The curse and the blessing of the blood diamonds

by Nairi Porter (image by Ariel Payopay)

Here is a question. Who or what is the dictator's best friend? The ignorance of the public, the mediocrity of the social institutions, or the weak economy?

Diamonds. Usually we see them shining in small boxes behind protected glass screens. Or on the necks and fingers of the Hollywood celebrities. Maybe that is why Naomi Campbell couldn't realise the true significance of the dirty gems in that box which two strange looking men gave her in 1997. Now she is testifying in the Hague where the international Tribunal for war crimes is investigating the atrocities in Sierra Leone which also involved the former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Naomi still remembers that dinner with the president 13 years ago in Cape Town. It was organised by Nelson Mandela who was president of South Africa at the time. The investigators suspect that the diamonds she received as a gift from the fascinated Taylor were "blood diamonds". Now this gift could expose the role of Taylor in smuggling weapons for the rebels in Sierra Leone during the horrific civil war in the 90's.

In her testimony, Naomi Campbell explains that she didn't know anything about any "blood diamonds" and she knew nothing of the genocide in Sierra Leone and she wasn't sure if the gift really came from Charles Taylor whom by the way she had never met before, although she kind of "suspected" it was the case.

Yes, probably no-one in the world of glamour and fashion has heard a thing about the so called blood diamonds. The celebrities probably do not even suspect that some of the gems of the "clean, sparkling, in a box" type which they are used to possess, may sometimes originate in muddy African mines and are extracted by people with the statute of semi-slaves. Neither do they contemplate about the blood, sweat and tears which used to be and most probably are still shed in this dirty trade with these beautiful pieces of carbon. And occasionally they need some star dust to be spilled around and some uproar to erupt in order to cast some light on the matter and to be reminded about the inconvenient facts surrounding the diamonds, and about the ugly conflicts on the poorest continent in the world which they are intertwined with.

Here is why they are called "blood diamonds". In the 80's and 90's, a portion of the diamonds of Africa were used to finance brutal conflicts in places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo and Zaire. These clamours were marked by mass murder, rape and mutilations. During that period nearly 4% of the mined diamonds in the world were stained with blood. Today the estimates claim this has dropped to 1%.

The blood diamonds were first heard of during the extremely violent conflict in Sierra Leone. In 1991 the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked its own country, jumping in from across the border with Liberia. The rebels gained control on the lucrative diamond mines in the east and they started smuggling the gems through Liberia. With the money they bought weapons from Charles Taylor who managed to monopolise the diamond trade in his country. The conflict in Sierra Leone lasted until 2002 and it resulted in 120,000 deaths and 2 million homeless people.

The RUF was notorious for its extreme atrocities. Later investigations revealed that they had mutilated 20,000 people with machetes. Their fighting units consisting of children were also infamous. Some of the children were 8 year old. Some investigations show that these units amounted up to 10,000 boys, drugged, and playing with AK's instead of toys. Often, when the rebels attacked a village, they would kill the parents in front of their children's eyes and force the children to kill the rest of their own relatives. Then they recruited them into their army. The boys were trained in special camps and the girls were turned into sex slaves. At least half the women who now live in Sierra Leone have been raped, tortured or turned into sex slaves in that period.

In 2008, during the trial of Taylor, one of his commanders Joseph "Zigzag" Marzah testified about his involvement in the genocide. He said Taylor had ordered his men to "play with the blood of their victims", to cut their stomachs open and take their intestines out. They executed everyone they saw indiscriminately - babies, women, old people. At some point Taylor even ordered his subordinates to eat the flesh of the enemy combatants...

In a 1998 report the international human rights organisation Global Witness was the first to publish data about the diamond trade and the way it financed this brutality. Two years later here in Kimberley, South Africa, an important meeting was held between representatives of all major diamond producing countries, and they discussed how they could put an end to the blood diamond trade. The result was a protocol establishing the international certificate system for diamond trade - the Kimberley Process. It has 75 member countries today. The organisation issues a certificate of origin for every single diamond in the world. A diamond is considered illegal if it lacks this certificate. This was the tool for cleaning out the blood diamonds.

