By their relative rarity, their beauty and usefulness, not just to jewelers but to industrialists and scientists, diamonds are expensive items. Because they are also small and easily portable, they have inevitably become a preferred method for criminals, probably including terrorists, to move great wealth around the world.
Terrorism, however, was only loosely behind the agenda for the meeting this week in Interlaken, Switzerland, in which major players in the diamond trade sat down to consider ways and means to stamp out the trade in illegal diamonds. The delegates chose to major on the fact that in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, diamonds have lain at the heart of many bloody and terrible conflicts, including the current strife in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In these nasty wars, militias and sometimes national armies have been deployed to seize and hold on to diamond-producing areas, while the land is mined in a breakneck drive to produce as many of the precious gems as possible. Part of the cash earned from the sale of these stolen stones is then used to arm and maintain the occupying armed forces, while the greater part is salted away in the Swiss bank accounts of the military leaders or the politicians behind them.
No consideration, whether of common humanity, environmental sensitivity or plain justice, is allowed to get in the way of this greed-inspired drive for ill-gotten gains. The trade in these gemstones, rightly called “blood diamonds”, is akin to the worldwide market for heroin and cocaine. Getting a grip on the diamond trade and identifying those that have been mined illegally is not going to be easy. Scientific analysis can generally pinpoint the origin of a stone but tests damage the diamond. A non-destructive test is currently lacking. The meeting therefore decided to concentrate upon using a paper trail to establish from exactly where a diamond has originated. The fact that this is going to prove a tall order should not however discourage those in the gem trade, working hand in hand with governments, from undertaking the campaign.
If a diamond cannot be traded without a comprehensive lump of paperwork that describes its existence from the moment it was won from the earth, the authorities will at least have a framework on which to mount checks. Men who are prepared to murder innocents to acquire diamonds are hardly going to hesitate to undertake fraud. However providing the proposed documentation builds up into a comprehensive and highly secure database, it ought to be possible to ensnare the illegal traders.
It is going to be a monumental task, because the creation of documentation will of necessity include the listing of all existing diamonds. Without this, it will be possible for illegal traders to try and pass off new gemstones as being in circulation for years. Indeed, it is likely that the greatest attempt at fraud will come as the database is being created, with criminals seeking to register stones which have not yet been mined. Unfortunately, for the Americans and those in pursuit of the wealth of international terrorists, the diamond registration process will probably only be of long-term benefit, and even then may not prove effective. It is in the nature of theft that the criminals are rarely interested in securing more than a fraction of the stolen goods. Therefore even if the price of blood diamonds collapses, the warlords who have grasped them will be happy with their ill-gotten gains, but will merely redouble their efforts of plunder to make up the shortfall with extra gems.
In the short term at least therefore, the new rules are likely to prove counterproductive. Nevertheless, this is a highly important initiative which deserves global support — even if it proves to have predictable shortcomings.
