Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trend Lines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Dirie. 0:12 Gold is one of Colombia's most important exports, but the people producing the precious metal, mostly informal small-scale miners, are facing violence, extortion, and expulsion. 0:25 James Bargains will explain some of the underlying dynamics and the political context in the second part of the show. 0:31 But first, I'm happy to be again joined by Judah Grunstein, World Politics Review editor-in-chief, to discuss this week's main stories in international politics. What has crossed your desk over the last days, Judah? 0:44 Well, we had, uh, a great briefing by Leah Farrell on the factors that drive affiliations and allegiances of local terrorist groups to the, the major global brand names, uh, which are obviously the Islamic State or ISIS and Al-Qaeda. 1:05 And, uh, in a, uh, what we've seen over, over the past year or six months is a major competition between the, those two groups for, uh, for high-profile, uh, attacks that generate a lot of attention and publicity, and that- that's something that we, we can see behind the attacks recently in Burkina Faso and in Mali, which were claimed by an Al-Qaeda affiliate. 1:33 Um, but there's also this competition between the two groups for affiliations and the, the local franchises. 1:41 Um, and, and recently, in the past year, uh, the Islamic State or ISIS has, has either implanted itself with returning fighters, uh, that have fought for the group in Syria and in Iraq that have then gone back to their home countries, or else it's gained the allegiance of local groups. 1:59 And we've seen this in Libya, we've seen it in Afghanistan, and most recently we saw it in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, where the Jakarta attack was claimed by an ISIS-affiliated local group. 2:10 And so that's created this, this narrative of an ascendant ISIS with, uh, with, uh, a- an emphasis in a lot of the coverage on the attraction of the group's ideology to these, to these local affiliates. 2:25 And Leah Farrell's piece really looks at, uh, at a whole range of other factors that drive these allegiances, and that because of that call into question this narrative of, uh, of an Islamic state that has a firm grip and firm control over these, uh, very dedicated and id- ideologically, uh, loyal local groups. 2:47 So it's a great piece and, um, and it's a topic that's, that gets a lot of coverage, but, uh, uh, this is a, a way to look at it in, from a, from a new angle. Mm. 2:56 Yeah, I know that, for example, in Somalia, this is an issue as well, where, uh, Al-Shabaab is an Al-Qaeda affiliate, but they are popping up, um, ISIS, uh, uh, affiliated groups or linked groups as well. 3:08 Um, but you also had an interesting article on El Salvador. Yes. Uh, another, another country that is beset by violence, but a different kind of violence. 3:19 Uh, we had a briefing by Christine Wade that looked at El Salvador's current murder epidemic. 3:25 And in case people are wondering about the use of the, the, the expression murder ep- murder epidemic, uh, the, the World Health Organization actually qualifies anything over 10 murders per 100,000, uh, population as epidemic proportions in terms of murder. 3:43 And to put it in perspective, El Salvador's current rate, uh, just climbed to over 100 murders per, per 100,000. 3:51 So that's 10 times the, the, the threshold at which the World Health Organization quali- qualifies something as a murder epidemic. And, uh, Christine Wade's briefing, uh, 4:03 uses this to illustrate what she calls a peace building paradox, uh, especially which, which El Salvador illustrates. 4:11 This is a country that just recently celebrated the 21st, 24th anniversary of the peace accords that ended a, a brutal civil war, and where the FMLN, which was the former guerrilla group and now a, a political party, has won the presidency in the past two elections. 4:28 So in many ways, El Salvador has, has been the, the, the poster child of successful peace building and successful, uh, uh, post-conflict, uh, reconstruction. 4:41 Uh, and at the same time, uh, more Salvadorans have left the country since the end of the war than did during the war. 4:48 And so the, this briefing looks at what went wrong, the particular things that were, uh, flawed in terms of implementation or which were left out of the actual deal that, uh, that then had repercussions afterward. 5:03 And she looks at, Christine Wade looks at the implications for other peace building efforts, and most notably in Colombia, which, uh, is closing in on a peace deal between the government and the FARC, uh, guerrilla group, a, a, a war that's lasted over 50 years. 5:20 And the way in which the deal, the, these peace deals are structured and what's included and what's left out can have very serious implications that, that can last and, and can m- m- be felt even a quarter century later. 