Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Hi, everybody, and welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. I'm Judah Grunstein, WPR's editor-in-chief. 0:13 For this week's report, James Bargent will join Andrew Green a little later to discuss Colombia's other peace process, this time with the ELN guerrilla group, and he'll explain why it might be even more challenging than the talks that recently ended the war with the FARC insurgency. 0:30 But first, I'll be talking with WPR senior editor Freddy Deknatel and associate editor Omar Rahman about the failure of talks to form a coalition government in Germany and the implications of a weakened Chancellor Angela Merkel for Europe and beyond. 0:46 Freddy, uh, Merkel's become sort of a fixture of the political landscape for more than a decade now. Uh, I've watched her work with three U.S. presidents, four French presidents, and, uh, she, you know, she's not flashy. 0:59 She's just really pragmatic and risk-averse. Uh, I've seen her often vilified, particularly with regard to the Greek debt crisis, but at the same time, she kind of grew on people. 1:10 I know she was, by the end of, uh, Barack Obama's term, one of his favorite international leaders to work with. 1:17 Um, she, she's obviously far from out of the picture, but she looks significantly weakened right now, uh, after the failure of talks. 1:25 Is this going to be a case of not appreciating something, in, in this case, a strong leader in a stable Germany, until it's gone? Uh, I think generally, yeah. 1:33 I mean, it, it also wasn't that long ago, um, after Trump's unexpected election that Merkel was being talked about as the leader of the free world now. Um, and, uh, 1:46 I think that the problem with, with, um, Merkel's position that if it hadn't been for Germany's hard stance against Greece and, and hard line generally in, in Europe's, uh, debt crisis, she would even be in a stronger position, or at least people would be even more, um, sort of worried about what a, a, a Germany without Merkel would look like and what an EU without Merkel would look like. 2:10 Um, I think it's, it's certainly reflective of this sort of splintering of, of politics across Europe, um, where you don't have any strong leaders really, uh, with a few exceptions. 2:22 Um, I still would, I mean, not to predict anything, I, I'd be surprised if Merkel really goes. 2:28 Um, I think that if anything, um, their, the stability in Germany is still, uh, more stable, if I could say that, than, than it is in other countries. 2:37 Um, and in a lot of ways, this is still sort of just the machinations of parliamentary politics. Right. Some brinksmanship going on. 2:45 Uh, some of the potential ways forward would be, uh, resuming the, the negotiations, which a lot of people are pushing for. 2:54 Uh, another would be Merkel governing as a minority, uh, leader, which would be by definition unstable and somewhat fragile. 3:03 And then new elections would be another route, and, uh, from the polling, it seems as if it wouldn't, at this point, really change the outcome. 3:13 Omar, part of the difficulty that Merkel's facing, uh, is due to the strong showing by the far-right Alternative for Germany party, uh, which was really an anti-EU and anti-immigrant party, uh, that surprised, uh, in September and took, I think, 11 or 12% of the vote, maybe even 13%. 3:34 Um, a- and the comparative poor showing of Merkel's Christian Democrats, uh, left her in a position where she had to try to come up with a, an unwieldy coalition, uh, that for now has failed. 3:47 Um, a lot of the AfD's rise was because of these long-term challenges, uh, of having to address Merkel's decision to open Germany's borders to what, what amounted to more than one million migrants and refugees, many of them fleeing conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa. 4:04 Um, at the time, uh, uh, of, of the refugee crisis, it, a lot of people were saying, "Well, look, this is, this is sort of the, the, the, the most clear illustration that you, th- that borders are obsolete when it comes to protecting from, uh, from crises in other parts of the world, uh, whether it be war and conflict, whether it be, uh, 4:28 uh, uh, pandemics, whether it be financial crises." 4:32 Uh, is this a question of borders being obsolete, or, uh, to the contrary, is the AfD's strong showing proof that they're more important than ever and, and very, uh, politically exploitable? 4:43 Uh, I think, you know, borders tend to fluctuate, um, and definitely the, uh, or the, sorry, the importance of borders, um, and I think at this moment, uh, across the world, we're seeing that the, the notion of strong borders and defending your country is ever more important. 5:02 And I think, you know, the, the, the refugee crisis, uh, and migrant crisis provided something for nationalist forces in Germany to seize upon, uh, and, and that really touched a nerve with the public. 