Five guys from the greater Washington DC area got themselves all fired up to do jihad, in no small part by watching jihadi videos. They kept their interest in jihad largely a secret from friends and family - because while jihadis talk about defending the Ummah, their actions suggest they are in some way estranged or alienated from their families and the Muslim communities they live in.

Along the way one of them made a friend on YouTube who provided a degree of guidance as they cobbled together a scheme to travel to Pakistan for training and ultimately combat. The YouTube relationship moved to a shared Yahoo email account and messages in the Drafts folder, the latter being a tried and true method for evading detection that actually worked in this case. That one of the guys had family in Pakistan helped, if only by providing them with a bit of reassurance - they would not be entirely strangers in a strange land.

Once in Pakistan things quickly went from bad to worse, what with not speaking Urdu, not being sufficiently vouched for, and given the high level of paranoia in jihadi circles in Pakistan at present. Finally they arrived at the home town of their one genuine Pakistani member, where they encountered his mum and dad who were there to arrange a marriage for their wayward son. What followed - with the boy's father trying and failing to talk the guys out of proceeding to Waziristan and then turning them in to the police - sounds like the beginning of a classic Hollywood melodrama.

There are no surprises here. This case is not qualitatively different than other cases we have seen over the last eight years. The role that the Internet, jihadi videos, and computer mediated communications played are all predictable, and the fact that their plot was not uncovered prior to their departure is not a sign of any great failing on the government's part. That the DC Five met their friend on YouTube rather than on a jihadi forum is a symptom of our success in turning cyberspace into a battlespace. Our actions in the online war against global jihad have been observed by the opposition, who have adapted as best they can.

Those of you interested in what the DC Five were likely watching on YouTube could start by reviewing the findings of my analysis of visual motifs in jihadi (and cholo) videos, which appears in the current issue of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. Regarding online recruitment to jihad, Conway and McInerney (2009) documented at least one such instance in their own exploratory study of Jihadi Video & Auto-Radicalisation.

Finally, here is my current bibliography regarding this case, my reading of which is the basis for the comments posted here.