De Beers

Accusations against the diamond industry were most severe against industry giant De Beers. They bought many Angolan diamonds, including diamonds from UNITA. De Beers disputes the definition of diamonds being “conflict diamonds” before 1998 (The date that the UN banned trade against Angolan Diamonds). De Beers claims that until they were not “officially” marked as conflict diamonds until 1998.
In an interview with Andrew Bone, Head of De Beers Public Affairs he says “up until the point of sanctions being imposed there was by definition no conflict diamonds in that country...” “Prior to the imposition of sanctions everybody in the world was still very hopeful that the UNITA rebels would engage in a lasting sustainable peace. Unfortunately in retrospect we can see that that hope was in vain. When it was recognized that the rebels in Angola were no longer going to participate in building peace in the country the UN had imposed sanctions and De Beers immediately, swiftly, and effectively started working with the UN to ensure that those sanctions were fully implemented.”
They were also accused of not searching for the true source of their diamonds and continued to buy diamonds from Liberia after it was obvious they were from conflict zones.
Fourtunately in October 1999 De Beers announced plans to close Angolan buying offices and in 2000, they announced they would stop buying diamonds on the open market. They claim to only buy diamonds from mines they have control of or have a share in.

The Kimberley Process

In 2003, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was devised. It’s a U.N. sponsored trade agreement that is required of diamonds crossing international boarders. It consists of a set of forms and regulations for countries exporting diamonds. The diamonds need to be in tamper resistant containers with government validated Kimberley certificates.
In theory the diamonds are supposed to be traceable from the point of origin to their final destination in a store. It potentially gives stores a warranty that states all diamonds sold under the Kimberly process were not sold to fund conflict. Today more than 70 countries use the Kimberley process.
In 2002 legal Sierra Leone diamond exports were $26 million and in 2005 that number had risen to $142 million. Now of course this can be attributed mainly because the civil wars that were funded by the diamonds are over. But nonetheless these numbers are improvements and today less than 1% of the diamonds sold are conflict diamonds.
But does the Kimberly system work?
The Kimberley process countries are supposed to institute internal controls to keep illegal diamonds from entering the system. T here is no way, even with the Kimberley process and a formal system of checking and rechecking that will account for every diamond mined especially when most of the miners are independent non-licensed miners, who mine with a shovel and a sieve out on a river. Despite the potential flaws the Kimberley process is overall beneficial.
But, some are worried that the diamond funded war could happen again. In countries that have access to diamonds it is not hard to fund a revolution and is a tempting source of income.

Liberia

After the First Liberian Civil war ,started by Charles Taylor, he was elected president in 1997. Soon it was discovered that many diamonds smuggled from Sierra Leone into Liberia and that Taylor used diamonds to finance his own conflicts and to help finance RUF movements in Sierra Leone.
In a 2 year period over 2 billion dollars were exported from Liberia to Antwerp, but Liberia has generally no diamond mines. An expert quotes “ [Liberia] could not produce 10 million a year much less 2 billion…”
Diamonds from Liberia would arrive in Antwerp with fraudulent papers from fake companies. The diamonds would be marked by what country they last went through, many went through Switzerland so the diamonds would be marked Swiss. But Switzerland has no diamonds. Nobody would bat an eye and investigate including the diamond industry empire De Beers even though it was blatantly obvious the diamonds were from conflict zones.
At his trial in 2007 Taylor pleaded not guilty to crimes against humanity. Because this is still an on-going matter it’s hard to gain information.


On a side note: Yes, this is the same Charles Taylor accused of cannibilism.

Angola

Similar to Sierra Leone, Civil war began 1975 when colonial power Portugal granted independence. After the cold war ended U.S. and Russian aid stopped both sides were stripped of funds. The government relied on oil and the rebel force UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) relied on diamonds. In 1992 UNITA seized 60-70% of Angola’s diamond mines. During the 1990’s over 3.7 billion dollars went through UNITA. In 1998 the U.N. Security Council banned export/trade of Angola diamonds not certified by its government. This stopped some flow of illegal diamonds but was not enough.

Blood Diamond Music Videos

Both of these videos use clips from the film Blood Diamond. Released in 2006 it gives a very accurate representation of the blood diamond catastrophes. It was a very brutal movie and was very moving. If you are interested in blood diamonds it is a must see.

