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| Afghanistan |
| Native American trackers to hunt bin Laden |
| 2007-03-11 |
| WASHINGTON: An elite group of Native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan's borders. The unit, the Shadow Wolves, was recruited from several tribes, including the Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache. It is being sent to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to pass on ancestral sign-reading skills to local border units. In recent years, members of the Shadow Wolves have mainly tracked smugglers along the US border with Mexico. But the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan and the US military's failure to hunt down Osama bin Laden - still at large on his 50th birthday on Saturday - has prompted the Pentagon to requisition them. US Defence Secretary Robert M.Gates said last month: "If I were Osama bin Laden, I'd keep looking over my shoulder." The Pentagon has been alarmed at the ease with which Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters have been slipping in and out of Afghanistan. Defence officials are convinced their movements can be curtailed by the Shadow Wolves. The unit has earned international respect for its tracking skills in the Arizona desert. It was founded in the early 1970s to curb the flow of marijuana into the US from Mexico and has since tracked people-smugglers across hundreds of square kilometres of the Tohono O'odham tribal reservation, southwest of Tucson. Harold Thompson, a Navajo Indian, and Gary Ortega, from the Tohono reservation, are experts at "cutting sign", the traditional Indian method of finding and following minute clues from a barren landscape. They can detect twigs snapped by passing humans or hair snagged on a branch and tell how long a sliver of food may have lain in the dirt. Some military experts want the Shadow Wolves to help to track down bin Laden. Despite a $US25million bounty on his head and the use of billions of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment, US forces have so far failed to fulfil President George W. Bush's promise to capture bin Laden "dead or alive". But a senior US official insisted last week that bin Laden's trail had "not gone stone cold". Vice-Admiral Mike McConnell, the new US director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee that bin Laden and his lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were setting up new training camps in northwestern Pakistan. |
| Posted by:Free Radical |
| #17 never forget, ;-) thanks Delphi2005 |
| Posted by: RD 2007-03-11 23:21 |
| #16 My ancestors were MicMac from Canada. I found this prayer that I thought was appropriate. Source: http://www.firstpeople.us/html/The_Hunters.html The Hunters There were but two beneath the sky - The thing I came to kill, and I. I, under covert, quietly Watched him sense eternity From quivering brush to pointed nose My gun to shoulder level rose. And then I felt (I could not see) Far off a hunter watching me. I slowly put me rifle by, For there were two who had to die - The thing I wished to kill, and I. I offer this to the First Nations people helping in the WOT, Kulelomok. Good luck! 9/11 Never forgive; never forget.... |
| Posted by: Delphi2005 2007-03-11 22:10 |
| #15 Tonto and Paint... |
| Posted by: crazyhorse 2007-03-11 20:18 |
| #14 An old Apache trick was to hang somebody from a tree limb by their ankles, then build a small fire under their head. Hours of entertainment. Of course, if they really didn't like you, they would give you to their women. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-03-11 19:33 |
| #13 Amen. |
| Posted by: CB 2007-03-11 18:45 |
| #12 Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache All I can say is, if the Jihadi's think they can scare us by sending us videos of people getting their heads wacked off, they ain't seen nothing yet until they see a dead person without a scalp. There is something horific about a face with an exposed shiney white skull above the eye brow line. Thank God they are on our side now... |
| Posted by: One Eyed Angavique7668 2007-03-11 18:18 |
| #11 Code Talkers in WWII, Shadow Wolves in the WOT. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-03-11 17:38 |
| #10 True, true if not it's finest asset. |
| Posted by: Shomock Poodle3800 2007-03-11 16:43 |
| #9 You never know how much spirit these fine people can find unless you employ it. For this is one of Americas finest Assets. Connect, they do. Find they will. |
| Posted by: newc 2007-03-11 16:26 |
| #8 Or the Child Support People™ |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2007-03-11 16:24 |
| #7 Not to take anything away from the Shadow Wolves but if we were truely serious about finding the bad guys we should sic the student loan people on them. Those bastards can find anybody. |
| Posted by: GORT 2007-03-11 15:55 |
| #6 Maybe they have some Lee Nez type vampires with them. (A & D Thurlo) |
| Posted by: SwissTex 2007-03-11 15:40 |
| #5 WaPo reporter is a bit dumb. The Lakota are are a branch of the Sioux. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-03-11 15:37 |
| #4 These guys would probably blend in, and do the job, but not too many around these days. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selous_Scouts ...."The charter of the Selous Scouts directed"the clandestine elimination of terrorists/terrorism both within and without the country." |
| Posted by: rhodesiafever 2007-03-11 14:34 |
| #3 I'm sure they're well trained in setting tiny little electronic targeting devices that cruise missiles can home in on. "Good morning, Mullah bin Lad (BOOM!!!)... |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-03-11 14:15 |
| #2 :-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-03-11 14:03 |
| #1 They're gonna stick out like sore thumbs walking around the mansions of Rawalpindi military cantonment. |
| Posted by: John Frum 2007-03-11 13:43 |