Monday - March 12, 2007

Shadow Wolves Put on Bin Laden's Trail

Or 'Bout Time 

Because of the Republican defeat in November, President Bush was rudely awakened out of his slumber in terms of policy in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  Beginning with the appointment of Robert Gates as Defense Secretary, the U.S. has started to do the right things, such as the promotion of Petraeus, the additional troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and now the deployment of Native American trackers to hunt down Bin Laden.

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.

What a difference one man can make in regards to effective policy.  One can definitely see Gate's hand in the new hard nosed, common sense policies that are being played in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  If the high tech route doesn't work, Gates is willing to try the low tech approach.  His flexibility compared to Rumsfeld's rigidity definitely makes him the right man at the right time in history.  If only the Democrats would take pride in the fact that their victory in November forced Bush to reexamine and rework his war strategies.

Trackposted to Wake Up America, Conservative Cat, Big Dog's Weblog, The World According to Carl, and DragonLady's World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.