Blood Diamonds Read online

  And for good reason: It’s hard to imagine a job more difficult or demanding. The workday starts at sunrise and ends at sunset. There are no lunch breaks and no days off. For their efforts at recovering diamonds from the soil, the diggers each receive two cups of rice and the equivalent of 50 cents per day. Bonuses based on the value of their personal production are dependent almost entirely on the trustworthiness of the miner they work for.

  The mine was roughly circular and about 300 yards in diameter. Here and there, earthen ledges connected one bank to another across muddy knee-deep pools of groundwater. High up on the banks, surrounding the pit like the jagged teeth of a colossal jungle monster, stood conical mounds of gravel that had been dug from the hole by hand. In such nonindustrialized mines, the process of looking for diamonds is almost exactly the same as it was half a century ago, except that gas-powered water pumps have replaced the bucket brigades of the old days. Essentially, a gigantic hole is dug into the ground until the prospectors hit groundwater, at a depth of usually 30 feet or so. The diamondiferous soil is carefully piled around the edge and covered with palm fronds. Attacking one pile at a time, diggers shovel the dirt into a wooden trough with a mesh sieve at the bottom. Water is pumped through the trough to separate big rocks from the small ones and a boy at the bottom of the trough shovels out the fine gravel, making another pile. In turn, that pile is dumped by the bucketload into circular sieves called “shake-shakes” and shirtless men and boys twirl the muck around and around at the surface of the water, forcing the heavier pebbles—including any diamonds—into the center and the clay and silt slurry to the outer edge.

  Teams of about six washers toil under the tropical sun, carefully watched over by one of the miner’s foremen, whose job is to keep an eye out for theft. Even the least muscular man washing gravel is rippled with perfectly defined muscles, sculpted from years of prospecting. Their motions are fluid and robotic: twirl, twirl, twirl, scoop, sift, dump, over and over and over. Watching them work, it astounded me how they ever found a single diamond, but their eyes were so attuned to picking out the stones—and there was a never-ending supply of gravel to be washed—that there was no hesitation or concern that diamonds were being overlooked.

  When a diamond is actually discovered, there’s hardly the celebration one might expect. Instead, one of the washers simply stops all motion, peering intently into his sieve, brushing rocks out of the way. He then plucks a tiny stone from the center of the mesh and gives a low whistle to the foreman, who ambles over to assess the discovery. There in his palm rests the source of all the country’s unrest, a puny diamond barely a quarter carat in weight, standing out from his brown hand like an improbably large grain of salt.

  It had been formed eons ago, crystallized under extreme pressure and temperature dozens of miles below the surface and carried up through a kimberlite pipe, subsequently shaken loose and eroded out, and then sent on a desultory, waterborne journey that took centuries to carry it here, near the village of Bomboma, where it was embedded in red dirt and gravel under the floor of a wild jungle. People have lost their hands, their lives, and their families for little stones like this one, which looked quite insignificant there on the bank of the pit. The diamond was then wrapped in paper and disappeared into the foreman’s shirt pocket. Eventually, after passing from African hands to Lebanese dealers, it will wind up in London and then probably Antwerp, Belgium, or Bombay, India, or New York City, where it will be cut and polished if the quality justifies it. On its own, the little rock that was discovered as I crouched by the mine’s edge is too small to make a very impressive engagement ring, but it might end up as part of a $1,000 necklace or bracelet. Our guide guessed that if the quality was decent, the miner might get $5 for it from one of the diamond merchants in Kenema.

  The digger who found it gets another bucket filled with gravel to wash.

