“Diamonds are the most portable form of wealth in the world” This is a quote from the book Blood Diamonds; Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones by Greg Campbell.
Diamonds are a huge part of our society. One might even go so far as to say our culture. They are the utmost symbol of love and eternity. Nearly everyone who is married or has a significant other has a diamond to show for it. That is just how our society works. What a lot of people don’t know about their diamond is the fact that a large portion of them got to where they are at the merciless hand of others. Innocent people were mutilated and murdered so that we people of well fortune, could wear a shiny rock on our finger.
After viewing Blood Diamond, I was very interested in the process that diamonds went though from the time they are mined to the time they are bought as a symbol of love. I decided to research these precious stones and find out the various ways that these stones make it to the market.
The first way that diamonds make it to the market that I would like to discuss is the legal way. The origin of diamonds is supposed to be kept track of. According to the Kimberly Process they are supposed to be tagged and all information of their origin is to be written down. They are taken from a mine where workers are getting wages for their efforts and are then taken to a local diamond buyer. Here the buyer gives a fair price and accepts the diamond as well as its tags. This buyer would then take the diamonds to a company such as the DeBeers Company and sell them to the big diamond market buyers who would cut and polish them and put a price on their heads. Jewelers from around the world would buy their diamonds from sources such as these. A small percentage of diamonds from Sierra Leone actually go through this process.
Smuggling is the next way of transportation for diamonds. This is the most common form of receiving diamonds. This was portrayed well in the movie because that is what Archer the main character does for a living. He smuggles diamonds into Liberia where they can then be exported as non conflict diamonds. As depicted in the scene with the goats. According to my research, Liberia has a mining capacity of 125,000 carats. But in the span of 4 years they exported 6 million carats. This is because of the smuggling into Liberia.
The final process of diamonds that I would like to talk about is how the government and rebel groups played into the smuggling of diamonds. The RUF has taken control of many diamond mines and uses the diamonds from those mines to purchase weapons and to fuel the decade long war. They sell these diamonds to weapons dealers or barter them off with other terrorist or rebel groups who then resell them into the mainstream market.
This is how diamonds from this part of the world make it into the jewelry stores that we all know and love.
This project really opened my eyes. I wanted to learn all there was to know about blood diamonds. After researching this topic online, I wanted to dig deeper. So I delved into the printed resources of the Merill-Cazier Library. I found two really great books that I would like to share excerpts from.
Blood Diamonds by: Greg Campbell
“……. Neither on paper nor in person does Sierra Leone look like a country that produces some of the most beautiful and Valuable diamonds sold by the $6 billion per year international diamond industry, a luxury market that sells 80 percent of its products to American consumers. Actually to refer to Sierra Leone as a “country” at all is only a matter of geographical convenience. In fact, it is a vacuum of violence, poverty, warlords, and misery, a tiny corner of West Africa where the wheels have fallen completely off and left no one in charge except whoever happens to be the best armed at the moment. The country comes in dead last on the United Nations Human Development Index and life expectancies are among the lowest in the world: Men born in Sierra Leone can expect to live an average age of 43, women to age 48. The infant mortality rate is one of the worst in Africa, with 146 deaths per 1,000 live births………… The only thing that seems to have remained constant where everything else has fallen apart is diamond production. In fact the sale of diamonds to customers around the world is what has kept the war churning.”
“……..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.”
“……… It is 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.”
“……..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……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.”
The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire by: Tom Zoellner
“……..The cargo of African wars made up as much as 14 percent of the world’s entire diamond trade. There was no way to sort the bloody stones from the clean ones, and the diamond industry had no interest in separating the two. Once they were shipped to Antwerp or London, they were dumped into bulk sales pouches like wheat seeds poured anonymously into the bins of a Kansas grain elevator.”
“The united States is the end of the road for about half of the world’s production of diamonds. Of that about 19 percent of the total value is devoted to engagement rings. The act of buying diamonds to seal a marriage proposal is a $4.5 billion business in the united states……….Engagement rings are the inner stitching of the diamond empire, a leading product category and one that constantly replenishes the mythology of love the stone needs for its survival.”
