Blood Diamonds Read online

  Prior to the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping mission in 1999, Sierra Leone had been almost entirely ignored by the powerful nations of the world, even though they were eager buyers of the diamonds that helped drive a decade’s worth of death and torture. It’s not difficult to see why Sierra Leone is low on most people’s list of places in which to intervene. Not only is it hard for most people to find on a map, but like many African countries, Sierra Leone has been consumed by corruption, dictatorial governments, and illiterate and thuggish leaders and victimized by breathtaking displays of otherworldly butchery. The climate is also horrible: Muggy and humid throughout the year, the tropical landscape is an incubator for malarial mosquitoes, polio, yellow fever, river blindness, and dozens of other deadly diseases. During the rainy season, everything—whether indoors or outdoors—remains wet for five months. During the dry season, harmattan winds from the Sahel and Sahara Deserts sandblast the country and the sunlight seems to be focused by a huge magnifying glass. The raw and unrelenting natural environment is reflected in the people and the actions of some of them in times of war.

  Unlike the countries of the former Yugoslavia, for example, there is no centuries-old ethnic conflict fueling the bloodshed; the people of Sierra Leone are a mix of indigenous tribes who still practice their animist beliefs and descendants of freed North American slaves. Prior to the RUF war, Sierra Leoneans lived relatively peacefully with one another. When the RUF first invaded the country from neighboring Liberia in 1991, the rebellion was ostensibly a peasants’ revolution against the perceived plundering of natural resources for the benefit of the ruling class in Freetown. But then the RUF and its Libyan-trained and Liberian-backed leader Foday Sankoh developed a taste for diamonds, and the “rebellion” was revealed as nothing more than a savage struggle to control diamond mining. The fact that such violence was occurring in an African country lowered the enthusiasm for international intervention all the more. African wars—thanks to a vacuum of media coverage that almost completely ignores sub-Saharan countries except in times of natural or man-made disasters—seem remote and incomprehensible to most consumers in developed nations. The vast majority of television programming from Africa seen around the world is composed of wildlife shows. In these panoramic and celebratory films actual Africans are largely absent.

  What makes Sierra Leone unique among former European colonies that have endured the painful transition to independence is its incredible natural wealth. Not only is the country rich in gem-quality diamonds, but it’s also a repository for oil, rubies, gold, rutile, and bauxite. It should be the Saudi Arabia of Africa, but it’s not.

  Most of those who live in Sierra Leone’s dense rain forests are farmers who have never set eyes on a diamond, but they have felt the stone’s impacts. Ever since diamonds were first discovered here in the 1930s the government has been unable to control the wealth for the benefit of its citizens, nor has it tried very hard to do so. Instead, the diamond fields have been plundered almost since they were first discovered, first by corporations, then by common thieves, and most recently by the armed thugs of the RUF. Estimates are difficult to come by but it’s believed that the RUF profited by between $25 million and $125 million per year by delivering rough gem-quality diamonds into the insatiable maw of the world’s diamond market.3

  The RUF is not alone in this endeavor. Rebels in Angola, whose Portuguese name forms the acronym UNITA, have raided diamond fields and oil operations to fund their decades-old war. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is in the midst of a baffling civil war between armed forces of several neighboring countries and ideologies; here too, diamonds are the prize for whichever group controls the areas where they’re found. Between these three countries, it’s estimated that rebel groups have sold enough diamonds to amount to 4 or 5 percent of the global output. Though this figure may seem reassuringly small—after all, 95 percent of diamonds sold around the world come from legitimate sources—it’s a testament to the power of their allure and value that such a small percentage is sufficient to cause an estimated 3.7 million deaths and displace 6 million people in these African war zones.4

  Diamonds are suited all too well for exploitation by organizations with nefarious goals. They are the most portable form of wealth known to man; it’s an often-repeated truth that enough diamonds can be carried on a person’s naked body to ensure a lifetime of riches, so stealing and smuggling millions of dollars worth from the battlefield to the marketplace is an easy and practically unstoppable practice. As the rebel groups have discovered, there is no lack of buyers for their goods and, until recently, there was little concern about where they originated or the amount of suffering their sellers had inflicted on innocent people.

  I MADE A NUMBER OF TRIPS to Sierra Leone in 2001 to document the country’s implosion from the trade of what has come to be known as “blood diamonds.” I planned to follow the murky trail of the diamonds from the time they’re mined to when they enter the mainstream trading channels. I wanted to see for myself the shocking contrast between the insufferable living conditions of the majority of Sierra Leone citizens and the beguiling allure of the diamonds being pulled from the muddy earth of the rain forests. Sierra Leone hosts the world’s largest and most expensive deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in history—more than 17,500 soldiers from 31 countries are stationed in a nation the size of South Carolina, and $612 million was spent on the mission in 2001 alone.5 I wanted to see if the diplomacy, military aid, and money being spent on a country that has been torn apart over diamonds were having any effect on the rampant bloodshed, inhumanity, and corruption.

