Stones of Contention

by Cleveland, Todd

  Leaders of the rival UNITA and MPLA organizations had also been eyeing the wealth buried in Lunda’s soils and were soon fighting over key towns in the region from which they could launch and oversee proximate mining operations. The MPLA government also nationalized what remained of Diamang, transferring its mineral rights to the diamond para-statal, Endiama. In turn, Endiama contracted De Beers in 1978 to manage production, which the industry giant did successfully before terminating its contract in 1985 in the face of UNITA attacks on its installations and personnel. De Beers concluded that although diamonds were precious, they were not that precious. Formal production declined sharply as a result of this violence, plummeting from $64 million in 1984 to less than $15 million in 1986. In response, the MPLA increased security in the region and, beginning that year, reorganized the mining zone, offering concessions in square parcels, or “blocks,” to foreign mining companies. These measures proved extremely profitable, and formal production rose to over one million carats in 1998, valued at roughly $180 million, and to over $234 million the following year.

  As the Angolan conflict dragged on through the end of the 1980s and into the ensuing decade, UNITA still periodically attacked formal mining operations, but on the whole the sector was flourishing. Never far from any diamond-related developments, De Beers eagerly returned to Angola, intent on building the infrastructure necessary to tap the kimberlite pipes that were being discovered. Illicit mining and smuggling continued alongside formal operations and totaled roughly $100 million in 1990, $300 million in 1991, and $550 million in 1992. For its part, instead of attempting to suppress this parallel industry, the MPLA opted to participate. To this end, the ruling party purchased the stockpiles that individuals in Lunda had amassed and set up buying centers in the mining region. Meanwhile, as a backdrop to this diamond-related activity, Cuba and South Africa began withdrawing their soldiers from the country in 1989, Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990, and, in 1991, the warring Angolan parties signed a peace accord, with elections set for 1992—quite an extraordinary series of political developments.

  Jonas Savimbi, UNITA’s charismatic, if maniacal leader, went on to lose the presidential election. But, undeterred, he quickly declared the proceedings fraudulent and led his group back into battle. With the Cold War now over, however, UNITA could no longer count on South African and American support. Conversely, the MPLA was flush with oil revenue from Angola’s offshore fields. In short, the rebel group was desperate. Only diamonds could save it now. And they did. Following a series of offensives in Lunda, UNITA captured the most lucrative diamond deposits, which would, over time, generate billions in revenues for the rebel group. In turn, these funds were used to purchase weaponry of all types, including tanks, which originated in an array of Eastern European countries and were eventually flown into UNITA territory. Sure enough, the same Viktor Bout who was active in Sierra Leone was also involved in this diamonds-for-arms scheme, along with many others hungry for UNITA’s stones. If the Angolan conflict in the 1980s had reflected Cold War ideologies, the 1990s version could roughly be reduced to “oil versus diamonds.” Indeed, although the term “blood oil” never really stuck, both natural resources played equally destructive roles in facilitating and prolonging the violence.

  Into the mid-1990s, despite the acute violence in Angola’s mining zones, illegal digging and smuggling continued apace. Now a central component of the war, UNITA and MPLA troops regularly battled over the most bountiful diamond deposits. Additionally, tens of thousands of increasingly armed and organized artisanal miners, or garimpeiros, and copious private security forces employed by private, formal mining operations were also present. The region was awash with arms. In order to try to stabilize Lunda and, in the process, increase its diamond revenues, in September 1993 the MPLA government contracted Executive Outcomes, just as the Sierra Leone government would do shortly thereafter. As in Sierra Leone, the mercenary/security company was highly effective. In July 1994, EO forces captured the strategic Cuango valley town of Cafunfo in western Lunda, while also scoring military successes elsewhere in the region before leaving at the end of 1995, diamond concessions in hand. Although disdained by the international community, EO was nothing if not extremely good at what it did.

  Meanwhile, the MPLA also launched a series of aggressive campaigns to clean up illicit operations in the area. One of these efforts, the 1996 “Cancer II Campaign,” resulted in the violent expulsion or death of thousands of garimpeiros. Many of these artisanal miners were Congolese, though Malians, Gabonese, and Senegalese were also among the ensnared. Yet for all of the violence administered during its execution, Cancer II failed to dent informal production for any substantial period of time. In many instances, instead of being expelled, illegal miners were actually pressed into service by security officers leading the clean-up operations or were made to pay protection money to continue mining on their own. Thus these campaigns more often compounded, rather than reduced, illicit diamond-related activity in the region.

  Throughout the 1990s, Angola’s diamond fields grew increasingly militarized and the levels of violence correspondingly escalated. A new development saw smaller foreign firms launch mining operations in partnership with Angolan corporations. These domestic entities were bankrolled by members of the civilian or military elite, while an array of Angolan private security companies provided protection, often in a very aggressive manner. Meanwhile, in mid-1998, having already claimed some 300,000 lives and disabled roughly 200,000 more individuals, largely due to copious land mines, the Angolan conflict returned to full war. This new round of violence mandated air cargo transport and even higher levels of security for mining operators and thus drove many of the smaller outfits out of business. Additionally, UNITA began targeting foreign employees of these companies, further hastening their departure.

