Diamonds and War in Sierra Leone: Cultural
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DIAMONDS AND WAR IN SIERRA LEONE: CULTURAL STRATEGIES FOR COMMERCIAL ADAPTATION TO ENDEMIC LO W-INTEN SIT Y CONFLICT DAVID CASPAR FITHEN DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON PhD 1999 PREFACE Although this thesis is the product of a structured PhD programme undertaken at University College, London, from 1994-1998, it builds upon my own experience of the West African diamond industry gained between mid-1992 and mid-1994. During this period I was employed by a small Anglo- Nigerian mining company that hoped to operate in southeastern Sierra Leone. My responsibilities in this capacity were varied and included the management of hardware and prospecting and mining supervision. This experience provided a valuable insight into the mechanics of the industry and the sociopolitical environment within which it functions. Doing business was neither easy for me nor for the company for which I worked. We had arrived in the immediate aftermath of a military coup and in the midst of a bitter internal war. A large proportion of the internal population had been displaced and the economy was on the verge of collapse. In the interior, rebel insurgents waged an unpredictable guerrilla war — there was no front line, merely shifting foci of attacks on predominantly civilian targets. My employers had gambled the success of their venture on the ability of an authoritarian, militarised regime to strategically and tactically counter what was, at the time, considered to be nothing more than a rag-tag, politically-confused band of disaffected and marginalised drop-outs. As time progressed and internal security steadily deteriorated in the face of the half-hearted efforts of the government army, it became clear to me that both my company and the state had gravely misjudged the situation. Throughout 1993, the insurgency gained ground and began to directly threaten the area in which my company worked. Investors grew nervous and the flow of operating capital so vital to any business began to dry up. By the beginning of the following year the business rapidly descended into insolvency and in February 1994 ceased trading. Shortly afterwards, I returned to the United Kingdom somewhat preoccupied with my lack of understanding of events in Sierra Leone. What was the war about and who exactly was fighting it? These questions, in time, came to be answered by scholars with specialist knowledge of the history and sociopolitics of the country and, in particular, Professor Paul Richards, whose bold and provocative book Fighting for the Rain Forest (1995) became the axis of academic debate concerning the context and dynamics of the conflict. I was fortunate to meet him shortly after returning to the United Kingdom and we were soon in agreement as to the highly important role of diamonds in the war. As a former diamontaire, another question continued to perplex me. How were some people, even in the midst of high insecurity, able to continue successfully trading diamonds, while others, my company included, failed? Rather unexpectedly, Professor Richards proposed that this question form the focus of a doctoral thesis. After some encouragement, for which I am indebted, I accepted the kind offer of his supervision and assistance. The work began with a consolidation of my knowledge about the diamond industry in Sierra Leone and how it ties into the global market. Although well-versed in the technicalities of extraction and the day-to-day running of a small open-cast mine, there were significant gaps in my understanding of what Janet MacGaffey calls the "real economy” of the industry or, in other words, the true articulation of its official and parallel aspects. I decided that a good starting point would be to create some sort of portrait of participants, in order to establish exactly which groups are involved and how they interact with each other. I knew that in effect, small foreign ventures like my own were probably of negligible importance in relation to annual national production. It was also apparent that this group of participants suffered the greatest failure rate. What I knew from my own experience of mining in Sierra Leone was that the core of the industry was controlled by highly politicised and ethnicised local groups and alliances of capital-holding Lebanese diaspora. Clearly identifying these distinct sets of players would provide a foundation for the construction of a multi-site ethnography. During the compilation of a working bibliography, I discovered that many West Africanist scholars often tended to group the Lebanese diaspora together as a single unified community. I knew this was a mistake — I had met both Muslim and Christian Lebanese in the diamond fields and had noticed significant differences in sociocultural characteristics. I was, of course, not the first to have done so. H.L. van der Laan, writing in the 1960s and 1970s, conducted research into the make up of the Lebanese community in Sierra Leone as part of detailed studies of the economics of country and diamond industry at the time. Van der Laan's work has been an important primary source for this thesis. As a lecturer in Economic Organisation at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, from 1959 to 1971, he became interested in the role of the Lebanese in the economy of Sierra Leone. In 1965 he completed The Sierra Leone Diamonds: an economic study covering the years 1952-1961, an account of the diamond rush following the deregulation of the industry in 1956. Between 1969 and 1971 he undertook research for a second book that aimed to study Lebanese commercial activity "not in isolation but against the backdrop of the economy of Sierra Leone as a whole". Although an economic analysis, the book, The Lebanese traders in Sierra Leone, published in 1975, provides, in part, a valuable ethnographic description of the various distinct communities that en masse constitute the "Lebanese diaspora". I used these data as a starting point for an examination of their social and political articulation in relation to the diamond trade. Van der Laan's fieldwork, like mine, consisted of systematic observation and interviews. Further details of my methodology will be given below. I then focused on the identification of the principal groups of land-possessing local elites who, in the course of time since the discovery of diamonds in Sierra Leone, have controlled varying degrees of access to potential mining sites. It is around these chiefly hierarchies and their relationship with the State and Lebanese diaspora groups that the industry operates. This highly dynamic articulation, in constant flux, is a central theme of the thesis. With a research strategy in mind, I returned to Sierra Leone in November 1996. Fieldwork was generously funded by the Overseas Development Administration. My arrival coincided with a cease fire between government and insurgents, but this was short-lived. In consequence, research was carried-out in war-time conditions which, not surprisingly, imposed certain constraints on movement and access to individuals and information. However, although the security conditions under which data were collected were unpredictable, the research plan was more or less adhered to. On return from the field, shortly after the May 1997 coup, neither I, nor my supervisor, felt that data were lacking in any specific area. IV/ The work is a multi-site ethnography and required a high degree of mobility. This was achieved by local air transport and, conflict permitting, bush taxi. The research was arranged around a series of many round-trips, continually moving between various regional settings and social groups. This was necessary to create an accurate picture of industry and commerce in the highly adverse circumstances of a peace process degenerating into all-out civil war. In respect of this, it should be remembered that the work is intended to provide a contextualised overview and analysis of a specific period of industrial history. Systematic observation and interview formed the basis of the fieldwork. Interviews were conducted in both informal and formal settings. Because of the nature of the environment in which work was carried out, and the continued conflict in Sierra Leone, it has been necessary to preserve the anonymity of many of my informants. In other instances pseudonyms have been used. In most cases, formalised interviews were noted long-hand in situ, typed-up and faxed back to the United Kingdom as quickly as possible. The original copies were then destroyed to preserve confidentiality. In some cases, a dictaphone was used Where this is the case, complete transcripts of conversations are reproduced in full. Typically, these conversations were of a less sensitive or less traceable nature and were thus unlikely to compromise the personal safety of individuals had they been misappropriated In informal situations where valuable information was passed on to me in confidence, I had no alternative other than to commit facts to memory for reproduction as accurately as possible at the earliest opportunity. Again, these would be faxed back to the United Kingdom and the originals destroyed A wide variety of informants were interviewed In the mines, forty eight labourers and their foremen were questioned in a total of twelve different sites. In the diamond buying offices of east and southeastern Sierra Leone twenty two diamond dealers were formally interviewed At least twice this number were engaged in informal conversations and chats throughout Sierra Leone and later, during my evacuation, in Monrovia, Liberia. Twenty seven formal interviews were conducted with local, diamond mining elites in a number of locations and again, many more insightful conversations took place on ad hoc bases. Another eighteen interviews took place with a range of individuals with \/ interests in the industry, including politicians, exporters, civil servants, members of the armed forces and expatriates.