  Before I arrived in Sierra Leone, like most people, I had no idea where the world’s most valuable gemstones came from. I knew little more than what I was told by television commercials, that diamonds were apparently forever, that they were rare, and that many of them were priceless. But since 1999, reports had been circulating that some diamonds weren’t as pure as their reputation proclaimed. The term “conflict diamonds” was bandied about and it gradually became known that some stones carried the blood of innocent victims, killed or mutilated by rebel groups in Africa who used the profits of diamond sales to continue their campaigns of brutality and inhumanity.

  Like almost anyone else who buys diamond rings or necklaces, I didn’t realize that the small stones’ invaluable reputation was nothing more than a 100-year-old parlor trick born of the greed of one company, De Beers Group, the largest diamond mining company in the world, which has completely manufactured both the worth of diamonds and the demand for them. I had no idea that De Beers’s monopolistic policies put in place more than a century ago enabled a band of ruthless killers to wrest diamonds from the heart of an untamed jungle and sell them to willing buyers with connections to respectable diamond centers from London to Antwerp to Bombay. I didn’t know that the proceeds from diamond sales funded not only the RUF’s war against its government, but also Hezbollah terrorism against Israel and Al Qaeda attacks against the United States. Nor could I have imagined that I would discover such a complicated and far-reaching network of smugglers, gunrunners, terrorists, corporate manipulaters, and corrupt governments that made such sales possible.

  And I certainly had no idea that the jewelry worn by hundreds of thousands of people around the world was bought at the expense of innocent and mutilated Africans who will never be able to wear jewelry of their own. I went to Sierra Leone to see for myself how the trade worked, to speak with the victims, and to discover how it was possible that the world’s premiere symbol of love and devotion could have been used to fund one of the most atrocious wars of the 1990s.

  1

  FROM PITS OF DESPAIR TO ALTARS OF LOVE

  Kenema, Sierra Leone

  CROUCHED BY THE MINE’S EDGE, I tried to ignore the grilling persistence of the equatorial sun overhead and concentrate on the dirt under my feet. Like everyone around me, I was looking for diamonds.

  Unlike the others, though, I squatted and flicked
through the gravel on the edge of the water with a stick, trying without much luck to tell the difference between a diamond and a chip of quartz. The others knew what they were doing. I was there to watch.

  We were somewhere in the jungle near a town called Bomboma in eastern Sierra Leone, at an open pit mine that had once been culled for diamonds by the Revolutionary United Front. The mine we were in, however, was in a region that had been reclaimed by the government and the men working there were all licensed to find wealth under the jungle floor. No one was really sure of the demarcation, though. The RUF was still nearby and its area of influence and control seemed to change daily, even though UN peacekeepers were also deployed nearby, actively pursuing a disarmament and demobilization agreement intended to end the savagery and displacement of this decade-long war once and for all.

  But the war was never more than an economic endeavor, a ten-year-long jewelry heist that continued despite the UN’s efforts and the RUF’s promises to stop mining. The only difference between an RUF mine and the one we were in is that there were no rifles in sight at ours.

  Visiting a diamond mine in Sierra Leone is not easy. Even the operators of those legitimately licensed by the government in Freetown are understandably very nervous about their portrayal in the international media. Therefore, American photojournalist Chris Hondros and I had to pose as government contractors preparing a report on working conditions at government mines, something we weren’t aware we had to do until we met our clandestine guide to the Bomboma mine.

  Our original plan was to simply wander around the diamond mining and trading town of Kenema until we ran into a miner who, we naively assumed, would be pleased to have two American journalists witness his daily toil in the countryside. But by unfortunate coincidence, the first man we discussed our plans with happened to be an African named Mr. Beh, who was, unbeknown to us at the time, an official with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources, an organization that likes to know who’s looking at the mines and why. He seemed jovial and more than willing to take us where we wanted to go, and we had no reason to be suspicious until we left the building where we’d met him after making plans to rendezvous in the morning.

  Out on the street, one of our local contacts, a reporter for the state-run radio station, caught up to us and told us to forget our plans with Mr. Beh. The Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources was notoriously paranoid, she said, and it could mean weeks worth of paperwork and intense interrogation before we would be allowed to visit a mine. And even if we were granted permission, it would be to visit a mine vetted entirely of diggers who may be inclined to complain about their working conditions. In fact, she said, if anyone were to ask from that point forward, we should simply say that we were researchers or employees with a nongovernmental organization, anything but journalists. Kenema is a small town and two white reporters stood out noticeably from the rest of the crowd. Being uncooperative with the diamond authorities, even though we were registered with the UN, could lead to arrest, she warned. It was our first introduction to the opaque and clandestine nature of the diamond business. Even legitimate mining operations played it close to the vest.