5:34 I also noticed that you had, uh, two new global insider interviews up on the homepage, uh, on a very particular theme. So what, what is this all about? 5:43 Well, the, the global insider interviews, uh, which are, which are essentially just brief three-question email interviews that we do with regional and area experts, um, and, and which we use to cover smaller stories, uh, that either don't rise to the threshold criteria for a briefing. 6:02 Uh, some examples, some of my favorite examples in the past have been, uh, one we did on the diplomacy between hotlines between various countries, and another was on, uh, uh, uh, the, uh, the unrecognized states, so this whole range of states that has no recognition. 6:19 So these are s- kind of small, off the, off the beaten track stories that we sometimes, uh, find, find interesting to cover. 6:27 And at other times, uh, we use these interviews As a way to cover a story that lends itself more to an information-dense question and answer Q&A format than to an essay form for the briefings or the feature articles. 6:42 And more recently, we've started to use them to cover recurring themes that affect a wide range of countries, such as the South China Sea territorial disputes or anti-corruption efforts. 6:54 Um, and then we group the, the resulting series together on a dedicated page. 7:00 And the two global insider interviews that we ran this week looked at another theme that we've been focusing on a lot, uh, over the past six months especially, and that's the end of the commodities boom that over the past decade has driven so much growth in Africa and Latin America, but also in Central Asia and countries like Indonesia and Australia. 7:21 And in general, for, for resource exporting countries, there are two major challenges. 7:27 The first is, uh, managing the so-called resource curse, which involves instituting policies to mitigate, mitigate the, the, the kinds of economic distortions that, uh, the sudden windfall revenues from resources, exporting resources generate, such as overvalued currencies and, and very often, uh, corruption. 7:50 Um, and the second major challenge is to protect th- the economy against the, the, the cyclical nature of the commodities market by, by using the revenues from the boom years to prepare for the bust years, and 8:06 countries can do this by investing in infrastructure and social welfare, for instance, and also by diversiv- di- diversifying the economy so that it's not overly dependent on this one sector. 8:16 Uh, i- in the past, Lisa Sachs has written two great feature articles for us on, uh, those topics and, and the, with an in-depth look at the kinds of policies to put in place, uh, for both of those challenges. 8:32 Um, un- un- unfortunately, w- with a handful except, of exceptions, like, uh, Chile comes to mind and, and Norway, very few countries actually manage to successfully achieve those goals. 8:45 And the, the result is that they face dramatic revenue losses when the boom turns to bust, and that impacts not only the economy, uh, in general, but also public spending and, and therefore, uh, often political stability. 8:58 Yeah, and in Africa, you, you can really see that at the moment. So there are a number of countries which are virtually completely dependent on commodities exports for their government revenue. 9:09 So you have Angola, you have the DR Congo, Algeria, uh, Nigeria, and, uh, also Zambia, w- for which you had a very interesting interview with Irmgard Erasmus, um, uh, in, in, as part of the series. 9:23 The, the current bust cycle makes c- clear the risks of the strategy to, to count completely on co- uh, commodity revenues. 9:31 It does, and, and in, in the two GIs that we ran this week, uh, Robert Looney discussed Saudi Arabia's efforts to, to increase its oil- its non-oil revenues in the face of the collapse of global oil prices. 9:45 And R- Richard Kozlarich, uh, offered a, a pretty grim picture of Azerbaijan. And, and to put it into context for, for people, uh, Azerbaijan, uh, had, despite an estimated $100 billion 10:02 in energy revenues over the past two decades, is now in talks with the IMF and the World Bank for a combined $4 billion emergency package to save its currency from collapse because of this, uh, because of the, the collapse in, in oil prices. 10:17 So it, uh, and, and, and the result has been in Azerbaijan, which is a, a, an authoritarian regime, it's a, it's a country where there's not a lot of dissent that's allowed, and there's been political, there's been demonstrations and protests and arrests, um, in, in the past few weeks. 