Stones of Contention

by Cleveland, Todd

  Alluvial Diamonds: Easy Access, Complicated Results

  If you happen to be the leader—or, for that matter, even a citizen—of an African nation, you, perhaps counterintuitively, may not want your country to have alluvial diamonds. Virtually every African state that has experienced diamond-fueled violence since independence features these types of deposits. Unlike diamonds buried in large, subterranean “holes” that can be easily safeguarded, alluvial deposits are much more expansive and thus not as easy to police. Furthermore, these widely dispersed and more easily accessed diamonds are also often more valuable, as erosion typically leaves behind higher concentrations of gem-quality stones. With these realities in mind, the seemingly sensational words of Milton Margai, the former prime minister of Sierra Leone, that led off this chapter are actually quite reasonable: “Diamonds are a nuisance to the country and I would like nothing better than to see every diamond mined out of the ground as soon as possible.”[104]Many Africans would agree, though they might consider “nuisance” not nearly a strong enough word.

  The reason why Africans might wish that alluvial diamond deposits were not present in their countries is that the informal, or “artisanal,” extraction process associated with these stones is highly rudimentary and extremely affordable and is, therefore, virtually impossible to control. In promising alluvial locations, shovelers dig holes until they reach groundwater. They then pile the diamondiferous soil around the edge of the shallow pits and, processing a pile at a time, shovel the ore into wooden troughs that feature mesh sieves at the bottom. Water is then pumped through in order to separate larger rocks from smaller ones—mimicking the washing stations from yesteryear—while a worker stationed at the bottom of the trough shovels out the refined gravel. Finally, workers dump bucketloads of this gravel into simple sieves and then shake it around, forcing the heavier pebbles, including diamonds, into the center and other materials to the outer edges. Note that the only equipment required is a shovel and a sieve. Indeed, given the unsophisticated and low-risk nature of this type of mining and the negligible capital required to engage in it, virtually anyone—really, anyone—can access alluvial deposits. I have, for example, personally witnessed dozens of elementary school-age children, scattering on our approach, illegally mining alluvial deposits in the Angolan bush. Due to this easy accessibility, Africans of all ages have long been encouraged to attempt to pry stones from the continent’s alluvial soils, with endless, unscrupulous buyers on hand eager to purchase the resultant bounty. It’s not difficult to imagine how in a developing nation in Africa this scenario might effect instability or, worse, complete chaos.

  The Culture of the Global Diamond Industry: No Questions Asked

  Machete-wielding rebels ominously watching over despondent captives desperately digging for diamonds is the image that most of us have of “blood diamonds.” One need only watch Blood Diamond to be familiar with the origins of this image. However, it would be misleading to implicate only this type of extralegal mining operation in the escalation of diamond-related violence in postcolonial Africa. For over a century, the formal diamond industry—from De Beers all the way down—has played a key role in facilitating the growth and viability of the informal market for stones, thereby blurring the line between state-sanctioned and unauthorized industries. After all, without purchasers for illicitly mined diamonds, unlicensed operators would have ceased harvesting them long ago—a simple case of supply and demand. Instead, clandestine trading, secretive buying-selling agreements, and the general “no questions asked” culture of the industry have enabled diamonds offered up for sale by violent warlords and subsistence miners alike to find their way into cutting shops and, ultimately, jewelry cases around the globe. The governments of importing countries deeply invested in the industry, such as Belgium, have also been culpable. Belgium? Indeed, as well as many other countries with which we wouldn’t normally associate such extreme violence and chaos. These states have historically been wary that stringent regulations—or, really, regulations of any type—could drive the diamond trade elsewhere and, thereby, deprive them of vital revenues. So, yes, Belgium.[105]

  Africa’s Fragile Political Landscape and Diamond Deposits: A “Bloody” Mixture

  It’s no coincidence that diamond-related violence has been so prevalent in Africa. It does matter that it’s Africa and not somewhere else, and there are specific reasons, beyond easy-to-access alluvial deposits and the industry’s “no questions asked” culture, why there has been so much diamond-fueled carnage on the continent. The origins of these myriad factors can be traced back to the colonial era and, in particular, the social, political, and economic distortions of the extended colonial period, which generated a series of highly fragile African states upon decolonization. In turn, their vulnerability offered ideal environments for challengers who sought to seize power. Thrust into the Cold War, newly independent states and their respective dissident groups each sought support from the world’s superpowers. Both the USSR and the United States (and their respective allies) duly responded, often in the form of monetary assistance, forgiven debts, military training, and weaponry. These external contributions from highly situational “friends” emboldened both oppressive regimes and rebel movements alike and, beginning in the 1960s, helped generate a dizzying array of coups on the continent. Following the conclusion of the Cold War, training and weapons donations dried up and were largely available only for purchase, rather than as handouts. The era of the free lunch was over. Consequently, belligerents of all types increasingly relied on revenues from commodities such as timber, oil, and a variety of minerals to finance hostilities. Due to their easy portability and consistently high price, diamonds became a logical “conflict commodity.”

