Simmering West Africa: A Slow Healing
By Maryam Sakeenah
25 July,
2008
Countercurrents.org
As the scars of war slowly heal, West Africa still remains prone to conflict raising its ugly head again. The issue of Blood Diamonds is still very pertinent and awareness of the role of diamonds as currency for conflict is important to create. This is because the root causes of turmoil and unrest in Africa still remain.
In fact, they deserve international attention and engagement. Africa suffers because the world has found new interests through the 'War on Terror', so Africa does not pertain any more. The question turns baffling when one compares it to American intervention in the Middle-East, Iraq and Afghanistan. Expectant, desperate, bleeding West Africa, one finds, happened to be outside the area of America's newfound strategic interest. An expert on African affairs insightfully remarks: "West Africa has been America's abandoned mistress. Throughout the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, it was essential to what the Americans wanted (vis a vis the Cold War), but with the emergence of new interests, it was abandoned and neglected. The message the people got to hear was that in this world there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests_ a message hard to take, indeed."
It is the root causes of the conflict that need to be addressed and redressed: that is poverty, disease, lack of basic facilities, unemployment, lack of education, weak and regressive economies.
Although efforts are being made to regulate diamond trade, yet what
is amiss is the concern for conditions on the ground. Even today,
diamond mining on West Africa goes on in the most miserable conditions.
Impoverished young men toil away in the mines for minimal wages, or
no wages at all. The irony that highlights this is that diamond producing
nations happen to be the poorest. Alex Yearsley adds, " Villages
mining diamonds for fifty years do not even have a water system or
a sewage disposal system." One million Africans earn pennies
a day in the backbreaking and increasingly fruitless search for alluvial
stones.
Fortune Magazine reports: Flying low over Koidu, Sierra Leone, in a twin-propeller plane shows how daunting that task is. Hundreds of men can be seen bent low in the rivers around Koidu. They are working in absolutely horrific conditions in the hopes of striking it rich, but the majority never do. Little of the region's innate mineral wealth has filtered down to residents. "A billion dollars' worth of diamonds have come out of Sierra Leone in the last several years, and there is no electricity or water wells," says Mordechai Rapaport.
Most people turn to diamond mining because there is no other option. Thousands who had been abducted during the civil war to work in diamond mines still choose to continue working there in abject misery, simply because there is nothing else for them to do. They are, in fact, captives to diamonds.
Osman Kante, a diamond miner who had been abducted into the job during the civil war says, " In this job I got nothing. I am just trying to survive everyday. If I could have any other job, I would leave this one. But I have to stay for now until God gives me something better to do." Diamond diggers today are paid in various ways. A minority receives a small wage. Others receive a small fraction of what they dig. Some work for a meal a day and a number are working for false hopes, that they will be rewarded if they can excavate a 'big' find. Violent tactics are still used by employers and living conditions are unhealthy, breeding disease. It is, technically, bonded slavery. Over a million diamond labourers earn less than a dollar a day. According to Yearsley, "The exploitation happens because the miners do not know the value of the stones they dig. They end up selling them for very low prices. The open market sells off these diamonds to consumers at huge prices, earning enormous profit. The diggers and miners must settle prices on their own terms." Diamonds bought in Sierra Leone for as little as $ 20 are sold in Antwerp for $ 1,500. It is a perverse bargain.
Owing to these abysmal conditions, the NGOs 'Partnership Africa-Canada' and 'Global Witness', with a share of the finances from the DeBeers company have organized the 'Diamond Development Institute.' The group believes that there have to be economic solutions to the problem and governments must be aided to improve conditions. They call for workers being empowered through education in their own rights. The group plans to channellize investment for the development of the diamond-mining community to ensure a decent wage for workers and a realistic, fair price for African diamonds.
In Koidu a U.S.-funded program trains diggers in how to grade and value the diamonds they find as a way of avoiding being fleeced by local traders. The Diamond Development Initiative also trains diggers in safety and economic issues. The heart of the matter, according to Ian Simmille, is to 'value diamonds not merely for being conflict-free, but also because they come from developmentally sound areas and those who dig for them get a fair price."
There still remains a long way to go. While sparkling jewels grace the coffers of the privileged, the same cause immense misery and suffering to obscure millions. The issue needs to be taken on with determination to end the vicious cycle of exploitation. History has shown how diamonds from West Africa have been misused with such devastating consequences that have scarred generations. The trade in Blood Diamonds has to end, and this will come about through increased awareness and concerted international efforts to end the root causes of conflict in volatile West African states. Nature's rare blessing in these lands should not be allowed to turn a curse, reddening the earth with stains of blood.
EPILOGUE
(Source: 'The Reality of Conflict Diamonds', Fortune Magazine, December 2006)
Sahr Amara is stooped low, knee-deep in a muddy river, in the fifth
hour of his workday. As he has each day for the past week, the 18-year-old
will earn a stipend of only 7 cents, enough to buy himself a bowl
of porridge to see him through the day.
Yet he returns every morning to dig in the wilting heat on the edge of Koidu, a town in eastern Sierra Leone, hunting for the one thing he says could transform his life: a diamond. Since he is the oldest of six children - three others have died of diseases - much of his family's future rests on his prospects.
His parents grow crops in a village about 20 miles from Koidu and cannot afford to buy his schoolbooks or pay his yearly tuition of 35,000 leones ($11.66). "I would like to find a diamond so I can go back to school," Amara says. "If I stay digging at this site for a long time and find nothing, maybe I will leave and try to find a job somewhere." That would leave Africa's 999,999 other diamond diggers still searching for a dream.
"If I find a big diamond, I can afford to go to school, I can learn, and then I can help my family and even my village," he says. So far the plan has proved elusive; he has found no gems during his first week of work. "It's not easy," he says.
Whether or not divine intervention leads Amara to a big find, his tale is anchored in a much more earthly economy: the $60-billion-a-year diamond industry, which has built its growth on dreams of love rather than of raw survival.
Koidu, whose diamonds have been mined since the 1930s, is thousands of miles away - and a galaxy removed - from the glittering displays in jewelry stores in New York, Tokyo and London. It is set in a country where the average man earns $220 a year and dies at 39. In the dwellings along Koidu's dirt tracks, residents eat dinner by candlelight not because it is romantic but because there is no electricity in town, just as there are no telephone lines and little indoor plumbing.
In short, it is hard to imagine a starker contrast between Amara's world and that of the people who might one day wear whatever diamond he finds, and they live in deep ignorance of each other. When asked what diamonds are used for, Amara draws a blank. "I only know they are valuable," he says.
References:
1) The History Channel, 'Blood Diamonds' (documentary film)
2) www.cnnmoney.com
3) Fortune Magazine, December 2006 edition
4) United Nations Department of Public Information, "Conflict Diamonds"
5) Maryam Sakeenah, "The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here", www.countercurrents.org
6) 'Blood Diamonds', the movie; Hollywood, 2007.