But the Kimberley Process does not always help. The conflict areas in Africa may be reduced today, and the organisation may be boasting of a 99% cleanness of all diamond trade worldwide, but critics point out a very important flaw in the system. By definition, the world certification system only detects cases when rebel factions financed with blood diamonds are trying to topple an official government. But in some cases the exact opposite happens - it's not rebels who terrorise the civilian population, it is the supposedly legitimate government which is abusing its population. Human rights watchers report that the questionable diamond trade is still alive and well, and it is now more linked to government corruption and violation of human rights, and brutal exploitation of the miners. And the Kimberley Process has hardly evolved enough to address the problems of the ever changing world.

The "blood diamond issue" is still on the agenda, it is far from solved. Especially in Zimbabwe. Several years ago one of the biggest diamond deposits was discovered there in the Marange area. The potential income is up to 1.7 billion dollars per year, which is roughly half of the country's BNP for 2010. The impoverished population was instantly caught into a "diamond fever" which however was brutally suppressed by Mugabe's government who sent the army to take full control of the diamond deposits. Over 200 illegal miners (who were poor peasants and had no other livelihood) were killed by the Zimbabwean military who were shooting from helicopters. The people in some areas are being forced to work like slaves in the military controlled diamond mines. Unlike Sierra Leone, in Zimbabwe the atrocities, the rapes and killings are done not by some rebel groups but by government forces - the police and the military. This goes under the radar of the Kimberley Protocol because the definition of "blood diamond" does not include such cases.

On top of that, Zimbabwe was very recently allowed to legitimise part of this new type of blood diamond trade. Earlier this year the member countries of the Kimberley Process allowed Zimbabwe to start selling its newly discovered diamonds, and effective from September 2010, they will be released on the world markets. This is caused by greed, without any doubt. Initially the human rights organisations had some influence on this issue and the export of Zimbabwean diamonds was banned due to suspicions that the gems were "bloody". During the embargo period the country stockpiled over 4.5 million carats of diamonds amounting to 1.7 billion dollars of value. In attempt to go round the certification standards, last week the Zimbabwean authorities decided to sell 900,000 carats of the gems on an auction. They put the diamonds in a safety box at the Harare airport, where various private jets started arriving from all around the world - billionaires from Russia, India, UK, Israel, Japan, Canada, Lebanon, and the US. If the income from the diamond deposits gets into the hands of Mugabe, this would inevitably lead to another dictatorial regime in Zimbabwe, and he would scrap all the political deals he is now making with the opposition. This would have enormous consequences for the country. But the so called "international community" is turning a blind eye to that threat, mostly because of the huge lobbyist pressure from powerful trade interests.

The situation in Angola is similar. The blood diamonds are history there only on paper. The civil war is now over and the income from the diamond trade (the diamonds there are particularly famous for their quality and size) is the fifth biggest in the world. But looking more closely, we realise that the process is far from "bloodless". According to Global Witness data, the rainforests in north-eastern Angola host thousands of miners living in absolute misery. They have come from the rural areas to make a living by working in the mines, even though they don't have a license from the government. This allows the authorities to treat them like cattle - they are frequently beaten, racketeered and sometimes killed by the government army and by private militants.

Another country undermining the Kimberley Process is Venezuela. It stopped using the official certificates in 2005. At the moment the country's diamonds are smuggled across neighbouring Guiana and Brazil, where they receive fake certificates and are poured into the world markets. Brazil is particularly benefiting from this as its contractors take huge commissions for that activity, and part of that goes back to their local and federal government in the form of gifts donations.

In its turn, Cote D'Ivoire remains the only country in the world whose diamond mining is sanctioned directly by the UN. The reason is that after the civil conflict which tore the country in two, all diamond deposits remained in the northern half which is controlled by rebel groups.

At this dark background, probably the only beam of light comes from Botswana, the country which was called a small African tiger for its well measured economic policies in the last decade. It is an exception and an example of how diamonds could improve the quality of life of the general population in real terms. The country is among the most stable and prosperous and well managed democracies in Africa, which makes it a gem of its own. When diamonds were first discovered there in 1967, Botswana was still among the 10 poorest countries in the world. Now, since it has 22% of the world's production of rough diamonds, its BNP per capita is almost 14,000 dollars. Of course Botswana wasn't bypassed by the world financial crisis which caused the shutting down of several mines. Granted, before the crisis Botswana was the fastest growing economy in the world with an average annual growth of 10% between 1975-2000. At the moment this growth may have dropped to 5-6% but that still is a remarkable phenomenon at the background of the stagnating world economies. It seems that indeed, there *is* a way out of the "curse of the blood diamonds", if this gift from nature is used wisely. But unfortunately this is not the case in most cases.