A diamond - international symbol of eternal love - is often also a product of exploitation and violence. Fashion Editor Deirdre McQuillan travels to Sierra Leone to see the local impact of the mining industry, and advises how to make sure you're buying a 'clean diamond'
Midday on a Friday in early April and the sun is beating down on the sandy alluvial fields of Joetown, outside Koidu, one of the biggest provincial towns in Sierra Leone. In the middle of a muddy pond, one of many such craters, a woman is bent double sifting gravel through what the locals call a "shaky shaky", or sieve. Thronged with similar diggers, the surrounding area is a honeycombed landscape of wrecked grassy dunes. On the way into town, we pass a procession of men on the potholed roads carrying sieves and spades, en route to work. Some are very young.
What they all dig for and what they all hope to find, what may change their daily life in some small way, are diamonds. This eastern province of Sierra Leone is the centre of its diamond industry and where the brutal civil war that engulfed the country for 11 years reached its most violent point as rebels sought to maintain control of its vast mineral wealth.
During one of the bloodiest wars in recent African history, the Revolutionary United Front was notorious for widespread mutilation, rape and the forced recruitment of child soldiers. "A short or long-sleeved suit?" they asked before dismemberment. Diamonds paid for the weapons and sustained the conflict. The amount earned in smuggling gems through neighbouring countries is estimated at anything from ¤20 to ¤100 million a year.
Though the war ended in 2002, evidence of its destruction is everywhere: in the ruined houses, the burnt-out buildings, the broken roads and the pain and trauma of the people. The day we visit Koidu, Charles Taylor, a former president of Liberia, who was deeply involved in that war, faces a court in the capital, Freetown, accused of crimes against humanity.
Sarah Konoma does not stop working as we speak to her. A woman in her 50s, or maybe younger, she tells us she has been finding very small diamonds and has been doing this "for a long time". She has to dig the gravel, turn it into the sieve, immerse the sieve in the water and shake it until the pebbles are clean, a back-breaking procedure repeated throughout the day. A diamond, if present, will always be in the centre of the washed gravel. If she finds one, she heads for town and sells it to one of the many, mostly Lebanese, dealers. She says she gets about 5,000-10,000 leones (€2-€4) for one. The Lebanese are the major traders of rough diamonds in both Africa and Antwerp; one Lebanese trader, called Hisham Mackie, accounted for 51 per cent of all Sierra Leone's official exports in the year up to July 2005.
Diamonds are a dirty business. An estimated €320 million worth are produced in Sierra Leone each year, though little of that money goes to diggers such as Sarah, according to Diamond Industry Annual Review, a report published by a coalition of non-governmental organisations. There are said to be some 250,000 such diggers in the Kono district, one of the poorest parts of the country, where many scour already well-excavated and exhausted areas. Ten or 20 per cent of the diamonds in jewellery shops in London, Tokyo, Paris and New York are produced by these people.
Because of their value as portable wealth, diamonds are easily concealed and easily smuggled. Sallieu Kamora, of the Freetownbased Campaign for Just Mining, says: "The potential for corruption begins with the miner. Nobody trusts anybody in the mining sector. All activities around diamonds are clouded in secrecy. The whole thing is a melting pot for corruption." At the end of the war there were fewer than 100 mining licences; today there are 2,400.
Compared with the alluvial fields, the large industrial mines, where diamonds are first blasted and then extracted from carrotshaped kimberlite pipes, are easier for the diamond companies to control and secure. We see this process in action in the cavernous pits on the outskirts of the town, operated by Koidu Holdings, a South African-based company that dominates the country's diamond sector. Koidu Holdings' leading investor is Benny Steinmetz, a billionaire who is Israel's fifth-richest man. South African security guards patrol the entrance to the mine, where last December a record 84-carat diamond was found, reckoned, according to one expert, to be worth between €4 million and €8 million.
Inside, we are shown around by a young South African geologist, Dr Lauren Freeman.
Enormous slag heaps of gravel and granite, graphic evidence of the extent of "slime" or "tailings" from the excavations, rise around us. The bulk of rock in Sierra Leone is granite, from which the kimberlite must be extracted through dynamiting. Once extracted, the kimberlite is crushed, screened and filtered to "liberate" the diamonds. Once liberated they go to the recovery room, a white shipping container "where they never get touched again until they reach the export box in Freetown for valuation and export direct to Antwerp", explains Dr Freeman. Miners at Koidu are paid no more than €1.60 a day.
Koidu diamonds are said to be of exceptional quality and value, octahedron in shape with good colour and clarity, whereas alluvial diamond deposits are rounded. But the cost to the environment is huge; a half-carat creates a ton of waste. When blasting occurs, twice a week, the earth vibrates and locals must evacuate for a couple of hours, no matter what they are doing. These upheavals are a source of much discontent in the area, and promises by the mining companies to resettle those affected have not been implemented satisfactorily.
Many say that the price to the environment of irreversible destruction is too high. "We don't like diamonds," one local says. "Agriculture would be better. If I could get rid of diamonds, I would, because the environment would yield a better income for the community. The destruction affects all life forms - the vegetation is the first to suffer, then the topsoil - rich in plant nutrients and agricultural potential - is lost. Food production becomes highrisk in these areas."
Mining companies argue, however, that mining employs hundreds of people and that every job supports another 10.
