06/16/16 – Jonathan Landay – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Introducing Jonathan Landay.
He is now at Reuters and back writing in partnership with Warren Strobel.
That's good to see.
This one is also with a guy named Phil Stewart.
U.S. sees no major Islamic State links to Boko Haram despite claims.
Welcome back, Jonathan.
How are you doing?
It's good to be back with you.
First of all, I have to ask because the wife would definitely have me ask you.
Is it really true they're making a Hollywood movie about you guys debunking the case for war with Iraq?
Yes, they are.
I think, you know, I'm not sure how much we're allowed to talk about it.
But since the director has been talking about it, that would be Rob Reiner.
I guess I can say something.
Yes.
As far as we know, it looks like the movie's on track to begin filming in October, I think.
Script is undergoing revisions.
Casting is going on right now and we'll see.
Great.
And for everybody who doesn't know, just Landay and Strobel legendarily debunked the case for war for Knight Ridder back in 2001 through three.
Anyway, moving on real quick here, because I know you're in a big hurry.
Tell me everything in the world you have to say about Boko Haram for five minutes, please, sir.
So we know that in that Boko Haram, which is this Islamic group that's been terrorizing northern Nigeria and parts of Niger and Chad, declared itself an arm of Islamic State.
I believe is in 2000 and I want to say 2015, March of 2015.
And so they became known as the Islamic State, West Africa province.
And we decided to take a real hard look at just how hard the links are between Islamic State, West Africa province or Boko Haram.
And what I call the mothership of Islamic State based in Raqqa in Syria and in Mosul in northern Iraq.
And we interviewed a lot of people, spent a couple of months looking at this.
And the bottom line is that as far as all of the U.S. officials that we spoke to, they have seen no evidence that shows significant operational support or financing for Boko Haram from the Islamic State mothership, as I call it, since that declaration of of loyalty that Boko Haram made to Islamic State.
Most of the people and the experts we talked to believe that that declaration of loyalty was more of a sort of branding exercise that was really designed to burnish Boko Haram's Islamic jihadi credentials and draw in new recruits and perhaps even appeal to the Islamic State core leadership for money, training weapons.
But as far as U.S. officials are concerned, they have not seen any significant evidence that in fact that has come to pass.
All right.
Well, so, yeah, I mean, on the face of it, they're pretty far away to really be part of the Islamic State structure, I guess.
And on the face of it, from the beginning, it was sort of a PR stunt.
But I guess it certainly opened up the question of just how close they would become.
Can you talk to us at all about do you know anything about them going to Mali in, say, 2013, 14, and meeting up with the Libyan and other jihadists there who had taken over northern Mali by then?
Because it started out as sort of sketchy sounding rumors, but it seems like there've been some pretty credible reports about those links.
The U.S. intelligence community is keeping a very close eye on trying to discern whether or not there are, in fact, significant links between Boko Haram and the Islamic State chapter in Libya, which is kind of the closest, most credible, most significant wing of Islamic State in Africa.
And at this point, they've just not been able to discern this.
There were some reports that perhaps the military in Chad had intercepted recently a shipment of arms from the Islamic State chapter in Libya to Boko Haram.
But it turns out that the United States intelligence community has not been able to confirm those reports.
As I said, keeping a close eye on whether or not there are any serious links between the Islamic State chapter in Libya, which, by the way, is under enormous pressure right now.
Their base in a place called Sirte on the Libyan coast is under major attack by U.S.-backed or U.S.-supported Libyan militias.
And at this point, they haven't seen that.
There's probably no doubt at all that there are Nigerian jihadis who have shown up in Libya.
They have shown up, in fact, in Raqqa in Syria and among the Islamic State fighters in Iraq.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a hard and fast link involving command and control, financing or anything else between Islamic State mothership, the command structure in Raqqa and Boko Haram, which is based in the deep forests of northern Nigeria.
Most people we talk to believe that the problem of Islamic State, the factors that are fueling it, which is poverty, lack of development, lack of health care, lack of education in northern Nigeria, northeastern Nigeria, is based more is more of a function of sort of this traditional discrimination by the central government against the Muslim-dominated northeast than it is a matter of, you know, radicalization and or anything else by Islamic State.
All right now.
So one last thing here.
I know you're in a rush, but so how goes the drone war there?
I mean, I know they've been putting bases in.
We've got special forces and spies crawling around somewhere doing something.
There were, as far as I know, there was a drone base in, I believe it was Mali or Chad, but I don't know that it's there anymore.
And so, you know, they're talking.
One of the big problems here, Scott, is the degree to which the United States is prepared to extend significant support to the Nigerian military, which has a pretty dismal human rights record and has been linked to excessive use of force against civilians in its fight against Islamic State.
There were allegations of a major massacre by the Nigerian military against Shia Muslims in northern Nigeria recently.
And so that kind of puts a bit of a constraint on what the United States is able to do.
The United States has said that the new Nigerian president has made significant has taken significant steps to address the problems there of both of corruption.
But they're waiting to see whether or not there's going to be more of a effort to try and deal with this significant human rights problems.
Now, we reported, Reuters reported, that the United States is prepared to supply or to supply or sell 12 attack aircraft to Nigeria.
Got to wait to see whether or not that goes through Congress.
There's such a thing as called the Leahy Amendment, remember, that could prevent that.
And also the United States has offered to send a special operations mission to advise Nigerian units.
And there has been more intelligence and surveillance assistance given to them.
But again, there is a concern about sort of the degree to which there has been any reform within the Nigerian military.
I know there's been training of a couple of Nigerian contingents that the United States feels pretty confident about.
But we'll have to wait and see where that part goes.
All right.
Thanks, Jonathan.
Appreciate it.
Anytime, Scott.
All right, y'all.
That is Jonathan Landay back with Warren Strobel now writing for Reuters.
This one is called U.S. sees no major Islamic State links to Boko Haram despite claims.
All right, y'all.
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