5:13 Um, and Merkel's decision to open those borders provided even more space, uh, for them to make it kind of a polarizing issue. Uh, and I think it, you know, it's important 5:23 to, you know, recognize that the EU as a whole is, is a really just a grand ex- experiment in, in governance, international relations, and it was severely tested by both the economic crisis you just referred to and the influx of migrants and refugees. 5:36 Uh, and I think there's always been and will always be pro- and anti-EU forces a- and nationalists and federalist forces within every country in the EU. 5:45 Um, and I think that the current leadership in some of these Central and Eastern European countries, uh, and Western European countries are actually kind of finding some middle ground, uh, between, you know, wanting open markets and borders of the EU, um, and, and, and not the kind of interference that has tended to come with, uh, joining the, the, the European Union. 6:06 No, I, uh, you're right, there's definitely been anti-EU sentiment in, in, um, in the various member states for a long time. 6:14 Uh, France famously in 2005 voted down, as did the Netherlands, the, the Europe, the European Union constitutional treaty, which was later sort of passed by parliaments as the Lisbon Treaty. 6:28 Um, but over the course of the last, uh, say Seven years since the, the Greek debt crisis, um, which became also the Italian debt crisis, the Spanish debt crisis, Portugal, Ireland. 6:44 Um, and the austerity budgets that were imposed for, for, to, to a large degree by Germany as a condition for sort of bailing out Greece and, and the other countries, um, that popular discontent became much more urgent and, and personally felt. 7:03 And that... A- and we saw it drive the appeal of, uh, far-right parties like Alternative for Germany, um, and the National Front here in France. 7:14 Uh, and then when, when the refugee crisis, uh, sort of, uh, began to overwhelm, uh, the European Union, a lot of it had to do with the, the, the, the, the internal borders ha- uh, having been eliminated essentially. 7:31 So once people got into Europe, it became very easy to progress, uh, further into Europe. 7:37 Um, and, and part of the problem with defending Europe's external borders had to do with this tension between member states, um, uh, guarding their, their s- their certain, certain powers from the EU. 7:50 Um, and then we saw Brexit, uh, of course. Um, here in France, uh, Emmanuel Macron has put together proposals for a reform agenda, but in a large degree they were dependent on having a, a powerful partner in Berlin. 8:06 So clearly it leaves a huge leadership vacuum at the heart of any EU issues. Um, it's somewhat ironic, uh, Freddy, for a long time the, the fear in Europe has been a s- a Germany that's too strong. 8:20 Now the, the fear seems to be a Germany that's too weak. Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's interesting of, you know, being careful what you, what you wish for. 8:28 Um, there was obviously a lot of resentment, uh, at Germany and, and Merkel's hard line on, um, you know, o- austerity and, and bailouts. 8:37 Um, but the flip side of that is, you know, a weakened Germany economically or politically I think would, would be a lot worse for, for Europe and the European Union at large. 8:47 Um, I mean, I, I, I, I also think it's just interesting you run down the list of, um, other European leaders. I mean, Theresa May in Britain is hardly going to be any kind of strong leader. 8:58 I mean, obviously Britain is negotiating its way out of the EU. Um, but beyond Macron, I... 9:05 you can't really think of any other Western European leader at least who would either be prepared to sort of pick up the mantle, um, from Merkel, but also I s- I sort of think the way that the EU is set up, that, you know, it's really gonna be a French or German leader who's going to direct EU policy at large given the, the economies that they're, uh, at, you know, at the top of and, and, and just the way that the EU is, is set up. 9:28 Even though, you know, it expanded into Eastern Europe, the sort of power center is still in Germany. Um, that's obviously been a longstanding issue in Europe that goes back to the, you know, inner workings of the EU. 9:39 Um, the, the resentments over the economic situation is more recent, but, um, I do think it's a question of, uh, would people rather have that or would they have a Germany that was destabilized politically and, and not, you know, Europe's economic powerhouse? 9:53 Well, hi- historically it was always the, what they called the French-German partnership that drove the EU. 10:00 Uh, and for a long time it was France that sort of set the vision and the Germany was the economic muscle behind it because, uh, France was never able really to, to pull off the, the structural reforms that would have, uh, made it more of a, a, a economic powerhouse within Europe, even though it is, uh, one of the largest economies, uh, at, I think just behind, uh, Germany and sort of back and forth with the UK from year to year. 10:26 Um, i- in some ways the UK entered the EU partly to sort of put the brake [laughs] on France, uh, f- pulling, pulling, pulling ahead too much. 10:37 Um, and then more recently Germany sort of started becoming more and more assertive in terms of pushing for its preferred policy options. 