Following in the footsteps of the WWII Codetalkers, an elite unit of Native American trackers is being deployed to help nab Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan:

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.

Very cool, but as AJ Strata points out: What took the US so long to deploy the Shadow Wolves?

Tigerhawk links to an old Smithsonian profile of the unit.

And here’s a tribute page to the Shadow Wolves. Their motto:

“In brightest day, in darkest night, no evil shall escape my sight, for I am the Shadow Wolf.”

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Update: Tons of readers point out the Shadow Wolf motto is inspired by Green Lantern:

In Brightest Day,
In Blackest Night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil’s might,
Beware my power: Green Lantern’s light!