Diamonds Are the Heart of the Matter - Ian Smillie and Lansana Gberie on role of diamond trafficking on funding war in Sierra Leone - Interview

UN Chronicle, Summer, 2000 by Horst Rutsch

Since the release of the report, you have established connections with other international organizations ...

Smillie: What we began to see in the process of writing the study was that everything is connected-the more you dig, the more connections you find. We didn't realize how many broad international implications there are. We didn't talk about guns, we only talked about diamonds, but there is a big correlation between small arms and diamonds, as there is between drugs and diamonds. We looked at the Belgium diamond industry and we looked at De Beers, but we didn't look at the American or the Israeli diamond industries, and there is a big diamond industry in India as well, and all of these are related. The fact is that there are so many countries producing diamonds-most notably in Africa but also elsewhere-that, in essence, we only touched the tip of the iceberg.

Since the report came out, De Beers has announced that it won't buy any more conflict diamonds. The Belgians have also announced a number of sweeping changes in the way they do business. What we want to know is: Are these changes real? Are they sincere? And how can they be monitored and verified? We want to make sure that the industry really does change, and we think it is worth continuing the project for a while longer. There is a huge vested interest in the industry staying more or less the way it is.

What we want to do is work with other organizations--in Europe and Africa--that are concerned about these issues and start to follow up and monitor the diamond trade. We maybe able to involve some organizations within the diamond industry itself that are concerned about this, because I think they have as much to gain from a better regulated industry as some people have from one that is not regulated. But it is not going to happen overnight.

In the end, what we want is to make sure that someone who buys a diamond ring-a symbol of love and purity-in New York or anywhere else in the world would be sure that this diamond did not come out of a war situation in Sierra Leone; that it did not cause the death of 5 or 10 or 15 people; or didn't result in a little child having her hand cut off. We want to make sure that all the diamonds that come into jewellery stores are clean.

Point of Fact: A new World Bank report, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and the Implications for Policy, which looked at 47 civil wars from 1960 to 1999, shows that the most powerful risk factor for civil war is heavy national reliance on exports of primary commodities. The looting of such resources explains many civil conflicts, from Sierra Leone to Colombia. They create profitable opportunities for a minority at the same time as they destroy them for the majority.

The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone, Diamonds and Human Security, by Ian Lansana Gberie and Ralph Hazleton, is by Pa Partnership Africa. Canada-A coalition of Canadian and African organizations which work development policies benefit African and Canadian societies. The complete report can be a accessed at www.net.web/pac.>