Posted on 03/10/2007 9:52:57 PM PST by Flavius
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 drug and people smugglers along the US border with Mexico.
But the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan and the American military’s failure to hunt down Osama Bin Laden — still at large on his 50th birthday yesterday — has prompted the Pentagon to requisition them.
Robert M Gates, the US defence secretary, 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-Qaeda 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 harsh 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 miles 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 $25m bounty on his head and the use of billions of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment — including pilotless drones, electronic sensors, infrared cameras and satellite surveillance — US forces have so far failed to fulfil President 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.
I wouldn't get too excited if this is on their resume.
Yeah, he's likely in pakistan. You'd have to twist musharraf's arms and threaten to cut all aid, military and otherwise, to get any help on finding him in pakistan. And even then it would take forever, with ISI soldiers in support of bin laden, al-qaida and the taliban, and violent jihad in general, hindering our progress at every step.
Better just give up on the Pakis; we should have done that decades ago. With some countires, in the middle east and elsewhere, it's always debatable how much of an ally they can be. Not so with pakistan; they've been abetting islamic jihad since the day they decided they couldn't cooperate with Hindus in a united India. It's time we end it with them, and encourage the country to breakup entirely.
I am not sure if any comanchee tribe still exist. They were prety much hunted down and killed or they went to Mexico. They were probably the most ruthless native Americans, even among their own people.
No one in American academia is going to believe this. They'd all be expecting the Native americans to support the destruction of all the non-natives. I was myself, to be honest, kind of surprised that the native americans felt any desire whatsoever to help americans, thought they'd be sympathetic to anyone who wants to murder white guys. Are you sure this isn't from some satire site.
The bottom line is the Pak border regions have been autonomous from any Pak Gov't for well over a century for very good reasons.....The Pak Gov't doesn't have the military power to control these regions.....
Can the Pak's do more then they currently are or have been? At times most certainly....Can they clean out the border regions.....No F'ing way. A 1/3 of their military would desert and not fight...and those who did would get their as$es handed to them....
Which is exactly why the border regions of Pak have been autonomous for well over a century.
We'll track down and put guns (or a JDAM) on UBL and Zawahiri one of these days.....and it will come from the risk, blood and sweat our shooters are giving every single day that most will never hear about......It is just a matter of time before the HUMINT we need finally comes in and we bag this SOB.
Finding a local young and mean knuckle dragger with a zest for his own power.....would make this day arrive sooner.
Perhaps.
But when it came to tracking and surviving in some of the most inhospitable areas on earth - nobody beats the Apaches.
I think you are correct about the Commanches, although they had a chief named Quannah Parker who was half white who settled down to be a successful citizen.
Thanks,
L
Very interesting.
Have any Family Bibles with this information?
What kind of business did Quannah get involevd with - cattle ranching?
bookmark
We are still around. I'm of Comanche descent. Some small bands moved to Oklahoma. Most assimilated. My family came from an area in Texas near Aspermont. They started working on farms and ranches mostly...many took on Christian names...in Spanish and English.
I never heard of the Panwee eating people.
There was a triabl group in Texas that did - the name was Tonkawa or soemthing like that. Some tribes practised ritual canabalism, but eating people as a regular protein source is relatively rare among modern man.
The Comanche were never a large tribe and I think current numbers are around 8000. Lawton, Oklahoma is where most live now.
Send Ward Churchill.
That was in the now days Galveston area. I understand the Pawnee did it as a ritual, not common practice.
I know they played hell in central/south Texas in the mid 1800's.
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