Clemency Burtonhill

Blood Diamond should help

How the diamond industry and Sierra Leone will be affected

Diamonds are a guerrilla’s best friend. You may have heard that it’s ‘girls’ who share a special relationship with the little sparklers, but don’t be fooled; females have simply had a rather more sophisticated advertising campaign working for them over the years. Drug-addled soldiers, morally lobotomised mercenaries and bloodthirsty terrorists are more appreciative of the potential contained in those chalky-white carbon stones than any dewy-eyed fiancée could ever hope to be.

Since the late 1990s, thanks to relentless lobbying by organisations such as Global Witness and Amnesty International, Western fiancées have become more conscious that these expensive symbols of eternal love may not have had the most loving of journeys to their left hand. The term ‘blood diamonds’, or ‘conflict diamonds’, entered the public consciousness at the height of the devastating war in Sierra Leone, when it became increasingly apparent that diamonds were fuelling and facilitating some of Africa’s most brutal conflicts, including those in Liberia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. During these wars, diamonds â” the most compact form of wealth known to man â” were smuggled effortlessly across borders and traded for arms, cocaine, medicines, food, and anything else needed to supply a lethal bush army such as Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Moving undetected, untaxed and unrecorded, millions of dollars worth of rough stones were absorbed into world diamond markets, bought up by cartels and ‘reputable’ companies, processed in diamond centres in New York, London or Antwerp, and delivered into the windows of jewellery shops. Meanwhile, almost four million people died and millions more were displaced.

To describe this process in the past tense is to accept the diamond industry’s line that, since the signing of peace agreements in West Africa, blood diamonds are a problem of the past.

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