10:35 So it really does have an impact on political stability, and this is one of the reasons why, in addition to the corruption series that we're, that we're running, that we're really taking a close look at this from week to week. 10:45 Mm. Uh, one thing I would l- I'd like to add, though, is that there's also s- uh, an upside for many countries, especially in Africa. 10:52 There are many countries who have virtually no resources at all, and they are a net, um, oil importer. 10:58 And they are quite happy now because their, their import bills, uh, have gone way down over the last, uh, last few years. [laughs] That's a, it's a good point. One man's ceiling is another man's floor. Yeah. 11:08 And, uh, and so there's, uh, for in term- there's the, w- w- where th- this series is generally looking at the challenges for resource exporting countries, but it's very true for resource importing countries, the, the bust cycle, uh, is, uh, is a, is a boon. 11:23 Oh, thanks for joining me again this week. It's a pleasure as always. 11:26 [Instrumental music] Colombia's profitable gold mining sector is dominated by small scale miners, but most of them are faced with violence, criminalization, and extortion. 11:38 James Bargent is the author of an in-depth feature article on the issue on worldpoliticsreview.com, titled Colombia's Informal Gold Miners Feel the Heat From All Sides. 11:49 And he was able to join me from Medellín to talk about the problems facing the miners and the government alike. [Instrumental music] Uh, my name's James Bargent. 11:58 I'm a freelance journalist based in Medellín, Colombia, um, specializing in things like organized crime and the Colombian conflict. 12:07 So in Colombia, you've got every different type of mining, large scale mining right down to artisanal mining. 12:13 But according to the, the most recent s- census of mining operations carried out by the government, it's 86.7% of gold mining operations have no legal title. 12:26 So the bulk of mining operations are this small, medium scale and artisanal mining. 12:33 So you do have large, um, li- a few handful of large companies doing industrial scale mining, and then you have these various types of small and medium scale mining. 12:41 So what you have is you'll have alluvial mining where they, um- They use backhoes and they use dredges to basically go into the riverbanks looking for more surface-based deposits. 12:55 You have subterranean mining where they'll open tunnels going into hillsides and looking for veins of gold. And then you have the lowest level artisanal mining. 13:07 So you have what they call barraqueros who are gold panners and also chatarreras who basically work with the rubble left by subterranean 13:18 mines and just sort of work through it to find the last few little pieces of gold in the materials that the miners throw away. The gold production in Colombia is very important for the economy. 13:30 And at the moment, it's heavily dependent on the informal sector. It's only a small percentage of it that's actually handled by large mining companies. 13:39 A lot of the mining hotspots, the economy is based entirely around mining. 13:43 It's not just that everyone works in mining, but also all the side economies, all the businesses, transports, repair, warehouse, everything is based around mining. 13:54 And if you took out the informal mining sector out of the equation, we would have very, very serious economic troubles. Gold has been both a boon and a curse for Segovia. 14:07 In 1988, paramilitaries gunned down 43 people in this square, one of their first massacres as they tried to demonstrate their power in the region. 14:15 Until last year, civilians were regularly caught up in deadly battles between two groups vying for racketeering rights. They finally called a truce and agreed to split the extortion money equally. 14:28 So I think one of the main issues around mining in Colombia is how armed groups and organised crime networks have infiltrated and exploited the illegal mining sector. There's various ways in which this happens. 14:42 The main one is simply for extortion. 14:45 If you have an illegal mining operation in a mining zone, and almost all the main mining zones are conflict hotspots where you have armed groups or like guerrilla groups or criminal networks operating, they will come and they will demand a cut of your operations. 15:02 If you, for example, you use retros and it's a machine-based operation, they will charge you a flat fee per machine per month. 15:09 If you are a barraquero, like doing the gold panning, then they will charge you either a weekly or monthly fee just to be allowed to work. And if you're working in subterranean mines, 15:22 they will do basically an analysis of how productive your mine is and charge you a percentage of your profits on a monthly basis, which you pay either in cash or in gold. 15:32 This has given rise to the Colombian government labelling illegal mining criminal mining, 15:40 which the miners say they feel that their victims are not collaborators and they've been criminalised and stigmatised by this association with armed groups. 