like listening to Obama’s predictions after the fact.
Tell us D., how many depends do you go through in a week? One thing that reassures me, its that the Left will not serve, do not know how to use firearms properly nor understand nature. As such when the storm breaks they will fold up quicker than Hunter does when denied his crack.
“This would not happen in the U.S. because we have no sympathetic countries to the north or south of us that would finance and arm groups that were trying to overthrow the U.S. government.” Yeah like Mexico isn’t ran by drug gangs who we know aren’t really big proponents of things like Rule of Law and Democracy.
Non sequitur
SS Schutze dacian declares it, so it must be so.
Yeah like Mexico isn’t ran by drug gangs
There have been numerous gun battles on the U.S. Mexican border between various Cartels and between Mexican authorities and Cartels… The most recent just a few days ago lasted over an hour and included 40MM grenade launchers…
“Taliban are not exactly a forgiving bunch”
No no no… That is the OLD Taliban. From way back last week BEFORE China Joe OBiden/Blinkin (and dacian) fixed them. Now they are the “authorities” in Afganistan. We must help them with understanding (and pallets of cash). Until the adults have to go back in AGAIN and clean house (Aug 30 would have been a GREAT day for at REAL POTUS to have done so as all the rats were out in the open).
those planes leave yet?…
So that guy must be ElaineD’s concubine man.
Unless the deputy has been using a different name from the beginning, you don’t need to be a genius to find the name and badge number of a LEO in Florida, takes less than 10 minutes on the internet unless said LEO has never written a report or probable cause affidavit in his/her career.
Am I the only one with reservations about putting a doorkicker/shooter with a tribal worldview background on an American police force? Hopefully he doesn’t view US citizens the same way he viewed his own people…
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