10:46 Um, Freddy mentioned previously and just now, uh, the, this sort of generalized weakness of, of leaders. 10:53 I've likened Theresa May to, uh, to the guy who's running the Chernobyl cleanup, his job safe mainly because no one else wants it. 11:01 Um, that said, it could be that Brexit in retrospect, uh, turns out to be a, a prescient decision if the EU kind of stumbles with a, a leadership vacuum. Um, 11:15 Omar, we've seen, uh, in the past few years Belgium and the Netherlands go through extended periods of time without governments. Uh, w- we've just mentioned Theresa May's weakness. 11:24 Uh, uh, Rajoy in Spain is a weakened leader. 11:28 Uh, Macron here in France has a solid majority, but he's pretty young and untested, uh, and a lot of his agenda, as I mentioned, dependent on having a strong partner in Berlin. Is this the new normal? 11:38 Uh, do we, do we, do we have to count on Justin Trudeau to, uh, to save the, save the West, or is this sort of a cyclical thing, a passing thing? Maybe, uh, with Justin Trudeau. 11:49 Uh, I, I think it's, I'm sure it's a cyclical thing. I mean, it's not gonna last forever. 11:54 Uh, but certainly I think we're in a period of flux globally, um, and so you have a lot of weak leaders, um, especially as institutions like the EU are kind of being undermined, uh, to some regard, um, and even the position of the United States. 12:09 So, um, I, I, I think this is not something that's gonna last long term, but certainly for the foreseeable future you might have, uh, weak parties in government. 12:17 Well, you, you make a good point and one that I wanted to bring up. 12:20 Um, what I just witnessed here in f- in France in the, in the latest, uh, presidential election, uh, basically the entire political landscape become reconfigured where the Socialist Party which had- Had a majority in parliament and had won the presidency in the previous election cycle, basically disappeared. 12:40 Uh, the center-right opposition, uh, was split between those who ended up, uh, signing on with Macron and those who didn't. Um, and you have Macron's majority is basically a new party. 12:53 Um, y- the similar things have been happening elsewhere in, in Europe, where traditional parties have been weakened, uh, f- French parties or alternative parties have been strengthened. In the U.S. 13:05 also, we see a little, a little bit of it happening, uh, more pronounced in the Republican Party, where you have this sort of Trump Tea Party faction, uh, one by one picking off mainstream Republicans. 13:18 Uh, the Democratic Party in the last election cycle showed quite a bit of strain in terms of the Bernie Sanders further left wing and the Hillary Clinton centrist wing. 13:28 Um, and then Freddy, given things that are going on around the world where Xi Jinping in China has, is certainly the, the furthest thing from a weak leader. 13:38 Uh, Vladimir Putin, I have my suspicions that there, there might be more going on behind the scenes than we know, but he certainly seems to be running, uh, uh, Russia's foreign policy, um, and is... 13:49 There's no real visible signs of any weakness. 13:52 Uh, i- is this just a period, is this a historical moment where we'll look back and think this is when the West, the dominance of Western Europe and the United States in terms of global affairs, uh, ended? 14:06 I don't think ended, but I do think a moment where, um, traditional parties and powers in the West had to scramble to, to figure things out, um, and to, and to sort of readjust their priorities and their policies, um, 14:21 A, to clarify what they really care about and, and what issues matter more now after the financial crisis, after, uh, the rise of China, after a situation where the U.S. 14:32 is not, um, the sole superpower necessarily and can dictate all, uh, most of the international agenda. 14:39 Um, and whether that, I mean, I don't know that that's really determined either because obviously part of that, um, this f- struggle we're seeing in the U.S. and elsewhere is, you know, those priorities 14:51 going up against nationalist priorities and this backlash, um, that's either nativist or nationalist or, um, other kinds of, uh, sort of barriers going up, and I think that that's, that's sort of the flux we're seeing and, and I, I'm optimistic that it'll turn out for the better in that, um, parties will 15:10 look and, and see what their priorities should be, what voters respond to. Um, but I d- I do think it's certainly, uh, 15:20 it's, it's a consequence of Russia and China on the one hand, but it's also a consequence of, of, um, sort of an inability to adjust, I think, um, and an in- and an inability to, to see the way the political wind, the way the polit- the political winds are blowing, um, in places like the U.S. 15:35 and, and Western Europe. Omar, we've, we've got, we've gotten a long way from failed coalition talks in Germany to the potential, uh, collapse of the West in global geopolitics. 