THE USE OF REGIONAL DIAMOND TRADING PLATFORMS TO ACCESS CONFLICT ZONES

Rough diamonds are one of the easiest minerals to extract from a war zone. Their high value to weight ratio means that a significant investment can be suitably concealed to evade detection. This attribute generally makes researchers assume that diamond smuggling from war zones to international trading centers is impossible to control—that the illicit diamond trade is like a river, which when confronted with an obstacle, will always find an alternative channel. This is true for the multitudes of African middlemen who smuggle varying amounts of diamonds across porous borders. International dealers who purchase diamonds from war zones are, however, much more constrained in their business and must rely on a limited number of routes to access rebel territory. These dealers almost always use operating platforms in a reasonable geographical proximity to the war zone to facilitate access to rebel groups, transfer cash to diamond buying operations, physically remove diamonds from the buying zone and organise their onward transfer to the legal international market. The multitude of networks that could deal with one particular rebel group and their infinite number of international hideouts is constricted to a bottleneck in these regional diamond trading platforms, without which access to rebel groups is either impossible or becomes a highly costly affair. This paper will consider the principle regional mechanisms by which diamond dealers organise, finance, orchestrate and conceal their business dealings with African rebel groups. Conflict diamond dealers interviewed by the author expressed economic rather than political motivation for their business activities, and in this context this paper will analyse why they have chosen regional operating platforms that conform to regional political alliances.     

BLOOD DIAMONDS

Few issues are currently as haunted by rumours and allegations as diamonds. ‘Conflict’ diamonds fuelling African wars originate mostly in Central Africa. Vast quantities of rough diamonds pass through rebel territory in this region. In Angola, UNITA controlled the export of diamonds for many years. The main rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) tax and regulate artisan miners who sell to dealers. Both Angola and the DRC established exporting monopolies in 2000 to reduce smuggling and increase official state revenue. The monopolies were promoted as a means to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the legitimate rough trade. Both were meant to bring order to local diamond markets. This essay appraises their success by establishing whether state revenue, transparency and oversight have increased, and official outlets for conflict diamonds have been reduced. Principal foreign power sources behind the monopolies are examined and allegations of links are assessed, highlighting specific cases to present a more complete picture of the dynamics in the monopolies, seeking to separate fact from fiction.