A Chance For Peace In The Diamond War

by Varsha Gupta d'Souza

"Everyone needs to understand that the situation must change, and that it has changed," said Thierry Kikumbi, the local head of the agency responsible for controlling the trade in 'blood diamonds,' i.e. gems sold to finance brutal wars in countries such as Congo, Sierra Leone and Angola.

But will not be easy. Congo exports about $400 million worth of diamonds a year. Recently, the minister of mines, Eugene Diomi Ndongala, estimated that the nation loses roughly the same amount to diamond smuggling.

A report issued last month by a UN panel of experts concluded that private militias are flourishing in the power vacuum created by the withdrawal of armies from neighboring countries, including Rwanda and Uganda, and are using funds from plundered resources to buy arms.

Kikumbi has ordered all diamonds to pass through the Congolese capital of Kinshasa to be taxed, certified and sent on to legitimate diamond markets in Europe.

The task will be especially difficult in Kisangani, one of the major centers of the illicit wartime trade in diamonds, says Kikumbi. Rebels of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), who were supported by neighboring Rwanda during the war, still control large swaths of the region, which produces about $70 million in diamonds a year.

And though Rwanda says it withdrew all its troops from Congo in September 2002, a UN report last year accused Rwanda of sponsoring rebel allies to keep the diamonds flowing for its benefit.

Though Congo's economy has started to grow again at a healthy rate of 6 percent a year, it would take a staggering 70 years at the current rate for Congo to regain the financial status it had when it won its independence in 1960, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information division of The Economist magazine.

The 2002 agreement, known as the Kimberley Process, requires legitimate governments to monitor the path of rough diamonds from the mines to the international market.

Ndongala, the minister of mines, estimated last summer that Congo could export $750 million worth of uncut diamonds a year, so blacklisting could rob the country of precious funds needed for the country's reconstruction.

To rein in the diamond trade in Congo, the government will have to first rein in the rebels who roam the countryside. Kikumbi conceded that many former rebel groups that have joined the transitional government still control large areas of the country, so enforcing the certification scheme will not be easy. But it is "our only choice for the future," he said.

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