15:46 But, uh, one, one, one last question before we wrap things up. 15:51 Um, I remember, uh, obviously Germany doesn't have a huge pr- footprint in the Middle East, which is your, your region of expertise, but I remember at the very beginning of the Arab uprisings in 2011, 2012, uh, or rather 2010, 2011, if I'm not mistaken, um, I remember s- writing that there was, that there was this, this fundamental questioning of legitimacy and that there was a lot of implication in the, of the West in a l- in some of the, in the power structures of the Middle East in ways that 16:27 could come back to, to, to haunt the West, uh, that once you start questioning legitimacy, it's almost like, uh, Descartes and, and doubt. 16:36 It's really hard to, wh- when you start doubting or questioning, to find, uh, an absolute zero where you can s- sort of anchor yourself. Do you see 16:47 th- any parallels between th- this, what appears to be a, a major reconfiguration and political questioning in Western Europe, in the West? Uh, any parallels between this and the Arab uprisings? 16:59 Any connections, uh, even if they're not obvious or, or direct? Uh, I'm not sure the connections are direct, but, uh, I think it takes me back to the question that you just posed to Freddy, uh, to some extent. 17:10 You know, I think there's really not a c- a clear vision of the world in the same way that existed in the, in the post-World War II, uh, era, even if there was, during the Cold War, parallel visions for the world. 17:21 Uh, but they were, they were fairly clear, and I think the world kind of was divided, uh, amongst people th- that were, uh, adhered to one or the other. 17:29 And then in the post-Cold War era, you had a, a pretty clear vision of the world, uh, espoused by the U.S. 17:35 and, you know, accepted by a lot of Europe and, and, and, you know, the, the bringing in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states into the fold, uh, and even Russia in the beginning to some extent. 17:45 Um, you know, when it comes to the Middle East and the parallels there, I think there's certainly a lack of legitimacy, uh, and there has been, uh, regarding the regimes that were in power for a very long time. 17:56 I think that's been an issue for, for decades. 17:58 Um, and I think really in the '70s we saw, uh, that start to change in terms of people posing an alternative to the kind of secular national states that had, uh, risen up in the '50s and '60s, uh, in the Middle East, but then failed to really provide the solutions that people were looking for to, uh, bring the Middle East and the Arab world and the Islamic world back to its stature as a, as a global center, as a global powerhouse. 18:25 Those, they failed to deliver on any promises to the regime, uh, sorry, to their peoples. 18:30 Uh, and, and then they kind of calcified in terms of, uh, their power and authority, uh, using, you know, a, a rentier model and a, and a security apparatus basically to keep themselves in power. And so those 18:43 Those started to crumble, I think, to a large extent in 2011. Whether there's a strong parallel with what's happening, uh, in Europe, uh, it's, it's difficult to say. 18:52 But I, I think you can see at its base, you know, a questioning of the, the, the [smacks lips] kind of foundational, uh, 19:02 ideologies of the regime to some extent and, and whether they're able to provide solutions to their people. 19:07 And, and maybe that has been undermined by the economic crisis, uh, globally and in, and in Europe and, and tested the kind of neoliberal order and the kind of, uh, market capitalist order, and people start to question that kind of thing. 19:22 That's how I was going to... That was the point that I was going to sort of tease out from what you said, that, uh, 19:28 obviously th- there's a big distinction between Western democracies and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, but there is this question of a fundamental model and promises that were made based on the model that, that didn't pan out and that weren't delivered. 19:42 Um, and so a questioning not only of the, the assumptions, but also of the people who have made these promises for so long. 19:49 Um, all right, well, uh, I, I, I don't want to pin too much on Angela Merkel for the, the collapse of Western civilization, for instance. She's, n- she, she might not be entirely responsible. 20:01 Uh, but definitely a, a lot of, uh, fascinating, uh, implications from, uh, what starts out basically as a, a domestic political impasse. 20:11 Uh, before we wrap up with a couple articles that we want to flag for everyone, let me mention to the people listening that we're in the final weeks of our three-month subscription drive, and our goal for the coming week is to sign up 75 new subscribers. 20:26 So if you like what we do and if you've thought about subscribing, now would be a great time to do so. 20:32 All you have to do is go to bit.ly/joinwpr, and if you enter the word "podcast" in the box marked Coupon or Referral Code, we'll throw in a 25% discount on the first year of an annual subscription. 20:46 Freddy, which article did you want to flag for everyone? 