Well, if they were smart…or so the saying goes. It seems that a jihadi by the name of Abu Abduhl-Rahman (aka Mark Taylor of New Zealand) Tweeted his precise location, and that of multiple ISIS “safe” houses, accidentally. Mr. Taylor claims to have left New Zealand on a quest for a bride in 2012, and has resurfaced under his new Islamic handle proclaiming his fealty to Allah. In a 15 second You Tube video posted in June, a man resembling Taylor says: ‘I am the New Zealander known as Mark John Taylor, my current location is in Syria and my commitment is for jihad, for Allah and his messenger.’ In July of 2014 Taylor spoke with a New Zealand newspaper claiming that he would stay in Syria until he achieved martyrdom. It seems that perhaps Mr. Taylor was inspired to join ISIS due to the New Zealand Army’s reluctance to re-enlist him earlier in the year, living up to the age old maxim “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”.

Fortunately, like many jihadi’s, Mr. Taylor is something of a narcissist who likes to broadcast his exploits via social media. In June he posted a video of his New Zealand passport burning and announced that his trip to Syria would be “one way”, something he would later deny. Unfortunately for Mr. Taylor, and fortunately for our military, there is no such thing as “deleting” something off of the internet. When Mr. Taylor realized his (possibly) deadly mistake, he deleted the Tweets but according to security researcher Jeff Wyers, owner of the open-source intelligence group iBrado, his firm was able to use the tweet geo-location information to place Taylor in a specific house in the Syrian town of al-Taqbah.

Perhaps our forces in the region can grant Mr. Taylor’s wish? Each of the 45 Tweets that he attempted to delete from his Twitter account were geo-tagged with the exact location of the ISIS safehouses that Mr. Taylor and his compatriots frequent. I can think of one belated Christmas gift the U.S. Army would just love to drop off for him.