  Even as foreign governments began to reduce military assistance to African states and rebel groups, both overseas and continental governments continued to play important, often nefarious, roles in the blood diamond process by transshipping smuggled stones and/or facilitating the transport of arms to their diamond-rich African allies. For example, in both Sierra Leone and Angola, the rebel movements responsible for destabilizing these countries would have been short-lived or even initially unviable had they not received substantial external support. In fact, in some cases, foreign governments provided assistance solely in order to gain access to the diamonds emanating from deposits in conflict-ridden African nations. In the post–Cold War world, cash-poor African regimes and rebel groups rarely had anything other than mineral resources to offer their covetous, external “associates.” In this context, greed often trumped ideological affinity, which, for some time, had supposedly been the cornerstone of partnerships between African and non-African nations.

  The Shifting Motivations of the Belligerents

  Since independence, many African governments and rebel groups have claimed that they were exploiting diamond deposits in the name of “development” or to “invest” in the continent’s peoples. But we now know that these combatants engaged (or, in the case of the DRC, continue to engage) in conflict primarily for the massive amounts of wealth available, rather than for any coherent political or social purposes. Even the leaders of contentious groups who were once motivated by competing political visions, such as the leftist MPLA regime and the right-leaning UNITA rebel movement in Angola, over time sacrificed these principles on the altar of avarice. In practice, the easily lootable diamond deposits that financed these “resource wars” have altered the core objective of many African combatants from victory to stalemate. As illogical as it may seem, the deliberate perpetuation of conflict to maintain an impasse has often proven more expeditious in generating wealth than control of the state. Indeed, many of the belligerents involved in Africa’s resource wars have come to view disorder not as a disaster, but as a condition that offers more economic opportunities than peace and order.[106]During the Angolan conflict, for example, MPLA and UNITA units coexisted in the country’s diamond region, each actively mining. At times, they even coope
rated in order to generate wealth for their respective military commanders, and themselves—a scenario that would have been infeasible during peacetime. Ultimately, although profits from blood diamonds have enabled both rebel groups and, to a lesser extent, standing governments to procure significant armaments, these revenues have failed to facilitate any meaningful, broadly beneficial administrative improvements on the continent. One is left to wonder if that was ever the objective.

  How to Clean a “Dirty” Diamond

  As we know from the preceding chapters, Africa has long generated large numbers of illicitly mined diamonds. Although some of these “dirty” stones have been smuggled out of the continent, many more leave through legitimate export channels, indistinguishable from legally mined or “clean” gems. Whether they are “clean” or “dirty,” over 80 percent of all rough stones travel to Antwerp, Belgium, where they are evaluated and sold. From there, over 90 percent of the stones reach Surat, India, where they are cut and polished and then sent on to diamond centers around the world, including New York, London, and Tel Aviv, or, as often happens, back to Antwerp. In these locations, jewelers from around the world purchase these stones, which are then scattered across the globe, coming to rest in glass cases in retail outlets of all types. Both “clean” and “dirty” stones share these well-worn itineraries.

  This facile merger of licit and illicit was first accomplished well before the term “blood diamond” emerged. Following civil unrest in an array of newly independent, diamond-producing African nations in the 1960s and 1970s, formal buyers typically remained in-country to purchase stones, but they did so in an increasingly informal fashion. Official production in Sierra Leone, for example, fell from 2,000,000 carats in 1970 to only 48,000 carats in 1988, paralleling a similar decline in the DRC. In these settings, diamond buying and selling steadily shifted from formal, legitimate channels to ones unsanctioned by the states involved. These illicit stones were then mixed with legally mined diamonds while still in the country of origin or, less commonly, later on in the supply chain. “Clean” and “dirty” stones emanating from the same place are, of course, impossible to differentiate, while even an expert is unlikely to be able to identify the origins of individual stones in lots in which diamonds from different deposits are combined. Given the industry’s opacity, this type of investigative inquiry rarely occurred, anyway.

  This “no questions asked” culture has also facilitated the movement of illicit stones at the international level. Customs officers of importing nations typically concern themselves only with a diamond’s “country of provenance”—the last place from which the diamond was shipped, not its “country of origin”—the place where the stone was mined. In this way, throughout the 1990s countries such as Liberia were exporting (smuggled) diamonds to Antwerp in volumes that far exceeded the amount and value of what their mines were capable of producing. Most of the stones actually came from Sierra Leone. Yet no one cared. By looking the other way, the industry was abetting an array of figures, some quite repugnant, to mine and sell diamonds outside of national guidelines and to smuggle them, often across multiple borders. Eventually, the vast majority of these diamonds resurfaced in the world’s cutting centers, were resold in gem form, and ultimately ended up in jewelry cases around the world as the foremost symbols of beauty, love, and, ironically, purity.

  Sierra Leone: “At the Heart” of the West African Diamond Chaos

  Long before Blood Diamond was released, Graham Greene’s popular novel The Heart of the Matter (1948) had highlighted unauthorized diamond mining in midcentury Sierra Leone and the murky trade associated with it. Yet much of the ensuing, even more lurid, history of the informal industry in the country remains widely unknown. Stretching back into the colonial period, unsanctioned diamond mining and trading in Sierra Leone have intermittently caused domestic conflict, destabilized wide areas of West Africa, and been responsible for the death or displacement of millions in the region, while very little of the revenue generated has been reinvested locally in any broadly beneficial manner.