  The resulting exodus meant that only the “usual suspects” were left standing in Lunda, and what a motley bunch they were. The remaining entities included multinational mining companies, which often featured layers of private security forces and secretive affiliations with Angolan generals; UNITA and, to a lesser extent, MPLA mining operations; and the hordes of garimpeiro diggers, who often paid “protection money” to UNITA or government forces in a mafia-style arrangement. Of course, when MPLA generals and other ranking officers were engaged in managing their illicit operations, trying to defeat UNITA receded in importance. At times, uniformed troops participating in these extracurricular operations clashed with private security personnel on corporate concessions that senior military and rebel commanders were also (illegally) mining. Given the array of competing armed parties in the region, Lunda had degenerated into a space in which firepower determined authority, and control was highly splintered and constantly shifting. Once again, individuals who relentlessly sought to access and exploit Africa’s diamond deposits had generated a “Wild West” environment.

  The year 1998 was a difficult one for US president Bill Clinton, who suffered through the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and also for the global economy, encumbered by the Asian financial crisis, but it was also particularly harsh for UNITA. In June, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1173, which prohibited the purchase of UNITA-mined diamonds, while the rebels also lost control of a series of premier deposits in Lunda. Even so, buyers of UNITA’s newly sanctioned stones were not in short supply. Moreover, the rebel group could still rely on a number of friendly and/or simply corrupt African governments—namely, those in Burkina Faso, Togo, and, for a time, the DRC—to facilitate the flows of arms (in) and diamonds (out). Regardless, the rebel outfit’s overall situation was undeniably growing desperate. In 1998, UNITA’s revenues from diamond sales fell below $200 million, while the MPLA’s oil revenues exceeded $3.3 billion—only roughly $400 million less than UNITA’s total diamond revenues between 1992 and 1998. Furthermore, in 1999, De Beers announced that it would stop buying Angolan diamonds, prompting UNITA to discontinue the tenders (scheduled sessions f
or prospective buyers to see what types and quantities of stones UNITA had on offer) it had been holding at its Andulo headquarters. Since enjoying control over approximately 60–70 percent of Angola’s diamond production during much of the 1990s, UNITA’s fortunes had steadily declined.

  In 2000, Angola’s diamond scenario was further internationalized via the intervention of Uzbek-Israeli tycoon, Lev Leviev. Extending the long-standing involvement of Israeli diamond traders in Africa, Leviev filled the procurement void that De Beers’s departure had generated by negotiating an exclusive contract to market Angola’s rough stones through an entity known as Ascorp. Unfazed by the violence in the country and unconcerned with the legal-ethical implications of purchasing Angolan diamonds, Leviev quickly began producing significant revenues for the MPLA government and, of course, for himself. By 2001, for example, tax revenue from diamonds had risen to over $50 million, up from only $10 million in 1998. Leviev had originally sold the Angolan government on the concept of Ascorp by claiming that funneling all diamonds through a single course would reduce smuggling, increase state revenue, and, ultimately, stem the flow of diamonds to UNITA. Unfortunately for the rebel movement, Leviev proved prescient on all accounts.

  On February 22, 2002, Savimbi’s time finally expired, and with it UNITA’s. Savimbi was killed in a hail of bullets by MPLA troops in Angola’s eastern Moxico province, and six weeks later a peace treaty was signed, and the civil conflict was abruptly, finally concluded. At the time of Savimbi’s death, he apparently had one suitcase stuffed with US dollars and another filled with diamonds. Evidently, he died every bit as dramatically as he had lived. These “blood diamonds,” and innumerable stones like them, had enabled UNITA to prolong the Angolan conflict by roughly a decade, resulting in the death or disablement of thousands of additional Angolan combatants and civilians. In fact, the war in Angola had lasted much longer than the conflict in Sierra Leone, in great part because its diamond resources simultaneously supported so many entities—even ostensibly competing ones. And because the individuals most responsible for ending the war were benefiting from its perpetuation, it’s not difficult to understand why the conflict was so protracted.

  The Kimberley Process: The “Silver Lining” of the “Blood Diamond” Conflicts

  As the conflicts in Sierra Leone and Angola were concluding, the United Nations was actively considering ways to try to prevent future “blood diamond” scenarios. The world body had initially been prompted into action following the release of scathing reports in 1998 and 2000 by two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada, respectively. Their activist efforts drew attention to the ways that both the formal diamond industry and governments worldwide were abetting the flow of illicit stones. The equally damning Fowler Report, also released in 2000, reconfirmed and updated details concerning the Angolan conflict that had earlier appeared in the Global Witness exposé. Along with roughly a dozen other UN-sponsored studies conducted between 2000 and 2002, these reports highlighted the limited effectiveness of sanctions and the ways that the diamond industry, along with complicit governments, had continued to facilitate the flow of unauthorized stones even after restrictions and penalties had been instituted. In effect, these reports collectively shamed into action both the industry and the culpable states, fearful that gem diamonds might otherwise become a pariah commodity, reminiscent of what had happened to fur some years earlier. After all, it wouldn’t have taken much creativity to recycle the popular slogan “I’d rather go naked than wear fur,” substituting diamonds for fur. After a series of negotiations with diamond producing, importing, and exporting governments, diamond industry representatives, and civil society organizations, the UN General Assembly created the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). Following the January 1, 2003, implementation of the KPCS, all rough diamonds were required to have a certificate of origin from the exporting country in order to prevent the sale of stones emanating from combat zones.