  “MY MOTHER WAS KILLED HERE, ” said our guide, a man who represented a mostly ineffective union for those who toiled in the mines. He pointed to an intersection of two footpaths marked by a knee-high boulder. “Every time I come through here, I think of her.”

  His mother had been killed while walking from one village to another when the RUF controlled the region. After harassing her, someone stuck a rifle in her gut and blew her into the witchgrass, where she lay until he and other relatives sneaked back to retrieve her body for burial.

  We were deep in the jungle, moving along footpaths that seemed to wind along the bottom of a green ocean. Overhead, a cathedral of interlocking branches and an umbrella of dancing leaves 50 feet up hid us from passing helicopters. Dusty shafts of golden sunlight reached like impossibly long crystals through the branches to the ground. Down here, it was easy to imagine how incredibly difficult it must be to fight in the bush. The vegetation was so thick that a regiment of RUF could have been standing two feet off the path and I never would have seen them. Automatic weapons and grenades are good only for a short distance in the jungle; the woody jigsaw of branches and trunks form a natural shield that absorbs and deflects bullets and shrapnel. The RUF perfected fighting in this sort of environment, using the jungle to sneak up close to their enemies and lay ambushes for government troops. They would strike without warning, spewing fire and rockets from the dense forest, then melt back into the trees.

  Our journey that morning had started at our guide’s hut on the side of a dirt road just outside Kenema, about five miles from the Bomboma mine. He was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when we nudged into his dark bedroom. “This is going to be slightly dangerous,” he said, reaching for a cigarette on the nightstand. “No one can know you’re reporters. I want you to see the mines like they really are. And when we come back, don’t tell anyone that I took you. I could get arrested.”

  And we couldn’t drive to the mine, either; cars were rare enough in the bush, but a car carrying two white men was bound to draw attention. Therefore, we were going to hike, he said.

  We began in Tissor, a small collection of mud huts with thatched roofs assembled in a neat clearing of hard-packed dirt that had been swept clean of leaves and debris. Chickens squawked underfoot and men and women who were so old they seemed to have been carved from wood stared impassively from porches and stools. The village was unremarkable except for its one facet of civic pride: It was here that the first Kamajor militia was formed to fight against the RUF.

  In one step, we went from the open clearing into the jungle, like walking from one room into another and having the door slam shut behind you. In the forest, the air was cool and dark and the path ahead of us looked like a giant green tunnel. We walked for miles, emerging from time to time into clearings where men and women burned fields for rice farms. We sidestepped snakes, jumped thick columns of venomous black ants that were more dangerous than snakes, and kicked through the husks of hundreds of mangos, discarded by local diamond-diggers who ate their breakfast during the walk to the mines. And of course, our eyes scanned the ground for milky crystals amid the well-packed gravel. Only a year before some lucky person had found a 25-carat diamond in the middle of Hangha Road in Kenema, a discovery that led to what was probably the town’s first-ever civic beautification project as everyone dredged the sewers and sifted mounds of garbage looking for more. “Diamonds,” we’d been told the previous evening, “are everywhere.”

  A few hours later, we emerged from the bush into Bomboma, a village occupied entirely by diamond-diggers and their families. The requisite flock of chickens scattered before us and cook-smoke plumed out from under A-shaped thatch huts. Naked toddlers played with machetes longer than their bodies and, at one house, a group of women dressed in bright scarves attended to a sick woman, covering her skin in a fine white powder.

  The first order of business was to convince the village chief that we were from some invented agency of the government, here to independently analyze working conditions at the mine. Any visit to an African village requires the blessing of the local chief, an affair that can involve up to two dozen people and take minutes or days depending on the leader’s disposition. We found the old man sitting on the floor, propped up against a wall in an inner courtyard of his house, a simple two-room structure made of packed mud and palm fronds, just like every other building. His face was grizzled with white beard-stubble and he wore a black Adidas T-shirt and soccer shorts. He spoke only the Mende language, so we couldn’t follow the specifics of the fabricated story our guide was relating to him, but could see that the chief seemed pleased that someone cared to send two representatives into the bush to check on them. White men in the African outback tend to draw a crowd, and Bomboma was no different. Workers preparing to go to the digging site were happy to be distracted by
the sight of two unusual strangers, one of whom carried what looked like a shiny cannon over his shoulder. They stared at Hondros’s Nikon and regarded us with friendly curiosity, as if we’d just beamed down from outer space.

  After another walk through the forest we soon stepped out onto the banks of the massive Bomboma mine. I immediately understood the paranoia of the Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources. The pit looked more like a slave colony than the first step on the journey of a diamond that would end up in one of the world’s largest and most profitable international luxury-commodities markets. On all sides, rib-skinny men stripped to their shorts were covered with mud and slime, the inevitable result of their jobs digging for diamonds. Even though it was barely 10 A.M., they all looked exhausted.