  A Long, Troublesome History: Sierra Leone’s Illicit Diamonds

  Illicit diamond mining and trading in Sierra Leone dates back almost as far as the initial discovery of deposits in the former British colony in 1930. However, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the problem became severe enough to threaten domestic stability and tarnish this jewel in Great Britain’s colonial crown. By this time, the rampant illicit mining and selling in which the roughly 70,000 African diggers who had descended on the Kono-centered operations of the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST) were engaged was imperiling the company’s mining monopoly. Until 1954, the colonial government supported SLST’s monopoly by opting to suppress illegal digging, though it also raised taxes on the company to help pay for regional police and monitoring services. Meanwhile, SLST was also actively combating illicit diamond activities in the area, beginning with the establishment in the 1930s of its ever-expanding Diamond Protection Force. Given these security measures, both the state and the company felt that this spike in illicit digging would be fleeting. How wrong they were.

  Map 3. Sierra Leone. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP

  By the mid-1950s, the massive “Diamond Rush” to the colony’s mines had prompted the state to revoke SLST’s mining monopoly and reduce the overall area of the company’s mining concessions. The government also strove to achieve a greater degree of control over the diggers by instituting the Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme (ADMS), which immediately converted all illegal diggings into licensed operations. It also attempted to expel all “native foreigners,” that is, Africans hailing from beyond Sierra Leone’s borders, in order to ensure that only domestic miners were benefiting. Finally, the colonial regime strategically invited De Beers to install buying stations around the mining areas that SLST had been forced to surrender. As the diamond juggernaut was anxious to maintain its monopoly on rough stones, corporate officials enthusiastically accepted. And because in the 1950s roughly 20 percent of all diamonds that reached the global market had exited Sierra Leone illegally, De Beers paid out high prices in an attempt to reduce the motivation to smuggle stones out.

  Although the ADMS was initially successful in providing some much-needed stability during Sierra Leone’s transition to political independence in 1961, by the late 1960s it was beginning to show serious signs of strain. A second diamond rush, this time around Koidu, had produced yet another “Wild West” environment, and individual operations now featured hundreds or even thousands of diggers, as opposed to the dozens for which the ADMS had legislated. As part of this latest rush, increasing numbers of rural residents were abandoning farming to seek their fortunes on the mines, reminiscent of the early days of diamond mining in South Africa. Many of these diggers were financed by Lebanese merchants resident in the country, who provided funds to purchase shovels, pumps, and sieves in exchange for the right to purchase stones from the groups they sponsored. In turn, these merchants used the profits to help fund militias operating in Lebanon. Thus Sierra Leone’s stones already featured problematic international dimensions, long before the term “blood diamonds” had ever been uttered.

  Meanwhile, despite SLST’s shrunken concessionary area, its Diamond Protection Force had grown from 85 in 1950, to 662 in 1957, and to over 1,300 in 1971. Government policing kept pace, with expulsions of foreigners featuring code names such as “Operation Parasite” and “Operation Stranger Drive” becoming regular undertakings. From 1957, the state had also been requiring residence permits for anyone in the region who was not an ethnic Kono. However, this attempt to emulate South Africa’s pass laws failed, at least in part because corrupt police officers took a greater interest in collecting payments from noncompliers than in enforcing the system. Following Sierra Leone’s independence, rival political parties also began competing to tap this wealth in order to generate funds and thereby expand their power. In 1984, SLST finally pulled out of Sierra Leone, further informalizing the country’s di
amond industry. At that point, things could only get worse, and they did.

  By the 1980s, Sierra Leone had become a virtual dictatorship under Siaka Stevens, who had been at the country’s helm since 1967, and the nation was quickly unraveling. Stevens and a small circle of trusted allies were unabashedly using diamond revenues to bolster a corrupt regime, indifferent to the societal degradation that saw, for example, life expectancy rates drop to as low as the mid-twenties in some regions. From a peak of over 2,000,000 carats generated in 1970, official diamond exports totaled just 48,000 carats by 1988, though of course informal production and marketing were thriving. With the country in deep disarray, a small group of discontented individuals began to take action, slowly at first, but building to a violent crescendo. Many from this collection of dissidents-turned-marauders had attended Sierra Leone’s Fourah Bay College, where they fueled their disgruntlement toward Stevens’s government by reading manifestos such as Kim Il-Sung’s “Juche Idea” and Muammar Gaddafi’s “Green Book”—standard reading for self-proclaimed revolutionaries everywhere. Several of these students eventually traveled to Libya to attend the annual Green Book celebrations, where they linked up with others to plot revolution for Sierra Leone, while also cementing ties with Gaddafi. One of these individuals was somewhat older, characterized by many as both charismatic and ebullient, and had previously spent time in prison for his role in a 1971 coup plot in Sierra Leone. His name was Foday Sankoh. Although most of you have probably never heard of Sankoh, throughout the 1990s and on into the first years of the new millennium his name became synonymous with terror in West Africa.