15:51 On the other hand, it is true that in these mining zones, illegal mining is now the main source of funding for armed groups or guerrilla groups or paramilitary groups or organised crime. 16:02 It can be even more profitable than drug trafficking. And then there's the fact that it's not the only, it's not the extent of their infiltration of the mining sector. 16:12 Although that's by far and away extortion is the most important one. There are other cases where they run their own mining operations. 16:20 They take, they force people off their mines and take control of them for themselves or front men. They use front men to invest in mines to launder their drug money. 16:30 So there's a lot of other ways that these armed groups engage with mining as well. What you've seen in the last few years has been, especially in the region of North Antioquia, is essentially gold wars. 16:43 These neo-paramilitary groups, the groups descended from the paramilitary counterinsurgents, 16:50 in the first years of their existence, they fought numerous turf wars to try and establish dominion over the territories where the paramilitaries used to be in control. 17:00 And in the north of Antioquia, this was basically a fight over the right to control illegal mining, as that was the biggest criminal resource in the region. And it sent violence off the roof. 17:14 I mean, there was towns in the region that were posting murder rates in excess of 500 per 100,000 people. So, I mean, really, really high violence levels. 17:26 The miners were often caught in the middle because both sides would demand extortion payments. And if they found out they were paying both sides, they could get caught in trouble. 17:36 And it got really, really violent in these territories. I mean, people describe it as essentially being like a war zone with grenades going off day and night, bodies turning up every day. And 17:49 most of it centred around the fact that they wanted to control illegal gold mining and the extortion and other benefits that it provides them. 18:01 Gold has become the newest front in Colombia's seemingly endless internal war. In the early morning darkness, Colombian police get ready for another raid. 18:19 They're not hunting cocaine labs or kidnappers. They're preparing to shut down nine illegal gold mines. 18:27 The police raid provokes fury in the miners, who say they are caught in the middle of a war between the authorities and these illegal militias. So nationally, the government has 18:46 declared a war on criminal mining. 18:49 Again, the problem with this is defining what is criminal mining, because it could just be there is very definitely an aspect where it's criminal mining when these illegal armed groups run the mining essentially for themselves and their benefits. 19:04 But What tends to happen is a lot of people that aren't criminals but just have to pay for extortion and the victims of these armed groups get swept up in this, in this idea of criminal mining. 19:15 So they've had as part of this war, war on criminal mining, they've had, um, a security crackdown. They now go, like, go to the mines, they blow up their machines. They, uh, close off the mine entrances. 19:27 They arrest miners. 19:29 Um, they're now doing thing- they, they stop and check people for, for gold that they're selling and confiscate the gold if they don't have the right, the right papers for it, even send people to prison for that. 19:40 Um, one kind of unforeseen consequence of this is an increase in coca cultivation. 19:47 What you saw in Bajo Cauca is there used to be quite a lot of coca cultivation to produce cocaine, and when there was a big clampdown in that, which, um, happened at the same time as the gold prices started to go up, there was a huge migration from coca cultivation to gold mining. 20:05 What you're seeing in Bajo Cauca at the moment is pretty much the reverse of that. 20:08 The security crackdown has made, uh, mining a lot more dangerous and a lot, uh, as well as the fall in prices have made it a lot less profitable. 20:17 So a lot of people are going back to coca cultivation, and that's shooting up again. And so on the one side, you've got this big security crackdown, and then on the other, there is, um, attempts to bring some 20:35 into, into the legal market. This has been a very, very disjointed effort, certainly on a national level. 20:41 In the, in the state of Antioquia, which is, you know, the, the heartland of the gold trade here, um, there is a local governor's office initiative to legalize the miners as well. 20:52 [smacks lips] So in this initiative, they separate the miners into traditional miners, boom miners, and criminal miners. So for them, the criminal miners they want to take out. 21:04 The boom miners are people that have arrived in, you know, over the last few years as the prices have taken off. And the idea is to help them develop economic activities around mining, but not mining. 