What is a Blood Diamond? What are Conflict Diamonds?

Accounting for almost half the world’s production of diamonds, Africa is the richest continent when it comes to mining diamonds. The largest diamond mines are located in the south between the Orange and Vaal rivers, with lesser diamond bearing kimberlite deposits across the west–central part of Africa. The first diamond deposits found in Africa were alluvial. Alluvial diamond deposits are controlled by the surrounding topography. Alluvial diamond deposits are usually located within river gravels that have been transported from their location of origin. South African diamonds were first stumbled upon in the winter of 1866, when a 15 year old boy found a transparent rock on the sandy south bank of the Orange River. By 1869 diamonds were found far from the river banks in hard blue rocks later called kimberlite after the diamond mining town of Kimberley. In the following 15 years South Africa produced more diamonds than India yielded in last 2,000 years of diamond mining. This abundance of diamonds pouring out of Africa coincided with the exhausting of Brazilian diamond deposits which had once out produced the European diamond demand a century earlier when they were discovered in the 1730s. The growing American wealth from the Industrial revolution in the United States during the late 1800s kept the diamond demand up with the South African supply.

People have been dying over diamonds for the thousands of years. From Aladdin’s conquest of Malwah to capture the "Koh i noor" diamond in the 1300s to the present day Taliban trading of Afghan Emeralds and Rubies for guns and bombs, warlords and terrorists alike have used gemstones to further their cause. Conflict or War diamonds are diamonds that are sold to fund the unlawful and illegal operations of rebel, military and terrorist groups. They are also called blood diamonds because the citizens that are forced to mine them are terrorized, mutilated or killed by those in control of the local diamond trade. Blood diamonds have helped fund devastating civil wars in Africa, costing the lives of an estimated 3.7 million. The countries most affected by conflict diamonds are Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Once a rough diamond is brought to market, its country of origin is difficult to trace. Once cut and polished, a diamond’s source can no longer be identified. Profits from the trade in blood diamonds, worth billions of dollars, were used by warlords and rebels to buy arms during the devastating civil wars in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone.

Blood diamonds are uncut rough diamonds sold to fund armed conflict and civil war. In the 1990s, up to 4% of the world’s rough diamonds were being used by rebel groups such as Unita in Angola and the brutal Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F) in Sierra Leone. Rough diamonds are the accepted currency to purchase weapons from arms dealers and become conflict diamonds when they sustain bloody civil wars. As a result the term "blood diamonds" was born. International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also discovered that rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the notorious government of Charles Taylor in Liberia were dealing in blood diamonds.

Hollywood released the film "Blood Diamond" starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly, highlighting the role of blood diamonds in Sierra Leone and recently, rapper Kanye West raised the issue of conflict "blood" diamonds in his music video "Diamonds" (featuring Jay–Z). In the song, West voices his own inner conflict with blood diamonds: In his video West takes you into dimly lit diamond mines, where under horrible conditions children are forced to mine for "small bits of primeval carbon" that have no use whatsoever to the average Sierra Leonean child who would rather have peace, food, and shelter. And if the enslaved child tries to steal a diamond they lose their hands to the R.U.F rebel’s dull machete; when the innocent children try to run away and the rebels will "hobble" their ankles like what happened to Novelist Paul Sheldon in Stephen King’s Misery, crippling the child for life. This spilt innocence blood is the way the term blood diamond came to be. Hollywood’s movies like "Lord of War" starring Nicholas Cage, "Blood Diamond" and Kayne West’s song and video about "blood diamonds" help raise the level of international awareness concerning blood diamonds. While the wars in Angola and Sierra Leone are now over and fighting in the DRC has decreased, the problem of conflict diamonds hasn't gone away. Diamonds mined in rebel–held areas in Côte d'Ivoire, a West African country in the midst of a chaotic conflict, are reaching the international diamond market. Conflict diamonds from Liberia are still being smuggled into neighboring countries and exported as part of the legitimate diamond trade.

In 1992, the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F.), a ruthless rebel group seized the diamond mining capital of Sierra Leone. The Liberian warlord, Charles Taylor, not only participated in the illicit diamond trade, he acted as mentor, trainer, banker and weapons supplier for the R.U.F., Charles Taylor used R.U.F. rebels to integrate a substantial amount of illicit blood diamonds (valued in the millions) into the global diamond trade, and then used the profits from the conflict diamonds to purchase weapons, which reinforced the R.U.F.’s military strength. Taylor, who later became President of Liberia, was a formidable force behind R.U.F. rebels’ reign of terror in Sierra Leone. This is a perfect example of how a blood diamond enables warlords to finance a conflict using the profits from illegal conflict diamond sales