RUF Child Soldiers

The RUF specifically used child soldiers in their fighting. More than 20,000 children aged from 7-12 were involved in the conflict. The majority were boys but young girls served as cooks, sex slaves, and sometimes soldiers. To provoke violent behavior alcohol and drugs were forced on the kids. This is still a problem in Sierra Leone because many of these children’s families are dead, leaving them on their own.

Sierra Leone

1930, diamonds were discovered in eastern Sierra Leone. Unfortunately, there are no Kimberlite pipes in Sierra Leone. The diamonds are mainly in riverbeds and have been spread around by erosion and water flow. Government group SLST (Sierra Leone Selection Trust) given exclusive mining right. Soon a network of miners and smugglers developed and diamonds were being smuggled into Liberia and Guinea. The country did not start to decline until 1967 when Siaka Stevens becomes prime minister.

Siaka Stevens nationalized the diamond industry and the government claimed 51% of the SLST. Official diamond exports went from $200-300 million a year down to almost nothing. The country quickly started to deteriorate. Funding for social services was gone, education, healthcare, and infrastructure collapsed. University students started to become radical and began forming early stages of rebel groups. Foday Sankof, ex Sierra Leone military, was a leader of one of the rebel groups and together with Charles Taylor formed the RUF (revolutionary united front).

In 1989 Sankof formed a base in Liberia, near the Sierra Leone boarder, where he recruited and trained his RUF soldiers, same time when Taylor began a civil war in Liberia. In March of 1991 the RUF invade Sierra Leone and quickly moved to the diamond rich area of Kono in eastern Sierra Leone. By 1993 more than 370,000 people had been displaced from the area, one of the goals of the RUF was to move civilians away from the diamond fields. By the end of 1994 Sierra Leone was in total chaos.

Unable to combat the RUF on their own the Sierra Leone government hired South African mercenary group “Executive Outcomes”. Executive Outcomes had a very effective air power and in one month most of the rebels had been cleared out of the eastern diamond fields. The temporary peace allowed for elections in 1996 and ex United Nations official Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was elected. Kabbah under pressure from the UN terminated the contract with Executive Outcomes and the RUF quickly re-launched their war and the country fell even deeper into chaos. Amputation, mutilation, and torture began to be widely used by the RUF.

In May 1997 the Sierra Leone military overthrew Kabbah and invited the RUF, as allies, into the capital city of Freetown. The RUF devastated the city with lootings, killings, and torture calling it “Operation Pay Yourself”. The people of Freetown did not stand for this and refused to support the RUF. There were protests in the streets and people refused to go to work. Soon, Nigerian intervention force ECOMOG drove RUF out of Freetown, reinstated Kabbah, and ousted military juntas. By 1998 ECOMOG had forced the RUF to retreat into Eastern Sierra Leone. This proved to be a blessing and a curse because the RUF again seized control of the diamond mines and re-launched their war.


In January 1999 the RUF marched back into Freetown. What followed was one of the most brutal massacres of the war. ECOMOG launched a counter attack and many civilians were killed. The devastation lasted two weeks until the RUF was once again pushed out of the capital, but the damage was done and over 6,000 were dead. The sheer brutal brutality of the RUF could not be overlooked by the international community any longer.

In 1999 the United States and the U.N. sponsored a peace meeting in Lome Togo between the government of Sierra Leone and the RUF. Terms of a peace treaty were agreed upon and it was signed in July 1999. The RUF was given blanket amnesty despite the numerous atrocities they had committed. Members of the RUF were even given money to rejoin society and the killers became the neighbors of the ones they had once terrified.

The main beneficiary of the Lome Peace Accords was Foday Sankof who became Vice President of Sierra Leone. In this role he was given official oversight of all diamond mines. Despite the peace agreement the RUF wanted complete control of the government and in 2000 began uprising. This time the RUF would be stopped. A 6,000 soldier U.N. peace keeping force became a 17,000 men peace keeping force and accompanied with a small yet heavily armed British intervention Force launched an attack against the RUF. The RUF was quickly eliminated from its strong points and Foday Sankof was arrested.

On January 18 2002 President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah officially declared an end to one of the bloodiest civil wars in history:

“Today we are happy that those flames of war have been extinguished”


2003, Foday Sankof was charged with 13 accounts of crime against humanity and he died shortly after in prison. During his trial in 2007 Charles Taylor was also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity and plead not guilty.

Four months after the war ended the Sierra Leone polls were open and Kabbah was easily elected. Men and women who had been mutilated and tortured as intimidation to not vote boldly cast their ballets.