Of Judgement and Cunning Work

Abstract

Ian Smillie is an Ottawa-based writer and consultant. He was co-author of PAC's Sierra Leone diamond study, The Heart of the Matter, and is research co-ordinator on PAC's Diamonds and Human Security Project. He served on the United Nations Expert Panel on Sierra Leone in 2000 and is a member of the Kimberley Process Task Force. His latest book is Partnership or Patronage: Local Capacity Building in Humanitarian Crises. And thous shalt make the breastplate of judgement with cunning work... and the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire and a diamond. Exodus 28:15, 18FOR YEARS, THERE HAVE BEEN TWO DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS in the world's diamond industry. The first is that diamonds, symbols of love, purity, and devotion, have become the currency of war in several parts of Africa. The second is that the entire industry has become infected by illegal activity. This is bad news for Canada because one of the richest diamond finds of the past four decades has just come on stream in the Northwest Territories, pitching us headlong into an old industry where all that glisters is not good. This paper will outline the nature of the industry, its problems, the implications for Canada, and what is being done to bring a partially corrupted and totally secretive industry into the twentieth century, if not the twenty-first.As a coveted, high-priced consumer product, diamonds are in fact largely a creation of the twentieth century, and the structure of the diamond trade as it exists today is a hangover from the swashbuckling pre-World War I days of cartels and monopolies. But the story is already getting ahead of itself. Reference to diamonds can be found in the Bible, in Pliny and in other early sources. The world's first known diamonds were mined in India, finding their way to ancient Rome, the far east, and later to renaissance Europe. Before 1850, as many as 30 million carats may have been produced in India. The world's second source of diamonds was Brazil, although its industry peaked in the eighteenth century, and the country is now regarded as a minor producer. The modern diamond era begins with a 15-year-old South African boy named Erasmus Jacobs, out one day in 1867 looking for sticks. Instead, he found a 21 carat diamond, and the rush was on. One of the best early South African sites was on a farm near Kimberley, owned by two brothers named De Beer. They had bought the farm for [Symbol Not Transcribed]50 and must have thought they were turning a handsome profit when they sold it to a consortium of diggers for [Symbol Not Transcribed]6300. They disappeared into history, but they left their name behind with one of the most fabled companies of all time.South African diamonds remain a force to contend with, but diamonds were subsequently discovered in the German Protectorate of Southwest Africa, now Namibia, in 1908, and at about the same time in the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Diamonds were found in Angola in 1912, and in the 1930s there were important finds in West Africa. Minor deposits were discovered in Guinea, Liberia, and Cote d'Ivoire, but the best quality gem diamonds were found in Kono District of Sierra Leone. Diamonds had been found in Russia in the nineteenth century, but it was not until the 1950s that the major Yakutia diamond deposits were uncovered, half of them north of the Arctic Circle. Australia has in recent years become a major producer of industrial diamonds, and there are smaller production sites in China, Venezuela, Tanzania, and elsewhere. The Canadian finds in 1991 - 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife - took the industry by surprise, and they promised to be important. As late as 1998, however, Canadian diamonds were still not on the production radar: by weight, 32 per cent of world production came out of Australia, 20 per cent more or less from the DRC (which will be explained later), 16 per cent each came from Botswana and Russia, nine per cent from Angola, and five per cent from all the other countries combined. …