Blood Diamonds Page 4

  Fawaz and those like him are important middlemen in the legitimate diamond trade. Licensed by the Sierra Leone government, they’re the first purchasers along a lengthy chain of buyers that ends with consumers in developed countries shopping for tennis bracelets. Out here, amid the sweltering heat and the potential of renewed RUF gunfire, he buys and sells diamonds that will be cherished as keepsakes forever by people whose only experience with such treacherous environments is gleaned from rare three-minute reports on CNN.

  Like Fawaz, the majority of such dealers are Lebanese whose parents and grandparents moved to West Africa by the thousands in the wake of World War II to sell consumer goods and general merchandise. Some 120,000 Lebanese are estimated to live throughout West Africa, most of them in the import–export business. 4 When diamonds were discovered in Sierra Leone they were well positioned to enter the gem business, because soon after the war the country was thrown into its first significant bout of internal turmoil over the precious stones.

  UNTIL THE EARLY 1950s, diamond production in Sierra Leone was dominated by one company, Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), a branch of the London-based exploration company West African Selection Trust. The company had holdings in gold mines in Ghana and was owned by the South African diamond powerhouse, De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. SLST was founded in Freetown in 1934, after De Beers’s vanguard of miners had plucked more than 32,000 carats of stones from the Sierra Leone jungle by hand. The company convinced the government—which was still administered by England—to grant it an exclusive mining concession, meaning that all the diamonds found in the rain forest went to one company.

  That was the theory at least. In truth, Sierra Leone provided a horrible mining environment. The deposits were located in the heart of an unexplored jungle, scattered among chieftaincies and villages that weren’t used to the sight of white men digging for rocks. The tropical vegetation in the bush grows as thick as anywhere on earth, communications with Freetown were almost non-existent, and travel into the provinces—often with heavy equipment and supplies—was a days-long endeavor from origin to destination. This harsh reality of jungle mining immediately raised concerns about security. The diamond-bearing region was so extensive and dense with vegetation, wild animals, and villages that few SLST officers were optimistic about being able to control one of diamond mining’s inherent costs of business: theft through illicit mining.

  In fact, the problem was worse than anyone anticipated. At first, mining went smoothly and SLST built a then-modern processing facility in Yengema, a town in the Kono District. Labor was abundant as the locals took advantage of endless opportunities to mine rivers and wash gravel.

  Things changed drastically in the wake of World War II, when Sierra Leoneans serving the British in the Royal West African Frontier Force returned from the battlefields of Burma, having learned the value of the innocuous stones that were being mined out from beneath the feet of villagers. It’s not surprising what happened after tales of limitless fortunes began circulating through the bush: Miners abandoned their jobs and became independent operators. They were also illegal operators, since only SLST had the right to mine for diamonds in Sierra Leone.

  But that hardly mattered. In the postwar years, Sierra Leone saw a massive diamond rush as thousands of locals and an equal number of neighboring Liberian and Guinean hopefuls struck out into SLST’s private reserve of diamond mines. The boom very nearly sank the country in the mid-1950s as farmers ignored their fields and instead washed gravel day in and day out, usually under the cover of night when they were less likely to be discovered. A food shortage struck the interior and, for the first time, Sierra Leone had to import staples like rice, a grain that was usually so abundant that the country normally exported it. More than an estimated 30,000 illegal miners were operating in 1954, a human tide that was almost impossible to stem.5 Many of these miners were supported by wealthy Lebanese financiers, most of whom had moved to Freetown in the wake of the war to sell general merchandise. Their business clout and expertise, their possession of import / export licenses, and their ties to supplies in Freetown made them natural partners for the men toiling in the bush.

  The Sierra Leone Army, a 1,300-strong force of soldiers whose general duties consisted of little more than guarding their own barracks in Freetown, was dispatched to the Kono District to provide security for SLST, which began to form its own militias, often from the ranks of the local police forces. Violent clashes between miners and these militias became regular events, but even the threat of gun battles didn’t slow the illicit trade; the returns provided by illegal mining far outweighed the risks.

