Diamonds In The Rough

By Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town

The woman has been waiting under the baobab tree for maybe two days. The sun burns through the branches of the tree that the locals say God grew upside down because it looks as if its roots are on top. She has two children with her, and they play in the dust, chasing chickens around the base of the huge tree, eating roasted corncobs from the campfire. A 4x4 truck with Zambian registration draws up, and a black man in a khaki safari suit gets out. The woman reaches inside her bra and draws out a twist of dirty cloth. Inside the wrapping are five diamonds of varying sizes. The man brings out an eyeglass and inspects them carefully. He reaches into his truck and pulls out a well-worn backpack. It appears to be full of U.S. dollars. He counts out several thousand dollars and hands them to the woman. "There will be more," the woman tells him as he prepares to drive away. "Maybe next week."

The buyer is a diamond dealer, registered with the Zambian government. He will drive back across the border where there is no border, just thick bush, scrubland and cattle trails. Even if he passes one of the rare police posts, he will just drive through and wave to the guards, perhaps give them a cigarette. He doesn't have to declare the diamonds. All he has to do is go to the Ministry of Mines in Zambia and get an export permit. He makes up a name and address of the "supplier" in Angola. The diamonds are now instantly legal for international trade. And next week there will be more garampeiros--diamond diggers--waiting for him under the baobab.

But though the diamonds are legal, they are anything but clean--at least in an ethical sense. Angola's diamonds, mined by thousands of men, women and children in backbreaking alluvial pits, fuel a rebel war that has torn the country apart for more than two decades. In a strange juxtaposition of the global economy, their hard work, which provides the resources to help buy some of the most lethal weapons on earth, also produces baubles for the delicate fingers of the world's brides in the most romantic moments of their life. Love and war have often been conjoined, but rarely like this.

Diamonds may be forever, but for producers in Africa they can be a curse or a blessing. They have taken at least one country, Botswana, from rags to riches. In terms of value, half the world's diamonds come from South Africa, Botswana or Namibia. The control of the diamond fields in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo has always been at the heart of dark and bloody civil wars in those nations as well. But Angola is a case unto itself, a land where a hijacked diamond industry continues to feed the fires of misery even as it swells the coffers of a rebel movement.

To combat that link, De Beers, which controls 70% of the world's diamond trade, has spent the fall implementing a new set of policies designed to help keep the hard-earned money of newly engaged couples from ending up in the hands of the rebels. This fall the company has reaffirmed its commitment to trying to stop the trade and even added a bit of a spin: a sense that the boycott was aimed directly at the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA), the rebel group led by Jonas Savimbi that has been a target of largely ineffectual U.N. sanctions since 1993. Explains De Beers spokesman Andrew Lamont: "The only goal is to do as much as we can to help the U.N. to limit the ability of UNITA to carry on the conflict."

But it won't be easy to stop the trade. UNITA has already amassed a fortune from illicit diamond sales, enough to continue its hostilities virtually indefinitely. Diamond analysts calculate that UNITA made more than $2.5 billion from diamond sales between 1992 and 1997, and last year collected at least $225 million. U.N. researchers and human-rights lobbying groups put the figure far higher. By any estimation, Savimbi's 40,000-strong UNITA must be the richest rebel movement in the world.

U.N. sanctions since mid-1998 against UNITA's diamond dealing have had little effect. Canada's U.N. ambassador, Robert Fowler, head of the Angolan sanctions committee, now has two panels of experts investigating UNITA's sanctions-busting operations and searching for a way to plug the embargo's holes. Fowler plans to put expert monitors in key trading centers to identify gems that could emanate from UNITA-held areas. He will also put U.N. customs officials at points in Africa where UNITA might move diamonds, money or weapons. At the same time, human-rights and environmental lobbyists have been pushing the industry to develop some kind of "certification" program so consumers can know where their diamonds are coming from. Like shoppers buying cheese, gem buyers would be able to choose their diamonds from Africa, Russia or the Americas with full knowledge of what they're buying.

The idea sounds good on paper but is tricky to execute. Every year millions of gems, ranging in size from small specks to major stones, are sorted into 14,000 categories before they are cut and polished, making it nearly impossible to mark each one in a way that could be retained from mine to showroom. Says Willy Nagel, a top De Beers broker in London: "The certification of diamonds is not foolproof. Smuggling is so widespread and so difficult to combat that one way or another, the UNITA diamonds are going to get on the market."

If anything, Savimbi seems to be attempting to expand his diamond operations. This fall he launched a violent push into the diamond-rich northern Cuango Valley that has forced the state mining company to withdraw most of its staff. In recent weeks the Angolan army has claimed successful attacks against UNITA--most notably a powerful strike that destroyed Savimbi's military headquarters at Bailundo. UNITA's attack on the Cuango diamond holdings is seen as a retaliation and a bold attempt to re-establish control over the area that produces Angola's most valuable precious stones.

Diamond traders on the Zambia-Angola border also say UNITA still has a rich source of diamonds at Mavinga, in southeastern Angola, long a UNITA stronghold. Mavinga's proximity to the Zambian and Namibian borders makes it ideal for the transfer of diamonds for money, goods or weapons. The border between the countries is just a cut line in the bush, with few fences, and runs for some 625 miles through remote scrubland. It's the kind of majestic rural space where you can see Africa at its best. Or, from the front seat of a diamond trader's truck, a continent at its worst.

--With reporting by Edward Barnes/New York

With reporting by EDWARD BARNES/NEW YORK