Cost-free indoctrination by the Taliban and al Qaeda is readily available on sites such as You Tube, which one official said was used by the five Americans to try and contact militants.
You Tube ? Yes that is right , these little wannabes watched You tube Videos to get all " Gay for Jihad , With all the thousands of videos taken down by "You tube Smackdown " there are still plenty of recruiting style videos on You Tube to see !
The internet is not a new frontier for Terrorists , But it is a growing front line , One that will only get worse , If not kept in check .
(You Tube Smackdown , is currently on strike)
ISLAMABAD: The detention in Pakistan of Americans seeking to contact militants and join holy war through the Internet suggests the country may need more than security crackdowns to contain threats from an insurgency.
The five men, students in their 20s from northern Virginia, were detained this week in the city of Sargodha in Punjab province, 190 km (120 miles) southeast of Islamabad, security officials said.
The suspects were being investigated for possible links to a Pakistan-based group suspected of carrying out high-profile attacks and with links to the Taliban and al Qaeda. Laptops, cellphones and maps of Pakistani cities were seized from them.
'It's a very difficult job to dismantle such networks which operate through the Internet. Their mode of communication was the Internet and email. All five and their contacts were using the same password and just putting their messages in draft and weren't sending them,' said a Pakistani security official.
'It's very difficult to detect them. If the FBI could not detect these types of messages, how can we? It's not an easy job.'
The possibility of having to track down militant networks on the Internet could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan. It is already struggling against militants who seem to carry out bombings at will, killing hundreds since October and raising questions over the stability of the nuclear-armed country.
Islamabad also faces mounting pressure from Washington to root out militants that cross the border to attack US-led troops in Afghanistan.
Radicalisation starts thousands of miles away from the strategic region. Some security officials say the Americans had intended to go fight in Afghanistan.
Two were of Pakistani origin. Officials said one of the Americans was of Egyptian origin, one of Yemeni origin and another of Eritrean origin, illustrating how the Internet can spread militant networks across continents, undetected.
If young men are leaning towards leaving behind the West to seek jihad, the Internet offers a variety of videos, made by some of the world's deadliest militant groups, to help them decide.
Cost-free indoctrination by the Taliban and al Qaeda is readily available on sites such as You Tube, which one official said was used by the five Americans to try and contact militants.
Videos romanticise what could be a violent future.
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