  ABOUT 50 MILES NORTH of the pit in Bomboma, a British geologist named J. D. Pollett made a discovery in 1930 similar to ours. He found diamonds on the bank of the Gbobora River, not realizing at the time that he had stumbled onto one of West Africa’s most valuable diamond deposits that would, over the next 40 years, produce more than 50 million carats of diamonds, half of which were of astounding gem quality.1 Pollett estimated that the diamond field he discovered extended over an area of perhaps 3,000 square miles, bounded on the west by the Sewa River and extending east into Liberia. Towns within that area—Kenema, Yengema, Koidu, Tongo Field, and Bo—would be transformed within two decades from sleepy bush villages in the middle of a rain forest that few people would ever care to visit to centers of violent intrigue and international commerce, both legal and illegal. On that day in 1930, Sierra Leone officially became diamondiferous, a designation that has always been both a blessing and a curse for any nation with a similar geology; the promise of vast wealth invariably invites chaos. The discovery of those diamonds—which, until then, had been deemed to be just another worthless piece of gravel by the locals—placed Sierra Leone on a course that would effectively destroy the entire country by the end of the century.

  At the time of the discovery, Sierra Leone had been a British colony for 50 years. Founded by former North American slaves freed for fighting on behalf of England in the Revolutionary War, the country was still 80 percent unexplored when Pollett and other teams of geologists forged into the bush to survey its lands and resources. The vast majority of trade, commerce, and political activity took place in Freetown, home to former slaves and captives from across West Africa and the Americas. Freetown’s population was composed of people who became known collectively as Krios, and since very few, if any, originally came from Sierra Leone, they didn’t stray far from the capital and enjoyed the modernity that flowed from their British rulers.

  The Africans who lived in the bush had no idea of the wealth that they trampled and ignored daily. To them, diamonds held no value whatsoever. It’s easy to imagine that the people of the Temne, Mende, and Kru tribes—who lived agrarian lives based on animist beliefs and rituals, much like their ancient ancestors had—were probably amused by the sight of white men digging excitedly for stones that they considered utterly worthless. That attitude was destined to be short-lived.

  As far back as the sixteenth century, some societies had viewed diamonds as talismans of strength, fortitude, and courage, attributes undoubtedly derived from the stones’ hardness, transparency, and purity. Since diamonds were even more rare then than they are now, it’s not surprising that they quickly were ascribed magical qualities. Diamonds were said to reveal the guilt or innocence of accused criminals and adulterers by the colors they reflected. They were said to reanimate the dead and render the virtuous invisible. The stones were also believed to bring the wearer all forms of good fortune, unless it had a blood-red flaw in the middle, in which case it meant certain death.2

  Theories about the origins of diamonds were no less fantastical. Fourteenth-century alchemists revealed the shortcomings of mineral sciences of the day by suggesting that male and female diamonds reproduce “and bring forth small children that multiply and grow all the year,” in the words of the author Sir John Mandeville: “I have oftentimes tried the experiment that if a man keep with them a little of the rock and water them with May dew often, they shall grow every year and the small will grow great,” he once wrote.

  Several cultures passed along the story of the great Valley of Diamonds, supposedly located on the island of Ceylon. In one version of the tale, Sindbad the Sailor is accidentally deposited there after piggybacking on a huge raptor in an attempt to escape one of the many life-threatening situations he frequently found himself in. But instead of being whisked to freedom, he was dropped in a high-walled gorge, the floor of which was covered in gorgeous diamonds. The trouble was that there was no way out and the diamonds were guarded by gigantic serpents whose gaze caused instant death. Fortunately for Sindbad, ingenuity was an early quality of diamond merchants and the men of Ceylon had invented a crafty system to get the
goods. Traders would skin the carcass of a sheep and hurl it into the valley. When it hit bottom, the gemstones would adhere to the flesh and prove to be a tantalizing treat for the oversized eagles that nested on the valley’s edge. An eagle would retrieve the sheep—and the diamonds attached to it—and return to its nest, where the traders would converge to scare it into flight and collect the bounty. Sindbad tied himself to a sheep carcass with his unwound turban and was thus lifted to freedom on the talons of an eagle, but not before stuffing his pockets with all the diamonds he could carry.