21:16 And then the traditional miners who they want to, um, [smacks lips] help legalize and formalize. Uh, now there's two ways to do this. 21:24 For the alluvial mining, they're, they're trying to find them, like, land titling, take them through the formalization process, getting all the licenses and environmental studies. 21:34 And then for the subterranean mining, idea is because most of that is on a concession owned by one big company, uh, is to broker contracts with that company so it can operate. Um, [smacks lips] 21:49 the miners pretty much all say the same thing, that it's a nice idea, but it starts to fall apart quite rapidly when it meets the far more complex reality on the ground in these, in these areas. 22:01 [dramatic music] This is El Mamboto, and in many ways, it is the story of Colombian gold mining. Uh, gold's come from here for hundreds and hundreds of years. 22:12 And what you have right now is small-scale mining, but the situation here is changing. 22:16 Uh, concessions for this mountain have been sold to a Canadian company, and they're gonna come in, and what they wanna do is move, relocate everyone in this village somewhere else and blow up this entire mountain from the peak on down to turn it into a huge open-scale mine. 22:35 So the econo- the, the Colombian government over the last 10 or 15 years has made mining and large-scale mining and foreign investment in mining a huge priority. 22:46 So the amount of concessions they've handed out since the turn of the century has increased by over 1,000%. They've basically been 22:55 parceling out pretty much all the country to, to, uh, large-scale mining companies who are buying up the, the exploration rights in this stage. 23:04 Um, they have been very, very encouraging with foreign companies to try and give them sort of very beneficial investment deals to encourage them to come in and invest. 23:13 And this is also related to Colombia's security improvements, as in there are areas that previously were no-go areas that are now opening up, so they want to bring in these companies to exploit the mineral wealth there. 23:26 Um, obviously this, what they're doing is also selling the land out from under these miners because these miners have no legal titles, but although they may have been working there for some time, they now found the land they're working on belongs to someone else. 23:40 So the combination of these things and the, the government's, um, increasing focus on criminal mining and how mining finances armed groups makes the miners feel that they're deliberately being singled out. 23:54 They're being stigmatized and criminalized and portrayed as, um, collaborators of armed groups in a way so that they can be forced out of their territories and the, the large-scale mining companies can, can operate in peace. 24:09 Um, I think this, this can be seen in, in part of a, a larger political and economic context in that you will see Colombia is very much several countries in one. 24:22 The cities can be quite developed, but in rural areas, it's still very much a peasant economy. 24:28 And a lot of people that work in these, in these small-scale traditional activities, such as small-scale agriculture or informal mining, [smacks lips] 24:39 they feel they're being forced out, um, to make way for, for, for bigger businesses. And Colombia is very, very much pushing that. It wants foreign investment in resource extraction. 24:50 It wants free trade deals so it can be more competitive on large-scale agriculture. 24:56 And what you'll find is th- these people working the small-scale activities and traditional activities in, in these rural areas do feel that they're, they're basically under threat and that there, there's no place for them in the Colombia the government is trying to, trying to create. 25:11 And obviously, this is all also linked to the peace process in that Colombia will be hoping to-- Well, peace with the, the FARC guerrillas means that much of the country will be more open up to developing the way that they want. 25:24 [dramatic music] My thanks to James for these insights, but be sure to check out the full article on worldpoliticsreview.com as well. That's it for our show this week. 25:36 Please subscribe to Trendlines on iTunes or in your favorite podcast app if you haven't done so already. Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Durie. 25:45 You can follow me 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. 25:55 The additional audio used in the report was sourced from The New York Times, the AFP, and Al Jazeera. Have a fantastic weekend, and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. 26:05 [dramatic music]