20:49 I wanted to flag, uh, Iyad Dakha's briefing on where Turkey stands now, uh, given the state of Syria's civil war, which has basically turned out exactly the opposite as, as Turkey hoped and intended. 21:03 Um, and it's, it's the latest piece in a series we have on the last days of ISIS and, and what the more or less the fall of the Islamic State means for Syria and, uh, and its neighboring countries. 21:15 And a series that's turning out really fascinating. Omar? 21:19 Uh, I'll, I'd like to flag Valerie Hopkins', uh, briefing on the establishment of the International Crimi- Criminal Justice System during, uh, the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the civil war that ensued from that, and kind of the great gains that were made, uh, in the decades after that, and how the kind of momentum's starting to shift away from the International Criminal Court and those institutions, and that's something that's gonna be seriously tested, uh, as they prepare for, um, trials regarding, you know, war crimes in Syria. 21:50 Okay, fascinating stuff. Thanks, both of you. Thanks, Judah. Thanks, Judah. And now over to Andrew for the report. 21:57 [upbeat music] The National Liberation Army of Colombia has freed a hostage in a goodwill gesture on the eve of peace talks, which would bring more than 50 years of conflict to an end. 22:10 Freddy Moreno was handed over by the country's last active rebel group, the ELN, two weeks after he was captured. 22:18 After decades of political violence, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, says it's ready to put down its weapons, at least for three months. 22:29 Following the Colombian government's historic peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, another armed group has come to the fore. 22:39 The National Liberation Army, or ELN, has been around since the 1960s but has long operated in the FARC's shadows. As that group has disbanded though, the ELN has expanded militarily. 22:53 At the same time, it has entered into peace talks with the government, talks that delivered a bilateral ceasefire that began in October. The question now is whether it will hold. 23:04 James Bargent, a freelance journalist based in Colombia, explains who the ELN are and what exactly it is that the group wants. The National Liberation Army, or the ELN, uh, have their roots in the 1960s. 23:16 They formed about the same time as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, which are or were the, uh, biggest and more well known of Colombia's insurgencies until they demobilized this year. 23:28 They're slightly different to the FARC in that whereas the FARC was very much a peasant-based movement based around land rights, the ELN has always had a slightly more urban intellectual side to it, uh, with its base being in radical student movements and also Catholic liberation theory. 23:48 It's always had a strong theological aspect to it as well. Um, so they've developed since the '60s. They've never really taken off in the same way as the FARC. I think at their height they had maybe about 5,000 fighters. 24:03 Today, they have probably less than 2,000 fighters. 24:07 And whereas the FARC at their peak occupied a third of Colombian territory, I mean, a lot of that territory was very sp- sparsely populated territory, but nevertheless, it was a third of the country. 24:19 The ELN has been confined to certain regional strongholds, so very much in the east of the country, um, in the, in the oil lands of Arauca and Norte de Santander and in parts of the west and the middle. 24:34 They're kind of sited all around Colombia, but confined to sort of territorial niches. They've never r- quite had the national reach that the FARC managed to obtain. Um, they're also organized differently to the FARC. 24:47 The FARC was a very hierarchical, militaristic sort of organization with a very sort of strong, um, mostly united leadership, whereas the ELN has always been prone to, to bickerings, to leadership challenges, uh, and they're, they're largely much more decentralized. 25:05 So the, the local regional factions do tend to operate semi-autonomously and don't always obey the commands of the leaders. 25:14 So although they've, they've kind of grown in parallel to the FARC, they have in many ways turned into quite a different, um, guerrilla insurgency. 25:23 As FARC has disarmed and prepared to reintegrate into society, it has created what Bargen calls a big opportunity and a big risk for the ELN. 25:33 An opportunity in the sense that they now have the, uh, the chance to expand into areas that were formerly FARC territories, which is in many ways quite a straightforward thing because you have a civil population that is quite used to living alongside guerrillas. 25:51 In most of FARC's, the, most of the FARC's territories, you know, they were the, the de facto authorities. The state didn't really reach. 25:59 So the conditions are there for them simply to sort of move in and take over the role the FARC had. The main benefit for this is not only a territorial expansion. In fact, it's primarily to do with criminal economies. 