  The majority of stones were smuggled out of the country. By 1955, it became obvious that there was no way SLST—even with the help of the army and a growing paramilitary police force—could control the smuggling situation. SLST and the government eventually dissolved the single-concession agreement and implemented an aggressive licensing program for indigenous diggers. But even with the dissolution of SLST’s private concession and new laws allowing independent operators to sell their goods in Sierra Leone, most miners had already developed contacts outside the country, which also allowed them to avoid export taxes.

  With the help of Saika Stevens, the minister of mines for Sierra Leone’s government-elect, De Beers instituted the Diamond Corporation of Sierra Leone (DCSL), a company that would buy diamonds from those who were at the time “stealing” them from SLST and selling them in Monrovia, the nearby capital of neighboring Liberia. In turn, DCSL would transport the diamonds to the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) in London, another De Beers concern, which was part of the Central Selling Organization (CSO), the global diamond funnel established by De Beers in the 1930s. At the time, the CSO sold 80 percent of the world’s diamonds to the retail marketplace.

  For the scheme to work, however, De Beers had to buy the diamonds in the bush in order to compete directly with the illicit traffickers. In real terms, what this meant was that some brave soul—who would have to be an expert in evaluating diamonds—would have to leave the comfort and safety of a downtown office and set off into the heart of an unmapped jungle with a backpack crammed with cash. At the diamond mines and in countless villages he would then compete with savvy local middlemen and smugglers who likely wouldn’t be too inclined to share their lucrative turf with the legitimate diamond cartel.

  In the beginning, things didn’t work out too well. The handful of London buyers who agreed to this risky assignment were up against hundreds of traffickers who outbid them for the diamonds in order to keep a loyal customer base among the diggers. The DCSL buyers were also constrained by rates dictated from London. It took five years and the creation of a new government office before the diamond buyers were able to offer rates similar to those offered in Monrovia. Although illicit sales of diamonds were never halted, by 1960 the estimated loss to the illicit market fell to its lowest point since the diamond rush began.

  The job of buying diamonds in the bush fell almost exclusively to the Lebanese traders once the system worked through all of its initial kinks. They were revered in diamond offices in Freetown. “After all, they accomplished the most dangerous part of the buyer’s mission, for the idea of walking through the forest carrying large sums of cash appealed to no one,” writes Jacques Legrand in Diamonds: Myth, Magic, and Reality. “All things considered, the profits made by the Lebanese were commensurate with the work they performed and an equilibrium was established to everyone’s satisfaction.” 6

  Diamonds only added to the increasing political tension of pre-independence Sierra Leone. Those who would be charged with assuming the mantle of government from the British in 1961 faced both an economic windfall as well as a witch’s brew of serious political and economic issues that would challenge any well-seasoned government. Sierra Leoneans, with the oversight of a British administration, had experienced no success in harnessing the country’s most valuable natural resource, as the diamond boom of the 1950s had shown. More diamon
ds were smuggled away than were exported, robbing the country of taxes and contracts that could have been used to build roads, utilities, and medical and educational facilities. Control of the diamond fields would require an incredibly delicate and astute, yet forceful and uncompromising government. The head of state would have to adopt strict border policies with Liberia, modernize export laws, and establish creative trade and labor agreements with diamond exploration companies. The entire monetary system should probably have been overhauled prior to independence. One of the reasons smugglers went to Monrovia was because Liberia’s dollar was fixed to the value of the U.S. dollar until 1997, making it the equivalent of hard currency. The much softer currency of Sierra Leone was good only in Sierra Leone.

  None of these measures was taken, however, and the smuggling did not stop once Sierra Leone was granted independence on April 27, 1961. Maintaining the diamond infrastructure was left to the Lebanese traders in towns like Kenema and Bo, and they had organized it in the first place to address the needs of smugglers.