  Although KPCS monitoring continues to be imperfect, the scheme has performed reasonably well. Since its inception, the KP has played a central role in helping to channel diamond mining revenues away from rebel movements, terrorists, and corrupt politicians, while helping elevate the mining sector’s tax contributions and boost economic development in producing countries.[111]Currently, the group boasts more than fifty participants, up from the original thirty-five, representing eighty countries (the European Community nations participate as a single entity), with other nations poised to join in the near future. Each year, the KP regulates the sale of hundreds of millions of “clean” carats, while “conflict diamonds” currently constitute less than 0.5 percent of the world’s production, down from roughly 10 percent in the late 1990s. The KP has also demonstrated its efficacy by suspending noncomplying members, including Congo-Brazzaville in 2004 (for being unable to verify the origins of all of its exports), Ghana in 2006 (for allegedly certifying stones from neighboring Ivory Coast), and, more recently, in May 2013, the Central African Republic, as a precautionary measure to preclude the “illicit introduction of rough stones into the supply chain” as a result of the political upheaval in that country. Going forward, it appears that the resolve of the nations participating in the KP will remain strong, and therefore the system is poised to continue to help safeguard the integrity of the industry, the economies of Africa’s diamond-producing nations, and the livelihoods of the masses of diamond miners operating in them.

  For all of the success that the KP has had in rendering it extremely difficult to deal in “conflict diamonds,” the system is not designed to stifle the entire range of diamond-related violence. In particular, the KPCS remains hamstrung owing to its narrow definition of “blood diamonds,” which requires the presence of rebel forces using sales of these stones to acquire arms in order to overthrow or destabilize incumbent governments. This designation limits the KP’s ability to address human rights abuses and an array of other criminal activities associated with diamond mining and trading. For example, beyond the KP’s purview lie all of the diamonds linked to money laundering, smuggling, tax evasion, sanction-busting, and state collapse—approximately one in every four rough stones, worth about $2 billion annually.[112]Even more problematically, as the case of Zimbabwe (explored in the next section) so vividly illustrates, the KP’s strict definition of “blood diamonds” allows despotic regimes to openly trade stones for weapons and other tools of suppression to terrorize their domestic populations. Despite mounting pressure by NGOs, and some KP members, for the Kimberley Process to broaden its definition of “blood diamonds,” the current one and the limitations it imposes are unlikely to change anytime soon.

  Also problematizing these efforts are retailers and consumers, who are not insisting on “clean” diamonds as rigorously as the KP had anticipated they would. For example, a study conducted following the implementation of the Kimberley Process found that roughly half of all jewelers were not requiring suppliers to document their stones as “conflict free,” even though virtually every industry association requires this assurance.[113]According to one jeweler interviewed as part of the study, “Why open a can of worms? Most people really don’t care. . . . It comes up so rarely and only the NGOs care about it. Our customers and potential customers really don’t.”[114]These jewelers’ disturbing sentiments actually point to a major weakness of the KP: its voluntary nature. From government officials in diamond-producing countries to mining companies, customs officials, cutting and polishing houses, jewelers, and, eventually, consumers like you and me, the system works only if all parties are willing to play their designated roles. The good news for supporters of the KP, both within and outside of the industry, is that its general success thus far suggests that compliance, cooperation, and diligence are currently prevailing in a system that is only roughly a decade old, even if considerable room for improvement remains.

  Zimbabwean Diamonds: A Dazzlingly Gray Area

  Unlike the deposits in
Sierra Leone and Angola, Zimbabwe’s substantial Marange fields, which lie roughly fifty miles southwest of the eastern city of Mutare, have come online in the Kimberley Process era. As per the KP: when there are no (armed) rebels and, thus, no war, there are no blood diamonds. According to this logic, Zimbabwe’s stones are “clean.” In fact, in 2010, a monitor for the KPCS did declare these diamonds “conflict-free,” enabling the country to sell them on the open market. Yet the diamond situation in this country remains anything but straightforward. So, why the controversy? Since the finds in Zimbabwe in early 2006—the largest in southern Africa since the Kimberley discoveries—the country’s security forces have assumed control of the diamond fields, a violent process that has included the rape of women, the conscription of children to perform hard labor, and the beating, maiming, and torturing of members of the local population. Moreover, because President Robert Mugabe’s authoritarian regime has so effectively utilized the prodigious profits that it has derived from these deposits to bankroll this thuggery, a diamond-fueled insurrection—a requisite for any KP-confirmed “blood diamond” scenario—remains virtually inconceivable. Even sans machete-wielding rebels and sanctions-busting arms dealers, though, the diamond scenario in Zimbabwe is acutely violent and extremely “bloody.”