Conflict Diamonds

Having just returned from Sierra Leone several days ago, diamonds have been on my mind. As oil in Nigeria seems to encourage corruption, diamonds seem to have done the same in Sierra Leone...Here are some current links

ANTWERP, Belgium, Oct 9 (Reuters Life!) - The biggest diamond to be found in 13 years, the "Lesotho Promise," was sold on Monday at auction for more than $12 million and is expected to fetch in excess of $20 million once it is cut up. ADVERTISEMENT The 603-carat (120 gram) diamond, named after the tiny African mountain kingdom where it was found, went under the hammer at the Antwerp Diamond Center and was sold to the South African Diamond Corporation, owner of luxury jewellers Graff.
(I wonder how much money the woman who found the diamond will receive...)



The RUF began its jewelry heist in 1991, using the support of neighboring Liberia to capture Sierra Leone's vast wealth of diamond mines. Since then, the rebels have carried out one of the most brutal military campaigns in recent history, to enrich themselves as well as the genteel captains of the diamond industry living far removed from the killing fields.

The RUF's signature tactic was amputation of civilians: Over the course of the decade-long war, the rebels have mutilated some 20,000 people, hacking off their arms, legs, lips, and ears with machetes and axes. This campaign was the RUF's grotesquely ironic response to Sierra Leone President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah's 1996 plea for citizens to “join hands for peace.” Another 50,000 to 75,000 have been killed. The RUF's goal was to terrorize the population and enjoy uncontested dominion over the diamond fields...

Beginning as early as 1998, the same year Al Qaeda operatives reportedly blew up U.S. embassies in Kenya and Sudan, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network began buying diamonds from the RUF of Sierra Leone, according to FBI sources quoted in the Washington Post.

The paper also reported that two of the Al Qaeda men implicated in those attacks—Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed—were in Sierra Leone in 2001, overseeing RUF diamond production.

As recently as mid-2001, a mere three months before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Al Qaeda had laundered millions of dollars by buying untraceable diamonds from the rebels. In the wake of Sept. 11, the United States and its allies in the “war on terrorism” froze more than $100 million worth of Al Qaeda assets worldwide. But the terrorists likely have an ace in the hole in the form of diamonds from Sierra Leone, wealth that can be easily and quickly sold and is virtually untraceable....

SURAT: This Christmas, Blood Diamond may take the sheen off Surat’s glittering Rs 45,000-crore gems and jewellery industry. Traders in the city, where 9 of the world’s 11 rough diamonds are cut or polished, fear their business may bleed after the release of Warner Bros’ forthcoming flick Blood Diamond, a film based on a story about the business of 'conflict diamonds' and how its perpetrators used the profits to fund terrorist cells to establish brutal dictatorships in poor African nations.