  The system employed by people like Fawaz is simple and dates back to the early diamond-rush days of the 1950s. Individual miners obtain a license from the government to dig on a certain plot of land or riverbank. Since the license is extremely expensive to the average would-be miner—who also needs to pay off the inevitable series of bribes—he often needs to find a sponsor, usually a Lebanese merchant. The merchant provides shovels, gasoline-powered water pumps, sieves, food, and pay for the miner’s hired diggers. In exchange, the diamonds are sold to the merchant, minus the overhead. Fawaz himself, though he works in one of Africa’s most valuable diamondiferous regions and is a conduit for what is eventually hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gemstones, has never even visited a mine.

  When war broke out in 1991, the system was so well established—and the profits so lucrative—that many Lebanese abandoned their businesses only under the most threatening circumstances. Even at the height of the RUF conflict, with the sounds of rocket blasts echoing off Kenema’s high hills, many merchants continued to man their offices and buy stones from the rebels. Official diamond exports from Sierra Leone practically ceased in the mid-1990s—whereas 2 million carats per year were exported in the 1960s, a paltry 9,000 carats were exported in 1999—but the old smuggling routes to Monrovia were still open for business.

  And there was certainly no lack of buyers. Everyone from legitimate brokers employed by Belgian cutting houses to agents of the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah crowded the streets and hotels of Monrovia, eager for the chance to buy diamonds from the RUF. Monrovia was a no-man’s-land of freewheeling dealing in diamonds that had been soaked in the blood of innocent Sierra Leoneans. For the legitimate brokers, it meant cheap goods and high profits; for the terrorists, it presented a picture-perfect opportunity to launder vast amounts of money undetected, an important development in the role diamonds would come to play in international terrorism in the beginning of the new century.

  2

  DIAMOND JUNCTION: A Smuggler’s Paradise

  Freetown, Sierra Leone

  SITTING ON FREETOWN’ S white-sand beaches, it’s almost possible to forget where you are, if you can ignore the regular rotor wash from UN helicopters returning to headquarters at the Mammy Yoko Hotel. But more tragic reminders are never far away.

  A young sand-beggar wandered over to our table and told us that he was poor and in need of money. He’d escaped the RUF a year before and couldn’t find work. He told us that he was 17 and had been fighting with the rebels since he was kidnapped at age 9. His mother and father were killed by RUF in Makeni, in north-central Sierra Leone, and he was trucked to the rebels’ eastern stronghold in Kailahun and forced to join the rebellion. It was either that or execution. His weapon had been an AK-58, a more powerful version of the ever-popular AK-47, which can hold up to 75 rounds of ammunition per magazine. He practiced his aim by shooting coconuts out of palm trees alongside other kidnapped children. After six weeks of training in guerilla warfare, he was ordered into battle.

  “You had to go,” he said.

  “Why? Could you say ‘no’?”

  “They kill you if you say ‘no,’” he said. “Four kids in my unit were killed because they wouldn’t fight.”

  I asked him if he’d ever chopped off anyone’s hands and he said he hadn’t. But he’d seen it done.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “We only chop hands by order.”

  “But why were the orders given?”

  “To scare people. To get the diamonds and make them leave the mines.”

  Less than five minutes after he left, a young child about 7 years old tentatively approached the table pulling an old man in sunglasses by the sleeves of his sport coat. The sleeves flapped in the breeze below the elbow and it was obvious that he’d had his hands chopped off. The girl wanted money for the man, her grandfather. He said he was once a diamond dealer and banker in Bo, Kenema’s sister city 50 miles to its west, and when the rebels attacked, they presumed he was rich. They chopped off both arms and gouged out his eyes with a bayonet. Now, like the young RUF lieutenant, he wandered the beach with his granddaughter leading the way and begged for money.