It all seems a far cry from the popular image of diamonds as an international symbol of eternal love, an image carefully fostered by De Beers in the postwar period through Hollywood and its dream factory. The company once even succeeded in changing the name of a Paramount film from Diamonds are Dangerous to Adventures in Diamonds. It lent diamonds to leading stars, a strategy that continues to this day, though Leonard DiCaprio's new movie, The Blood Diamond, about gem smuggling in Sierra Leone, may worry the industry.
Last year official diamond exports from Sierra Leone reached more than €115 million, from which the government reaped 3 per cent. That sum is less than the aid the country is receiving from Ireland. Koidu town, destroyed during the war, is like something out of a Wild West movie, with its dusty streets, peeling paint, broken buildings, war amputees, out-of-work youths, roadside stalls and deafening music. As the only white people in the town, we are approached surreptitiously by men offering diamonds for sale, but we decline their offers.
Lack of electricity turns the town into an eerie darkness of moving shadows at night, while during the hot and humid daylight hours, people on crutches, on motorbikes or on foot throng the streets. Diamond dealers, prostitutes and former rebels are everywhere. "A sunny place for shady people," as Somerset Maugham might have described it.
Stories of the war abound. Margaret Gbassie was five months pregnant and walking to Kabbala when a rebel opened fire on her. A bullet struck her leg as she ran for cover. Her leg was later amputated, and her baby was born deformed. She tells me that the prosthesis is too painful to wear, so she just uses crutches.
Feremusu Tarawaly is a dignified old lady whose fingers were cut off by rebels. "We were attacked and chased out of the town and were without food for three months. I came on my own to get mangoes and a soldier appeared.
"He asked me was I scared of him and made me place my hand on a mango stick; it took three blows of the machete to cut off my fingers," she tells me without emotion. The pain, though, remains. Sahr Gborie was a builder; he was caught by rebels who tried to split him in two; his fingers were hacked off.
Now all three beg on the streets of Koidu for food. As we talk, a woman without hands appears nearby, another gruesome reminder of the war. You are advised to put donations into an amputee's pocket directly.
In the face of all this, efforts have been made to stem the trade in illegal diamonds and those used to fuel conflict. The Kimberley Process, initiated in 2003, is an international government and industry certification scheme that includes all major diamondproducing and -trading countries. Each country has to certify all rough-diamond exports as conflict-free, but, according to Global Witness, a human-rights organisation that focuses on labour and resource exploitation, the process has flaws. Diamonds from Ivory Coast mined in rebel-held areas are being smuggled to Mali, while Liberian diamonds are being smuggled into neighbouring countries, helped by poor border controls.
There is also a long way to go before customers demand evidence from jewellers that the diamonds they are buying are "clean". There are, however, signs of change. In the US, awareness of responsible mining is growing. Companies such as Texas-based greenKarat.com and Seraglio, in London, are focusing on what they call ethical jewellery. "We won the battle with food; we're kind of getting there with clothing. I think maybe in a few years' time people will be thinking about jewellery, too," Lucy Wills of Seraglio told the New York Times.
One Irish couple who wanted to ensure that they bought an ethically produced engagement ring questioned jewellers closely about the origin of their gems. "I knew some of the issues relating to the diamond trade," says Sean Farrell, co-ordinator of Trócaire's Lenten campaign. "In popular imagination they are connected with love, but in my time I had seen the dirty side in Rwanda and the border with Congo and the effect that the exploitation of diamonds had on that country, fuelling war. Myself and Irene wanted our diamond to be ethical and not associated with conflict or the arms trade, because it is something worn for life."
They went to a number of jewellery shops to look at rings, but, dissatisfied with the answers they got, eventually found a Canadian company on the web with an explicitly ethical diamond range. It was guaranteed non-conflict, mined in an environmentally friendly way using non-exploitative labour. Canadadiamonds.com sent the emerald-cut diamond to Ireland, and a jeweller in Longford made the ring and the setting.
"It cost around the same as what we would have paid in any jewellery shop in Ireland and was exactly what it said. If people ask questions, it does change the practices," he says.
Gerry Appleby is Ireland's largest retailer of diamonds and a member of Amnesty. He buys thousands of diamonds annually in Antwerp and makes jewellery in Dublin. Most of Appleby's diamonds come from Russia and Canada. "My prices have to be international. I have to compete with Hong Kong, South Africa and Dubai," he says. He became aware of conflict diamonds in l999 and believes that the Kimberley Process is working, having been instrumental in setting it up. "I am asked at least once or twice a week where diamonds have come from. Irish customers are well educated and savvy," he says.
And they are spending more. The average engagement ring costs about €4,000 today, more than double the price of 10 years ago. He shows me certificates that guarantee the diamonds. "As long as a diamond has one of these certificates it has been through the Kimberly Process and has passed all tests. The US and Belgium won't touch anything to do with dodgy diamonds. It is important for the industry. The US still takes 65 per cent of world diamonds, and it passed the clean diamonds act in 2002. If you can't export to the US, forget it."
Unlike a diamond, however, amputation is forever. Though Zsa Zsa Gabor once said that she never disliked a man enough to give him back his diamonds, there is the darker side to the glitter and the bling.
For anyone thinking of buying a diamond, for most a significant expenditure, the traditional advice has always been to look for the four Cs: cut, colour, clarity and carat. But today it is the fifth C that matters: certificate of origin. On Monday, the 45th anniversary of Sierra Leone's independence, the Sierra Leone-Ireland Partnership will launch an information leaflet about diamonds and Sierra Leone.