26:13 Uh, the FARC have left a vacuum. 26:15 The FARC had a big empire of criminal economies that they used to finance their insurgency, which included taxing and regulating the coca trade, in some cases actually trafficking drugs themselves, uh, extorting or sometimes running illegal mining operations, huge extortion networks of anything in their territory. 26:35 And, you know, this is hundreds of millions of dollars worth of criminal activities that they controlled, but it's now up for grabs because the FARC have largely departed from the scene and left these, left these criminal economies for whoever wants to claim them. 26:49 So in that sense, the ELN have a chance to really increase their funding and their territorial reach. They also have an opportunity to boost their ranks. 27:01 Um, if there are disillusioned FARC soldiers who are unhappy with the peace process or were never on board in the first place, they can simply, what you ca- call in Colombia, change armbands. 27:12 You know, they just take off their FARC armband, put on their ELN armband, and the ELN have some battle-hardened troops to join the ranks. 27:19 It's been very hard to confirm these cases, but in most areas, uh, where there has been this kind of transition, there's certainly strong suspicions that this is what's been happening. 27:29 On the other side, though, it also presents a risk because you have the Colombian military, which is one of the biggest and best equipped in the region, that's been fighting a counterinsurgency for over half a century, that was previously primarily focused on the FARC and is now going to be turning their attentions to the ELN. 27:49 So they're gonna find operating a lot tougher at the same time as they have this opportunity to expand and, um, and boost their finances. The Colombian military is not the only enemy the ELN is confronting. 28:04 Yeah, so the ELN's main conflict at the moment is, as I mentioned before, to, to occupy what were FARC territories. 28:12 And in this, they're fighting against a group that call themselves the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia or the, the Gaitánist, um, Self-Defense Force of Colombia. Gaitán's a famous political figure here. 28:25 Now, this is a group, they're also commonly known as the Uraneos. 28:28 The, the government refer to them as the Clan del Golfo or the, the Gulf Clan, that were formed from former paramilitary counterinsurgencies that used to fight the guerrillas, but demobilized and large factions of them criminalized. 28:45 And they've, they've kind of lost the counterinsurgency facade, and now they're more interested in controlling strategic territories for drug trafficking, illegal mining, and extortion mostly. 28:57 Um, so these, the AGC are also looking to do the same as the ELN and basically expand into what were FARC territories and take over these lucrative criminal economies that the FARC used to control. 29:10 Um, this has brought them into conflict with the ELN. Uh, and in some places, you know, we've seen... Some places it, it's more low-key, the odd homicide here, threats. 29:22 But in other places, we're seeing entire towns displaced or confined by landmines. 29:28 We're seeing confrontations with reports of hundreds of members of these, um, both groups facing off, which seems very large for them all to be in one place, but there's been numerous reports of hundreds of them, uh, walking around certain regions. 29:43 And this has basically brought, brought the war back to certain areas. I mean, certain areas that 29:49 may have had to live under the FARC and they're fighting the army, but they didn't have this sort of violence for quite a long time. 29:57 At the same time as violence has escalated, the ELN has also engaged the Colombian government in peace talks, and there have been some key differences from the earlier negotiations with the FARC. 30:08 This has been a very slow and arduous process. The preliminary talks started back when the FARC were still talking, but it's taken a long time to get to the stage where we're actually sitting down with a formal agenda. 30:22 This is largely for several reasons. One is it's just very difficult to negotiate with the ELN because, as I mentioned before, they just don't have that centralized command. 30:33 So you can find yourself negotiating with one faction and another faction just completely disagrees with what you're talking about. Another is the ELN have been very reluctant, unlike the FARC. 30:44 The FARC, for example, renounced kidnapping. As a precondition for the talks, ELN have been very reluctant to do this and while they've been releasing hostages, they've not really completely stopped kidnapping. 30:58 So the talks finally got underway in Quito in Ecuador, and they've been devising an agenda which again is in some ways good, in some ways problematic. 31:10 It's good in the sense that one of the criticisms of the FARC process was that civil society was largely excluded. 31:17 It was negotiations between guerrilla commanders and the government, and everyone else just had to sit and watch. 