Standing in front of tens of fighters clad in headscarves and sunglasses and carrying AK-47s in an unknown location, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi reads in Arabic from a scrap of paper in a video posted online in late October. On October 30, ISIS’s semi-official media channel, Amaq, posted a statement online, saying that it had received a pledge of allegiance from “Katibat al-Mourabitoun” under Sahrawi’s leadership. Sahrawi was born in Algeria according to jihadi policy group the Counter Extremism Project, though his surname suggests ties to Western Sahara —a contested region inhabited by the Sahrawi people, which is at the center of a wrangle between Morocco and the indigenous, Algerian-backed Polisario Front.