  Other than the Mammy Yoko Hotel, which hosted the offices of UNAMSIL, there was no place to escape the walking, talking evidence of how bad and desperate a place Sierra Leone was. Freetown was a city filled with war-ravaged beggars and thieves. There were too many refugees and not enough humanitarian aid to go around. People crippled with polio staked out street corners, and tried to extort money from those passing within reach. Waiters would try to sell you diamonds or offer to rent their sisters to you for weeks at a time. Children with bloated bellies scratched at the windows of downtown restaurants.

  Just when you thought you’d found a safe corner to escape to—some dim tent of a streetside restaurant where few people could see into the gloom and you could order yet another beer and let your mind wander to something other than death, disease, and torture—in would stumble a multiple-amputee, a man who’d had his arms, lips, and ears sawn off with a rusted ax. If it was really an unlucky day for you, the guy would also have polio and malaria and be partially retarded. There is no shortage of such people, and when they corner you in a restaurant whose walls are composed of stolen UNHCR rain-plastic, there are only two things to do: Stare stoically through him as if he doesn’t exist, or reach for your wallet and hope a limp leone-note worth 50 cents is penance enough.

  When giving money to the amputated, you must put it directly into their pockets.

  FREETOWN’S VERY NAME is so ironic that no one even bothers to point it out. Its English founders, who had good intentions, however misplaced they might have been at the time, had certainly envisioned a different future. During the Revolutionary War, the British gave American slaves the opportunity to be freed in exchange for fighting for the crown. At the end of the war, more than 15,000 former slaves who had accepted the offer made their way to Great Britain. Although slavery was still legal there, in 1772 a court had ruled that once freed, a slave was free for life. Unaccustomed to making a life of their own, and aided little by the government they had fought for, many of the new residents suffered crushing poverty and unemployment.

  In 1787, a group of British philanthropists purchased 32 square miles of land near Bunce Island, a large landmass in the Sierra Leone River just north of the Freetown Peninsula, from local Temne leaders. Their idea was to create a “Province of Freedom” for the ex-slaves. Later that year, 100 European prostitutes and 300 former slaves arrived in what would become Freetown. Many of the freed slaves knew nothing of Africa, having been born in Europe or the Americas. Even if they had, very few of them—perhaps none of them—had ancestors from Sierra Leone. Although Sierra Leone had been plied for slaves prior to that time, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Cameroon were the main players in the trade. Of the original 400 settlers dropped at the peninsula’s deep-water harbor, only 48 survived th
e next three years, the rest succumbing to a gallery of deadly diseases, warfare with the local inhabitants, or the temptation to leave Sierra Leone in search of their original homelands.1

  Undaunted, the philanthropists tried again in 1792, this time shipping some 1,200 former slaves from the United States who had fled to Nova Scotia, Canada; they later sent 500 more from Jamaica. It was during this period that the Sierra Leone settlers first started profiting from the country’s natural resources: To survive and make a rather handsome living in their new home, many of the settlers got into the slave trade, the irony being either lost on them or deemed inconsequential. Slaving was nothing new to Sierra Leone and the trade resembled that of conflict diamonds in a number of ways. For one, the history of slaving is filled with characters that seem to have been plucked from a lurid pulp novel. Consider the self-proclaimed wretch of a slaving captain John Newton, a man so vile “that even his crew regarded him as little more than an animal,” according to historian Lindsey Terry. “Once he fell overboard and his ship’s crew refused to drop a boat to him. Instead they threw a harpoon at him, with which they dragged him back into the ship.”

  Newton, an Englishman, captained a specially designed slave frigate named, simply enough, A Slave Ship. She could carry up to 600 people, chained side to side and lined up like timber. The purpose was to pack in as many slaves as the ship could hold since an average of 20 percent died during the two-month-long middle passage to Cuba.

  In 1748, Newton loaded slave cargo in Sierra Leone and weighed anchor into a massive storm that lasted eleven days. Convinced that he wouldn’t survive, he had a religious conversion on the deck, in the raging storm, bellowing out to God to “save his wretched soul.” The experience led to his writing the psalm “Amazing Grace” some 20 years later.