Shadow Wolves

AN elite group of Native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan's borders.

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-Qaeda fighters have been slipping in and out of Afghanistan. Defence officials are convinced their movements can be curtailed by the Shadow Wolves.

<snip>

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 $US25 million 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".

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21363226-2,00.html?from=public_rss

Are they sending trackers to hunt down Bin Laden? Do they think these guys moving down trails in their own territory are trying to hide their presence? Gee, I guess the last guy in the mujadeen group is walking backwards down the trail using a piece of shrub to wipe the tracks way. I don't think so.
The whole thing sounds like something out of a "B" grade movie.