POLISH border police fighting smugglers of people, drugs, tobacco, nuclear material and weapons are employing American Indian trackers

POLISH border police fighting smugglers of people, drugs, tobacco, nuclear material and weapons are employing American Indian trackers to guard the frontier with Ukraine. It is a long way from the burning deserts of Arizona to the gateway to Russia. But Poland believes the methods of ruthless international criminals can be combated with ancient methods that are now being passed on to security forces. The tracking course is part of a larger programme funded by the United States government’s Defence Threat Detection Agency, whose main aim is to search for America’s most elusive enemies: terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. The three Native Americans teaching the course - two from the Tohono O’odham tribe and one Navajo - have been holding one-week courses in Poland, and are now in the third and last week of their tour, instructing border patrol officers in the tiny town of Huwniki near the Ukrainian border. The 26 Polish guards taking part will have learned how to use damaged leaves, broken branches and even compressed pebbles to tell them where criminals may be hiding or which direction they’ve taken. Border police group leader Jerzy Ostrowski said: "Sometimes quite a simple thing can be a very important sign. A broken branch or even just part of a footprint can tell us where and how many people are going or what they’re doing." The Native Americans teaching the course normally work as US Customs patrol officers on the Tohono O’odham Indian reservation in Arizona.