31:23 The ELN, on the other hand, are insistent on the participation of ci-civil s- of civil society as the basis for these talks. So in one sense, it's good that civil society's gonna be involved. 31:35 In another, this makes a very slow and arduous process even more slow and difficult and complicated. 31:43 So the talks have progressed very slowly until September when they, they produced their first real concrete advance, and that was a ceasefire for three months, a bilateral ceasefire, uh, lasting from October to January. 31:57 Now, this actually, given the amount of time they've been talking, is a big advance. 32:01 In, in the FARC talks it took a long, long time before they got to the stage where they agreed to a ceasefire, so it is a, a very good, um, significant advance. 32:11 Um, the question's gonna be is whether they'll be able to maintain it. I don't, I don't think there's any real doubt about the 32:19 ELN leadership's commitment to this idea, but whether they will be able to apply it to regions like I talk about in the story, like Choco in the west or Arauca in the east, is, um, is going to be very difficult. 32:34 And the other thing is they've, they've committed in parts of these to do, stop doing things like, uh, laying landmines and recruiting minors. And again, I think it, it's likely we'll see 32:46 certainly a huge reduction if not a complete eradication of confrontations between the army and the ELN, but it just seems very unlikely that all their local factions are going to stop these practices that are, you know, it's just part of what they do. 33:00 That's how they are. They, they [laughs] if they go into an area, they mine it to protect themselves, and they often recruit kids for their ranks as well. So that's where we're at at the moment. 33:10 Um, we're basically seeing if this ceasefire's gonna hold. The other thing to note is next May are the presidential elections. 33:18 So President Juan Manuel Santos, who really drove through the FARC process and has established this ELN process as well, he's now into his lame duck period, you know. 33:29 And he's also exhausted all his political capital pushing through the FARC one. So now he's quite unpopular in the country, he has no political backing, and he's counting down the months until he's out. So 33:43 really we're looking to the next administration and who's gonna pick this up, and there is huge uncertainty over that. So the future of the talks is also uncertain because of these political considerations. 33:58 Ahead of the May election, the political situation is still incredibly fluid. The outcome of that vote could have significant ramifications for the talks. 34:07 It's difficult to say who, uh, Santos' success is gonna be in right now. I mean, we-we're basically in the primary stage, so the main parties are just selecting their candidates now. 34:19 Um, we know that the former Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras is going to stand as kind of the establishment candidate, which is not good news to the peace talks because he's broken away from Santos and suddenly come, come out against, well, certainly large parts of the peace process. 34:39 Uh, we also know that the Centro Democrático, which is the main opposition party, whoever their candidate is, they're going to fiercely resist the peace process because that's, that's their political stance. 34:51 It's kind of their reason for being. 34:53 Uh, they're led by former President Álvaro Uribe, who maintains a huge le- well, a significant level of very, very dedicated support despite the fact that he's a hugely controversial figure. 35:09 Uh, he's faced numerous investigations for ties to paramilitary death squads and drug traffickers and so on. 35:17 And so there's those two candidates, uh, whoever the Centro Democrático is and Germán Vargas Lleras stand a reasonable chance of, of winning. It's very possible. 35:27 And if either of those win, then the peace process un- is unlikely to continue. Ve- very unlikely to just kill it right out. 35:35 They'll probably put conditions down that the ELN will never meet, and the whole thing will just fall apart. 35:41 Um, of the other candidates, there will be some very strongly pro-peace ones who will make the peace process, uh, more with the FARC, but also the ELN process, you know, a core part of what they're, what they're standing for. 35:55 But really, it, it's very difficult to see what's going to happen in the next year because it, it's gonna be stuck certainly for the next year in kind of a holding pattern as we transition between the governments and then the new government which will come into power around August, I think, but probably won't be implementing much in the terms of l-legislation until 2019. 36:20 So it's really down to those running the talks to just to keep things moving along and show enough progress for whoever the new government is to continue with the process. Now, in terms of the popular support for this, 36:38 the truth is, I mean, for most people, they just don't think about it very much now. I think the, the FARC process was hugely divisive. It went on for a long time. And I think a lot of people are kind of peace weary. 