Diamonds: Fuel for Conflict

▪ 2001

 In 1998 the UN Security Council imposed an embargo on diamonds from areas held by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). A Council report in March 2000 claimed, however, that significant numbers of UNITA diamonds continued to reach world markets. The report implicated De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., the Anglo–South Africa company that controlled about 60% of the global trade in rough diamonds. The report also criticized the world's largest diamond market, in Antwerp, Belg., for not verifying the origin of the diamonds traded there. In the Angola conflict, which originated during the Cold War, the government funded its military with oil revenues, whereas UNITA resorted to diamonds.

      Diamonds also fueled the fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That conflict continued the 19th-century scramble for Africa, but with African nations now trying to control Congo's vast natural resources. Lucrative diamond concessions were given to companies tied to Zimbabwean military officers, including close associates of Zimbabwe Pres. Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe was the strongest backer of Congo Pres. Laurent Kabila, who was also thought to have personally benefited from diamond deals. Both Uganda and Rwanda, the main supporters of Congo's anti-Kabila rebels, purportedly profited from diamond mines under rebel control.

      More than those conflicts, however, the war in Sierra Leone directed world attention to the destructive role of diamonds. Following the collapse of a fragile peace in May, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) renewed its battle against the government of Pres. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Investigations by the UN and other organizations revealed a network that brought weapons, chiefly from Bulgaria and Ukraine, into Sierra Leone. Often transactions involved the direct exchange of diamonds for arms. Investigators also presented evidence that stones from RUF areas reached diamond-cutting centres in Belgium and Israel. In July the UN Security Council banned the trading of all diamonds from RUF Sierra Leone. Credible allegations emerged that RUF diamonds and weapons passed through Liberia with the cooperation of Liberian Pres. Charles Taylor, a close associate of RUF leader Foday Sankoh. Such transshipments made the UN embargo virtually impossible to enforce.

      The diamond industry feared that public revulsion against so-called blood diamonds would lead to a general boycott of the gems. De Beers pledged in July that it would buy no diamonds from rebel groups. Despite those efforts, considerable difficulties remained. Once a diamond was polished, for example, there was no way to identify its origin definitively. Also, corruption in many diamond-producing countries allowed smugglers to launder embargoed stones through legitimate channels.

Matthew A. Cenzer

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