In a simple yet comprehensive book, Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones, journalist Greg Campbell tells the story of the Sierra Leone nightmare and the precious stones that ignited it. Like a jeweler examining a diamond's many facets, Campbell looks at the tragedy from different angles, slowly illuminating the difficult details in a polished narrative that is both easy to read and thought-provoking.
Blood Diamonds is not driven by ideological ranting or self-righteous outrage. What gives the book its compelling rhythm is the simple, grim symmetry that Campbell lays before the reader. He contrasts, for example, the image of diamonds glittering on distant hands with the severed hands of locals who have never even seen the stones they are suffering for.
But Campbell is not content with merely provoking interest and alarm; he wants to find solutions. He notes that diamonds wouldn't be so valuable if the De Beers cartel didn't restrict their supply on the one hand and excite their demand through aggressive marketing on the other. So one option would be to beat the cartel somehow--perhaps through legislation against it, or public awareness campaigns designed to decrease demand. But even if effective, these attempts at lowering the value of diamonds would have a number of undesirable side effects, such as the impoverishment of successful African countries such as Botswana that depend on legitimate diamond mining.
Another approach is to find a stable, long-term political solution that will end the conflict. That way, diamonds might still be smuggled out of Sierra Leone but they wouldn't be tarnished by war crimes--just ordinary ones. But peace in Sierra Leone is highly unstable, and Campbell is pessimistic about its prospects. Campbell also considers technological solutions, such as laser branding, which offer ways to identify and exclude conflict diamonds from the market. He argues that while these ideas look good on paper, they would be nearly impossible to put into practice.
Another solution that is currently being implemented is the Kimberley Process, an international agreement negotiated by several dozen countries in cooperation with a diamond industry that has become concerned about the potential costs of a consumer backlash. The U.S. delayed giving its approval until journalist Doug Farah wrote the front-page _Washington Post_ story in early ovember 2001 that linked Al Qaeda to diamond purchases in Sierra Leone. What the Kimberley Process tries to do, Campbell explains, is create "a uniform, unforgeable paper trail" that would document each diamond's journey. But the problem here is that diamonds are simply too mobile, and conflict diamonds could easily be mixed in with diamonds from clean sources. Smuggling might become harder to do but smuggled diamonds will actually become harder to detect.
The one solution Campbell embraces boldly is the managed development of diamonds, on the Botswana model, where monopolies like De Beers work in cooperation with a democratic government. This might seem, to some, a rather frustrating end to the saga. The very company whose price-fixing encouraged the outbreak of war in the first place would be called in to help rebuild, and would reap huge profits in the process. And De Beers, as Campbell points out, has become "officially accountable to no one" after insiders bought the company off the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges in June 2001. We encounter Max Weber's "iron cage" of capitalism here: the only solution to monopoly is more monopoly.
The endorsement of managed development is sure to be one of the more controversial points of the book. Critics will likewise be uneasy about Campbell's somewhat sympathetic portrayal of South African mercenaries, his benign attitudes towards British colonialism, and his politically incorrect depiction of Lebanese diamond merchants.
But Campbell's book will survive these challenges because of its freshness. His account is not steeped in the marshy polemics of academic discourse; his voice is that of an ordinary, if highly articulate, visitor, and it avoids the hand-wringing, jargon-packed, dreamy calls for "alternatives" that are so fashionable in left-wing circles nowadays. If there is a weakness in his prescriptions, it is that he does not explain how De Beers is to be kept in line. That, presumably, is left to activists, aid agencies, and watchdog groups; Campbell should have addressed the issue more squarely.
Ultimately, there are two important points that the book raises. One is that there "is no longer any such thing as an 'isolated, regional conflict'"; events in neglected places like Sierra Leone may turn out to have major consequences for the world. Al Qaeda didn't attack the U.S. on behalf of the poor people of Sierra Leone; in fact, its diamond purchases made their suffering worse. But the fact that terrorists were able to launder money in a region that the U.S. and Europe had done little for aside from evacuating their diplomats should wake up the political establishment to the immediate necessity of addressing global poverty and conflict.
The other important point is that no industry, no matter how shiny and glittering its image, is ever free of abuse and nastiness. Campbell's book can be read as a companion to the writings of other journalists like Blaine Harden, whose August 2001 article in The New York Times exposed the horror and drudgery of coltan mining in the rainforests of the eastern Congo. Coltan, an essential ingredient in the capacitors of cellular phones and other expensive gadgets, is also "the muck-caked counterpoint to the brainier-than-thou, environmentally friendly image of the high-tech economy," in Harden's words. It was blamed by a report to the UN Security Council for contributing to Congo's civil war and cited by environmental groups for leading to massive devastation in the forest.
We now know that the "New Economy" was largely inflated on the surface by unreasonable expectations in the dot-com sector and the unconscionable business practices of companies with heavy political clout. The truth is now emerging about the underbelly, where the "New Economy" looks pretty much the same as the old one, symbolized by an African with heavy tools "spend[ing] days up to his crotch in muck," as Harden writes.
Yet the grim reality may be that the only solution is more capitalism, not less, at least for the time being. The task now is to identify what the role of activists and civil society should be in response. Campbell's book is an excellent prelude to this dialogue, and recommended reading even for those who might be inclined to disagree with his observations and conclusions.
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