In Angola, the Blood Diamond Resurfaces

In Angola, the ‘Blood Diamond’ Resurfaces

CAFUNFO, Angola—On paper, Angola is a poster child for the global effort to keep "blood diamonds" out of the world's jewelry stores.

International pressure helped end a vicious civil war a decade ago by strangling the ability of rebels to trade diamonds for weapons. Angola is now a leading member of the so-called Kimberley Process, an industry-wide effort to prevent commerce in rough diamonds by insurgent groups. Today, Angola is the world's fifth-largest diamond producer by value, and its gems are coveted for their size and purity.

But a visit to Angola's diamond heartland reveals that plenty of blood still spills over those precious stones. Here in the sprawling jungle of northeast Angola, a violent economy prevails in which thousands of peasant miners eke out a living searching for diamonds with shovels and sieves.

This sort of violence, which has made headlines in nearby Zimbabwe, is threatening to tear the Kimberley Process apart. But many of Africa's diamond-producing nations are wary about any effort to beef up the industry's policing of human rights.

Around Angola's mines, tales of confrontation abound. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Linda Moisés da Rosa, 55 years old, denounced the killings of her two sons, both diamond miners. In September, she said, Angolan soldiers descended on a large mine near here to chase away diggers. When some refused to leave, she said, the soldiers caved in the mine, burying alive around 45 men, including her son Pereira Eduardo Antonio, 21.

In February, she said, her oldest son, 33-year-old Tito Eduardo, the family's sole breadwinner, got into a dispute with private security guards at another mining site. She said the guards had agreed to let local diggers sift gravel for diamonds in exchange for around $30 a day. They accused her son of failing to pay the bribe, and when he argued back, she said, "they killed him with a machete."

The issue has plunged the Kimberley Process into the worst crisis in its brief history. Born at a time of great bloodshed on the African continent, the 75-nation Kimberley Process was initially lauded for its commitment to human rights. Rebel movements had seized control of diamond regions in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and used the gems to finance rebel armies. Facing a public-relations nightmare, world diamond companies agreed to buy diamonds only if they are certified by internationally recognized governments. The Kimberley Process says well over 99% of the world's rough-diamond trade is now "conflict-free."

But critics say there's a big loophole in that definition: It doesn't take into account human-rights abuses in diamond territory controlled by governments themselves. "The Kimberley Process cut the financial lifeline of rebels, but at the same time it gave legitimacy to corrupt governments that abuse their own people," says Rafael Marques.

Much of the recent controversy is focused on Zimbabwe, where the group Human Rights Watch last year reported that government soldiers massacred over 200 people in a fight to control diamond fields in the east of the country, raped local women and presured peasants into mining work. The Kimberley Process temporarily suspended exports from the area on the grounds that the turmoil was allowing undocumented stones to be smuggled into the world market.

In Angola, which far overshadows Zimbabwe in importance to the jewelry market, the Kimberley Process appears to have little appetite for human-rights issues. Last August, when a Kimberley Process peer-review team arrived to check the country's compliance procedures, Angolan forces were just mopping up a major operation to expel some 30,000 illegal Congolese miners from Angolan territory near here. According to a U.S. State Department report citing local media and nongovernmental organizations, military and police "arbitrarily beat and raped detainees" and forced them to march to the border without food or water. The government has denied committing abuses and says the army was merely securing the nation's borders.

A confidential Kimberley Process report on the review visit makes no mention of alleged human-rights abuses, although it criticizes Angola for failing to present a plan to better document the output of peasant mining. The group spent just two days in Lunda Norte, an area near the Congo border that has become a flashpoint for clashes between diggers and security forces. According to a draft of the internal report, the delegation intended to visit the site of a large illegal mining operation but was thwarted by "a last-minute decision to participate in a

graduation ceremony for new border patrol security officers."

The roots of Angola's current blood-diamond problems have much to do with geology. Unlike in Botswana and South Africa, where corporations use heavy machinery to extract diamonds out of deep shafts, much of Angola's diamond reserves are alluvial, meaning the stones have been washed out of the earth and scattered across the countryside. They're available to anyone with a shovel and wood-framed sieve, and are difficult for mining companies to secure. More than a million people world-wide earn a living from artisanal mining.

Angola's artisanal miners, known in Portuguese asgarimpeiros, played a pivotal role in the country's civil war, which lasted for 27 years and left at least a half-million people dead. U.S.-backed troops of the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, fighting to depose a Soviet-supported socialist government, controlled much of the country's diamond territory. To fund their war effort, they enlisted peasant diggers from here as well as neighboring Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The war's end led to a surge in diamond production, as large mining companies dusted off old claims and launched new operations. Among the players are Odebrecht SA of Brazil, Russia's state-owned Alrosa; and a company controlled by Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev, all of which operate in joint ventures with the government diamond company Endiama.

But the garimpeiros were hardly prepared to put away their shovels. Vast parts of the countryside haven't even been explored yet, much less mined. The peasants proved adept at finding diamond deposits that the big companies missed, and this so-called informal production continued to account for more than one-quarter of the country's diamond exports.

To soak up those diamonds, Angola authorized foreign-run buying operations to be established. U.S. diamond giant Lazare Kaplan International Inc. became a fixture in the area, signing a technical agreement with the government to set up diamond buying houses. Lazare Kaplan eventually stopped business in Angola in 2008 due to financial problems. Lazare Kaplan Chairman Maurice Tempelsman says the company was trying to bring development to the area and help strengthen Angola's Kimberley Process controls. "I am strongly committed to the protection of human rights," Mr. Tempelsman said.

For Ahmad Mouein, a Lebanese buyer who bills himself as "Boss Mouein," it's a great business opportunity. "Sometimes a digger here can sell you a $500,000 stone for $5,000, $10,000," he marvels. He says the Kimberley Process hasn't succeeded in its primary mission of halting smuggling. "Kimberley or not Kimberley, my friend, for the diamond, you can do what you want."

By many accounts, the presence of these diamond buying houses has only fanned the violence by encouraging more peasants to get into the mining business at the same time that government security forces have been tasked with stopping them.

Near an illegal mining site, peasants described a scenario. In December, an army patrol swept through the village of Bundo in search of mining tools, says Cazanguia Andre, the 60-year-old deputy chief of the village. He says he ran into them on the way back from tilling his field, and they accused him of being a garimpeiro. They then hit him twice in the head with a rifle butt and struck him with a pole, he adds, breaking his arm. Later, after they discovered shovels at the local church, which Mr. Andre says were being used for construction, they arrested three people.

A lieutenant at a nearby temporary army encampment declined to be interviewed but said his squad hasn't committed any abuses of the local population and isn't involved in any mining activities.

Back in Bundo, four garimpeiros give a different story. They say when soldiers swept through they discovered the garimpeiros working with a water pump in a pit. The soldiers confiscated the pump. Then a negotiation ensued, says one garimpeiro, and the soldiers agreed to give back the pump in exchange for $54—as well as a split of the action. "When we hit the diamonds, the soldiers will be present to get their share," he says.

SOURCE:

Blood Diamond Wall Street Journal Reading Questions

1. What is the Kimberly Process?

2. What is the “loop hole” in the Kimberly Process?

3. What are alluvial diamond fields? How are they different from other diamond mines?

4. What was the United States role in the Angolan civil war?

5. What are garimpeiros? Do they still exist in Angola?

6. What do you think can be done to improve the diamond mining business in Angola?

HANDOUTS