36:53 You know, they just don't want to think about it anymore. And, you know, especially because the ELN represents a relatively confined threat compared to the FARC, they are happy just not to think about it too much. 37:06 So there's a chance even that it won't be that high up the agenda in the elections because people don't want to confront people into facing what, again, could be quite a divisive issue. 37:18 Obviously, in areas where the ELN are strong, then attitudes are very difficult. 37:23 I mean, the situation has got much, much worse since the FARC went with the advance of the ELN and they would welcome any process that takes out any more armed actors out of their areas. So those people care very much. 37:38 But for the general population, there's just not as much interest as you'd expect in the process. The ELN are not necessarily making the process any easier. 37:48 It's difficult to say what the ELN are going to be aiming for in these talks for the reason that their main, the things that they sort of fight around most are just not on the table. 38:02 So their main sort of banners they rally around are things like the nationalization of national resources because, you know, they operate in oil territories a lot. So that's a major one. 38:14 The changing of the military doctrine or the economic model that Colombia uses. Now, these aren't things that the Colombian government is going to negotiate. So exactly what ELN are hoping to get out of this isn't clear. 38:31 The FARC had a very, very specific six-point agenda. Okay, we want rural reform. We want the situation for the coca farmers to be dealt with and this sort of thing. 38:41 Whereas what the ELN is saying is we want to hear petitions from civil society about what problems they want us to tackle in these talks. 38:50 What's going to come out of this in terms of a final agreement will very much depend on what civil society says and how they participate in these talks. 39:00 Because really, ELN's central things that they've been fighting over, they're just not going to get. 39:06 The government is not going to cede things like the nationalization of the oil industry in talks with a relatively small guerrilla insurgency. 39:14 It's going to be very difficult to see these talks through the next year, I think. And another thing that's really hanging over it all is the FARC process and the implementation of the FARC accords. 39:25 Because so far, the government has been doing a pretty poor job of implementing the accords, really. They've been behind on everything. They've had real issues like passing legislation in Congress. 39:38 The legal framework, or certainly the complete legal framework to implement the accords is unlikely to be in place before the elections, which means that a new government can start picking away at the seams and undoing certainly the intention of the accords, if not the accords themselves. 39:55 And the ELN will be watching all this. 39:57 And if they're looking at this and seeing that if you sign an agreement with the government and then when it comes to implementing it, that's not what they implement, then they're not going to have much faith in their own process, 40:12 which again is going to put a real strain on seeing it through the next year while we're in this kind of political limbo. 40:19 So I think it's going to take a real effort on the part of negotiators and on both sides to be able to show concrete advances during this time 40:29 to give the process the credibility it needs to push through into the next political administration. And I think the ceasefire really is critical to this. 40:38 If they can prove that they can use these talks to reduce violence that has in certain regions been really increasing, 40:46 then hopefully that will give it the impetus for these talks to carry on no matter what the political situation is. Many thanks to James Bargant for joining us this week. 41:00 If you'd like to read more about Colombia's peace process with the ELN, you can find his in-depth article on worldpoliticsreview.com. 41:07 If you like what you hear on Trendlines, go ahead and subscribe to it in the podcast app of your choice. That will save you the trouble of downloading each new episode. 41:16 And if you like what you've seen on WPR, please do subscribe. You can do that at bit.ly slash joinwpr. 41:24 And if you enter the word podcast in the box marked coupon or referral code, we'll apply a 25% discount to the first year of an annual subscription. 41:33 We've got a couple weeks left in our subscription drive, and our goal for the coming week is to sign up 75 new subscribers. I hope you'll be one of them. 41:41 And finally, if you'd like to send comments or questions, email us at podcast at worldpoliticsreview.com. Trendlines is produced and edited by Peter Dury. Andrew Green conducted the report interview this week. 41:54 You can follow both of them and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 42:04 Have a great weekend, and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines.
