{"id":720,"date":"2019-03-04T16:58:35","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T16:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=720"},"modified":"2019-10-18T01:06:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T00:06:00","slug":"a-girls-best-friend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/a-girls-best-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"A girl’s best friend?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article has been reproduced from the <\/strong>Socialist Standard<\/strong><\/em> (August 2000), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

It is a profound and tragic irony that diamonds, marketed in London, \nNew York and Antwerp as the eternal symbol of love and beauty, are \npotent symbols of hate and disfigurement, misery and suffering to the \nmillions of people in whose countries they are mined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIn Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo and Angola, the diamond trade has \npought with it years of conflict and instability and the deaths and \nmaiming of hundreds of thousands of Africans perceived as standing in \nthe way of the lucrative profits the increasingly illicit trade pings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe statistics speak for themselves. In Angola, between 1992 and 1997, \nU.N.I.T.A. earned $3.7 billion from illegal diamond sales, helping them \nfuel a war in which 500,000 were killed. In under ten years of fighting,\n Jonas Savimbi built his rag-tag army up into one of the best armed \nirregular forces around, all thanks to diamonds he traded for \nstate-of-the-art weaponry. In Sierra Leone, between 1991 and 1999, over \n50,000 died and many more were maimed (their limbs hacked off with \nmachetes) whilst government forces fought the rebel R.U.F. over an \nillegal diamond industry worth over $200 million a year. And in nearby \nLiberia, between 1989 and 1997, 150,000 died as a result of a conflict \nfought over control of the diamond trade. Liberia, which incidentally \nhas no significant diamond deposits of its own, nevertheless runs a $300\n million plus diamond trade with the help of troops loyal to Sierra \nLeone’s R.U.F. leader Foday Sankah. Such is the illicit global trade in \ndiamonds that the US State Department believes it to be worth anything \nup to $7 billion a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe diamond trail usually starts in the dusty towns of Angola, in the \nSierra Leone wilderness or the jungle terrain surrounding Kisangani in \nthe Congo, where half-naked workers labour with pick, spade and drill, \nguarded by miniature and well-equipped armies. Small mine owners pass on\n their stones they unearth to local dealers, though not before the \nguards’ commanders have had their share, and likewise the local dealers \nhave to make payment to the local militia leaders, who similarly have to\n pass a share to their seniors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nImmense armies can be spread over hundreds of thousands of miles of \ndiamond rich land, providing safe passage to all prepared to pay the \nprice, whilst governments and warlords sell concessions to mine, with \nconcession purchasers selling them on to anyone keen on making a killing\n (no pun intended). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThere are of course other key figures, albeit playing as low a profile \nas possible. They include Burkina Faso’s leader Blaise Compaore and \nLiberia’s Charles Taylor, who help speed smooth passage by circumventing\n the controls imposed by the U.N. and other regulatory bodies. \nMeanwhile, the governments of Uganda, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and \nZimbabwe provide military help to warlords in exchange for these little \nshiny stones and the right to mine them. In the case of the latter, \ncritics of Robert Mugabe accuse him of donating 11,000 troops to the \nconflict in the Congo in return for diamond field concessions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAnd of course there is the middle men who make the deals, find further \nsafe passage for the diamonds to the western markets and supply the \nweapons that fuel the conflicts and ensure the diamonds keep coming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nInvestigators working with the United Nations (U.N.) recognise a well \norganised international network of smuggling involving numerous west and\n southern African countries, with further links to freight companies \nsupplying arms from the\nUnited Arab Emirates to Bulgaria and the Ukraine. Whilst the R.U.F. in \nSierra Leone have been provided with former Soviet surface-to-air \nmissiles, at the height of the Angolan war over twenty Ilyushin aircraft\n could be found landing on one airstrip each evening, each loaded with \nmilitary hardware. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nWhilst pressure groups, such as Global Witness, the U.N. and other \ndiamond industry regulatory bodies try to introduce an “ethical \ndimension” into the trade, the dealers themselves fear their efforts \nwill undermine consumer demand because of the diamond’s link with \nlimbless children in West Africa. Provenance certificates, supposedly \nimplying that this and that diamond has no blood on it have been \nsuggested, but such a move would require the co-operation of bankers, \npokers and buyers in Tel Aviv, Antwerp and Bombay\u2014the three main diamond\n centres – and indeed the governments of several countries, including \nLiberia, who are only too happy to overlook the fact that a few hundred \ncarats true cost is a child hobbling along on crutches and provide \nforged documents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAs Herbert Rowe, a political scientist specialising in African affairs \nat Georgetown University in Washington noted: “Even in the Cold War, \nsuperpowers did not allow the wholesale ripping up of the economy, the \nuse of children as soldiers and attacks upon relief groups” (The \nGuardian, London, U.K., 14\/05\/2000). He is of course referring to \ncountries like Sierra Leone, now the poorest country on earth and whose \npopulation has enjoyed no health or education system for ten years, as a\n direct result of the mayhem that has been set loose because of the \ngreed for the profits that diamonds ping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nFurther anti-diamond trade measures have included a boycott of diamonds.\n But the truth is that\u2014 although the trade pings so much misery in its \nwake\u2014the average piece of diamond-laden jewellery on display in the \nlocal high street has only a 4 percent chance of having an illicit \nsource and that the diamond most likely originated in Namibia, Botswana,\n South Africa or the Russian Federation. Further, any such embargo would\n hit “innocent” diamond producing and cutting countries such as Botswana\n and India, the latter with a diamond industry employing 800,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe fact that only 4 percent of the diamonds that adorn our loved ones \nare bloodstained and that this 4 percent has caused so much chaos and \nupset throughout Africa suggests, more than anything, the intrinsic \ndanger of the incentive to make a profit at any cost. All the controls \nit is possible to impose upon the diamond trade would not distract one \niota from the fact that, at whatever human cost, if there are profits to\n be made from the trade then profits will be made. This is the essential\n nature of capitalism, even in its more overt and legal forms. If \nprofits can be made, no matter how small, they will be made and to hell \nwith anyone who stands in the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe task is not to try to regulate the diamond trade more efficiently, \nbut to end the system that makes the diamond the commodity it is; to \nbanish forever the system that conditions us into thinking that wearing a\n shiny stone pings status and respect. Since this journal’s inception \nninety-five years ago, we have consistently reported the wars and \nconflicts, the misery and sufferings our class has endured in the name \nof the profits derived from mineral wealth and its possession by an \nelite. We expect, for the foreseeable future, to carry on in this \ntradition until our class truly wakes up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: J. Bissett <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Back to the Global Economy Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Back to the World Socialist Movement home page<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article has been reproduced from the Socialist Standard (August 2000), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain It is a profound and tragic irony that diamonds, marketed in London, New York and Antwerp as the eternal symbol of love and beauty, are potent symbols of hate and disfigurement, misery and suffering…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-720","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/720\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}