  Diamonds are, in fact, the products of heat and pressure. About 120 miles below the earth’s surface, carbon atoms are superheated at 3,600 degrees and compressed under incredible pressures in what’s called the diamond-stability field, the level within the earth that possesses the right pressure and temperature to turn carbon into diamonds. Geologists surmise that this superhard carbon material was then driven toward the surface at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour during an explosive geological event, carried along with magma and gas to a much cooler depth that prevented the diamonds from being reheated into a more common carbon form such as graphite. These volcanic eruptions originated far below the diamond-stability field, punching through layer after layer of earth, picking up anything and everything that they intersected, resulting in a bubbling stew of geological debris that, when hardened, is known as kimberlite. Many kimberlites didn’t make it to the surface, but for those that got close, the lessening pressure of overhead rock allowed the eruption to pick up speed. Gaseous explosions probably blew through the jungle canopy as the pipes surfaced, showering diamonds and everything else for miles around like so much birdshot.

  Kimberlite pipes are found all over the world, but not all of them contain diamonds, as many a would-be millionaire has discovered in places like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Ithaca, New York, both home to kimberlites that have yielded no diamonds. But the kimberlites that blasted into what would eventually become Sierra Leone—two small chimneys that are about a billion years old and likely stood more than 1,500 feet above the plains—bore beautiful, innumerable diamonds. Millennia of erosion and lavish summer rains on the tropical forests that grip Africa from The Gambia to Somalia have hidden the diamonds under the region’s red and yellow dirt like so many undiscovered Easter eggs.3

  All who have ever coveted this wealth—government regimes, smugglers, lovers, merchants—have historically never cared where they were found or under what conditions they were extracted so long as they could turn a profit or showcase one, or several, on a golden band or necklace. Although diamonds are no longer believed to cure disease or act as crystal balls, they still symbolize wealth, power, love, and honor.

  Only in the past two years—as public knowledge has increased about the bloodbaths being waged over the control of Sierra Leone’s vast wealth—have people begun to learn that diamonds found in their local jewelry stores may have begun their journey in the hands of those who have tortured and killed to gain them.

  “FOR EIGHT MONTHS LAST YEAR, I sat in this office and I didn’t buy a single diamond,” complained Fawaz S. Fawaz, a heavyset beer-barrel of a man, as he lit a fresh Marlboro off the smoldering butt of his last one. “There are no good diamonds coming in.”

  He balanced the smoke on top of a pile of crushed filters burying an ashtray on the countertop and continued his clumsy surgery on a tropical bird bought from a little boy on the street. The colorful, scared creature was a gift for Fawaz’s young son and once he’d clipped the wings, he untied the twine on its legs and handed it off to a servant, who scurried away to deliver it.

  Fawaz is a Lebanese diamond merchant, one of scores whose signs clog the main pothole-ridden road through Kenema, the smoking, popping, wheezing hub of diamond commerce in the heart of the Sierra Leone jungle.

  Given its reputation as a diamond capital, it was no surprise when Kenema was attacked by the RUF and its mines captured in 1993. The town was then on the front lines of the diamond war and it was briefly recaptured by government forces in 1994, only to have the RUF win it back a few months later. Kenema stayed under RUF control until 1998, when ECOMOG forces reclaimed it for good. Three years later, in the summer of 2001, it was difficult to imagine that full-scale diamond production had ever been interrupted. Indeed it really hadn’t: It was simply conducted by the rebels and many Lebanese endured the threat of dying in a gun battle or artillery barrage to remain behind to deal with them for their diamonds. Unlike other liberated towns that are characterized by the sleepy drudgery of rural life, Kenema is a hectic, overcrowded anthill of nonstop commercial activity. Guarded by a battalion of Zambian soldiers serving with the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and a remote base to what seems like every nongovernmental organization ever incorporated, Kenema is proof that properly motivated and controlled greed can overcome the threats of warfare.

  The main thoroughfare, Hangha Road, is littered with Lebanese storefronts with large signs announcing “Diamond Merchant” in hand-painted letters. Every merchant’s logo is a jumbo-sized brilliant-cut diamond, but the images add little luster to the garbage-strewn streets filled with beggars and refugees who still hang onto the old gambler’s notion that they are just one lucky find away from eternal wealth. In the early days, that was certainly the case. Diamonds turned up in garden patches, latrines, and the middle of the streets. Like most other places in Sierra Leone, Kenema hid its dollar-value well: The town smelled like stagnant water and untreated wounds and clouds of disease-bearing mosquitoes hung in the air like a cartoon’s crowded thought balloons.

