A LITTLE BIRD TOLD US

A top Taliban figure gives away his hiding spot on Twitter

Sindh, Pakistan, the region where a Taliban spokesman was tweeting from. Oops.
Sindh, Pakistan, the region where a Taliban spokesman was tweeting from. Oops.
Image: Google Maps

One prominent member of the Taliban might want to consider finding a new place of refuge.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a longtime spokesman for the Afghan group, made a series of tweets last week which accidentally geolocated him to Sindh, Pakistan.

Mujahid quickly denied that he was in Pakistan and said the geolocation was part of an “enemy plot.”

The Taliban is active on social media—it used to tweet regularly under the handle @alemarahweb, though that account doesn’t exist anymore. Mujahid has nearly 6,000 followers.

Social media has a history of outing the location of people who’d probably prefer to remain hidden. This summer, in a shrewd act of investigative Instagram reporting, BuzzFeed discovered that a Russian soldier was operating inside Ukraine.

“Mujahid” might actually be a combination of several different people. Here’s one of them, with his back turned to the camera, speaking to CNN in 2009: