Angola and Sierra Leone Blood Diamonds Cecil Term Paper

Angola and Sierra Leone Blood Diamonds

Cecil John Rhodes founded De Beers, a diamond mining and trading corporation back in 1888. It is the world's largest diamond cartel and receives all credit for making the engagement ring "an inseparable part of courtship and married life" (Jay Epstein, p.121). De Beer has shown immense success at controlling the price of diamonds. It achieved this goal by limiting the worldwide supply. It has a strong monopoly in the diamond business and is thus what one may call "the mafia" of the diamond world. It was till the 1980s that De Beers was involved directly in Sierra Leone. De Beers had some concession in offshore diamond mining and it enjoyed an office in Freetown. After that time it was known that De Beers has maintained an indirect relationship rather than a direct one. It then started to purchase offices in other lower diamond producing neighboring countries. Its aim was to sweep up the supplies all across the globe. It started to purchase diamonds from rebel struck areas and war zones. The diamonds produced by Rebel groups in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo are known more famously as "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds." In 2002 the United Nations stated that De Beers was illegally taking advantage of resources in the war zones in Africa. However, "the Department for Trade and Industry said allegations by the United Nations two years ago that the company illegally exploited natural resources in the war-torn African country were unsubstantiated" (Edmund Conway). What the truth is, probably no one will ever know.

Numerous men purchase diamonds worldwide to give it to their loved ones. With De Beers' campaign "Diamonds are forever," and their promotion of a diamond ring to be some sort of an accepted ritual, diamond business has flourished greatly.What a person can never be sure is the fact that the diamond he is purchasing is actually a legal diamond of a blood diamond. This is due to the ease with while illegal diamonds can enter the legal diamond market. Not many people were aware of this fact and today although most are aware of the situation, diamonds are being bought and sold without any verification. Maybe what they do not know is that "whether from the killing fields of Sierra Leone, DRCongo or Angola, every blood-diamond perpetuates a barbaric conflict that, by some counts, has caused 3.7m deaths and displaced 6m Africans" (Greg Campbell, p.62). To get a better insight on what blood diamonds are, it is only appropriate to define them in clear terms. Blood diamonds are basically those diamonds which the rebel groups produce and sell so as to finance their war of terrorism on legitimate democratic governments. The more the conflict stricken areas, the more the blood diamonds hence a higher number of deaths. Are diamonds really worth dying for? While people, women and children, are being killed in such war zones, our men are purchasing diamonds to beautify their women. Their beautification comes at the cost of dead children. "The savagery is not only limited to guerilla warfare. Such is the price….....