  Still, Kenema was more pleasant than most places emerging from the war. On a road parallel to Hangha, a mile-long marketplace seemed to explode with wares: Everything from doorknobs to underwear was on sale. On the other side of town, a food market was hip-to-elbow with colorfully dressed women selling mounds of cassava powder by the cupful and endless rows of tables assembled helter-skelter offering fish meat that had been sitting in the sun all day, attracting battalions of huge black flies. A stroll through the food market certainly took care of your appetite; the reeking fish alone were enough to make most visitors swear off eating for the foreseeable future. In an alley, a group of men assembled shake-shakes from freshly cut pine, imported wire mesh, and ten-penny nails, banging them together much as their grandfathers had in the 1930s and 1940s. The finished products were stacked like oversized poker chips next to a towering pile of used shovels and picks for sale. And it wouldn’t have been Africa if every other square foot of roadway wasn’t occupied by salesmen hawking rare parrots, fish heads, tablecloths, camouflage T-shirts, and black-market cigarettes.

  All the Lebanese shops were nearly identical: Each offered racks and racks of cheap Japanese boom boxes for sale, along with shortwave radios, Sony Walkmans, and various other electronic products. But that was just window dressing and giveaways, throwbacks to the time when Lebanese families made their living selling consumer goods in Freetown; the real business happened in the back rooms, usually past a phalanx of slender young men in Tupac Shakur T-shirts guarding the doorway. In these rooms, whose decorations didn’t extend beyond the proprietor’s state diamond license and maybe a grainy photo of an olive-skinned family on a rare visit to Lebanon, was where the real wheeling and dealing transpired. There was always a desk with a white velvet pad in the center, a low-hanging lamp directly overhead, a full ashtray, seven or eight magnifying lenses of different powers, and an array of jeweler’s loupes. From the despairing tone of some of the Lebanese traders we visited, it seemed as though there was probably a thick film of dust on most of those lenses.

  “All of the good diamonds are in Kono,” Fawaz said, waving his hand to indicate the area 50 miles to the north where the RUF still reigned. He’d invited me and Hondros into his storefront for a cup of Lebanese coffee, which he ordered by simply shouting into the throng on the street, seemingly to no one. Dressed in gray polyester slacks and a tissue-thin 1950s-era button-down short-sleev
ed shirt—left unbuttoned near the neck to reveal a jet-black carpet of chest hair and a thick gold chain—the 50-plus-year-old Fawaz looked more like a counterman in a Philadelphia deli during the 1960s than a wealthy merchant in the jungles of Sierra Leone, through whose hands countless valuable gemstones have flowed. The Fawaz name was emblazoned on billboards up and down Hangha Road, but he insisted that the network of Fawaz cousins and brothers that operated in Kenema and other diamond villages was small compared to other merchants in town. But at the time of our visit, they were all pretty much muttering the same complaint: No good diamonds have been coming in from the fields.

  Whether that was true or whether Fawaz simply didn’t want to show us any goods is beside the point. One of Sierra Leone’s most important diamond areas—Tongo Field—was a mere 30 miles away from where we sat and under complete control of the RUF. It was universally assumed that rebel couriers sold diamonds in Kenema. We’d seen diamonds everywhere there—including a large, eight-sided rough stone that an old man wandering in the market had popped out of his mouth—and it’s likely that many of the stones skirted the legitimate channels. While the official currency is the leone (worth 2,000 to the U.S. dollar), in places like Kenema the currency of choice for anything beyond food and clothing was diamonds. If you needed a new car or motorcycle, you paid in diamonds because they were often easier to come by—and easier to carry—than a mountain of leones. If you owed your friend a favor for watching out for your family during the war, you gave him a nice piece of rough. Even a school for children orphaned by the war, in Freetown’s Aberdeen district, sells RUF-mined diamonds to reporters and personnel from nongovernmental organizations and the UN so that they can buy food and books for the students.