Liberia in disguise with diamonds

The UN Security Council has voted Friday to lift the four year embargo on Liberian diamond exports. The move is a welcome none for one of the world’s poorest countries and a recognition that Liberia is making progress after emerging from 14 years of war which claimed the lives of almost ten per cent of the population and displaced half of its three million residents. The British president of the Security Council Emyr Jones Parry said the vote recognised the progress made under current Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and a reflection of the high regard for Johnson-Sirleaf herself who has ruled the country since elections in 2006.

This is the second recent international vote of confidence in Johnson-Sirleaf’s leadership with the UN lifting the embargo on Liberian timber in June 2006. The diamond export ban dates back to 2003 and was meant to stop the flow of “blood diamonds” which were responsible for fuelling conflicts across West Africa. Now that the ban has been lifted, Liberia can now sign up to the Kimberley Process which is an international diamond certification scheme to track the origins of the precious gem in world markets.

Liberian UN ambassador Nathaniel Barnes told reporters Liberia filed an application to sign up to the Process in March and it had now been accepted. The new UN resolution "means a lot to the people of Liberia," he said. The Monrovia government had "the political will ... (to) make good things happen within the diamond industry so that we can move forward." Liberia needs all the help it can get; the country currently has a staggering 85% unemployment rate with former civil war fighters accounting for much of that number.

Diamonds have been at the centre of Liberia’s problems in last two decades. They were discovered in Liberia just before World War I, but it was not until 1925 that the giant British-owned Consolidated African Selection Trust (CAST) sent in prospectors. Liberia was then in a unique position for an African country. It was ruled neither by a European colonial power or a local African people. It had been settled in the early 1800s by freed American slaves.

Its genesis as a nation goes back to 1816 and the formation of a Quaker organisation known as the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS was set up with the idea of sending freed slaves back to Africa and bringing Christianity with them. Although many blacks and abolitionists opposed the scheme, in 1822 the ACS succeeded in raising funds to land 86 emigrants in Africa on the Grain Coast at Cape Montserrado. Governed by a few accompanying white agents, the colony did it tough in the early days but eventually prospered.

In 1824 they named their settlement Monrovia after American president (and ACS member) James Monroe. They named the new colony itself, Liberia (freedom). England and France recognised Liberia as an independent country in 1847 but the US refused to follow suit to avoid the sight of a black ambassador in Washington. Eventually Lincoln extended official recognition in 1862 in the middle of the Civil War.

When the impoverished ACS could no longer support Liberia, the country turned to private industry to help. They leased large areas of land to American companies such as Firestone, which operated the largest rubber plantation in the world near the city of Harbel. In 1930 the League of Nations accused Liberia and Firestone of colluding to create near slave labour conditions. Firestone still operates there today and the same problems persist today. Local labourers brought a lawsuit in 2005 against Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire for subjecting workers to slavery and using child labour.

The post World War II regimes of William Tubman and William Tolbert were authoritarian, pro-foreign investment and pro-American. But the gap between rich and poor widened. In 1980, the army staged a coup, formed a ruling council and ended 133 years of Americo-Liberian political domination. Lowly ranked 28 year old Master Sergeant Samuel Doe became head of state. But his regime was dogged by a succession of failed coups. At the end of the 1980s, a new group the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) emerged led by Charles Taylor.

Taylor had a colourful past. In 1979 he escaped Liberia after being accused of stealing almost a million dollars. Five years later he was arrested in the US on charges of embezzling $922,000 of government funds. Taylor escaped from prison and fled from the US. He ended up in Libya where he received military training from Gaddafy. There he met Sierra Leonean Foday Sankoh. Sankoh went home to fight the Sierra Leone government with his infamous Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Taylor’s NPFL worked closely with the RUF to dominate the diamond trade in their countries. In 1989 the NPFL invaded Liberia from Ivory Coast and soon laid siege to the capital. Taylor eventually stormed Monrovia, and overthrew Doe before torturing him to death a year later. Doe’s death caused Liberia to splinter into several factions. Eventually five neighbour nations sent in an Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to restore order. All the Liberian parties except Taylor agreed to a national government who continued the fight. The war dragged on for most of the 1990s.

Finally under pressure from the UN, Taylor agreed to a ceasefire. In elections in 1996, Charles Taylor won the presidency with a landslide 75% of the vote. Most people voted for him because they knew he would resume the war if he lost. In 1999 a new rebellion broke out. A group calling itself Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), backed by neighbouring Guinea launched attacks in northern Liberia. Then a second group called the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) attacked in the south backed by Ivory Coast.

By 2003, the game was up for Taylor. The UN charged him with war crimes dating back from his involvement with RUF rebels in Sierra Leone. LURD besieged Monrovia as President Bush became involved urging Taylor to leave Liberia. A new African military force led by Nigeria sent troops into Liberia. Nigeria offered Taylor asylum if he agreed to stay out of Liberian politics. He resigned and flew to Nigeria. There he faced increasing international pressure to face trial. Taylor was finally arrested after he tried to cross into Cameroon in 2006. He now awaits trial in Sierra Leone.

Liberia is still trying to pick up the pieces after Taylor. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World banker and finance minister won a high profile election in 2005 against football hero George Weah. She became Africa’s first female president in the process. Her background gives her good credentials to rebuild Liberia’s shattered economy. She also pledged "to bring motherly sensitivity and emotion to the presidency" as a way of healing the wounds of war. This week’s diamond decision will go a long way to help.

Sierra Leone's RUF diamonds

The diamond industry Rapaport Group, in conjunction with movie maker Ed Zwick, have announced they will be holding a media conference in New York’s Hilton Hotel next Monday to address issues related to the sale of so-called "conflict diamonds". In the conference, Zwick will examine what the industry should do to eliminate conflict diamonds. Also, Martin Rapaport will announce the establishment of the Fair Trade Diamond and Jewellery Association. This will be a non-profit organisation devoted to promoting ethical and fair trade sourcing and production of diamonds and other gems in Africa and elsewhere. Rapaport will also announce the launch of an educational fund for children at risk in Sierra Leone.

The media conference is taking place now to take advantage of the international publicity on the issue generated by Zwick’s current movie release “Blood Diamond”. The film is based on a book called “Blood Diamonds” by Greg Campbell. The book and the film are set in the war torn West African nation of Sierra Leone in 1999. Sierra Leone is a major diamond producer but its exports were banned during the civil war to stop profits funding military arms. Campbell’s thesis was that although Sierra Leonean diamonds had been banned from the legitimate market, trading continued as exporting from non-diamond producing nearby nations such as Liberia and The Gambia rose dramatically during the war.

Sierra Leone was a former British colony which gained independence in 1961. Like most African countries, it has had a troubled subsequent post-colonial existence. The architect of independence was Milton Margai. Still regarded as Sierra Leone's greatest statesman, Margai merged the two British political entities (the coastal colony and the inland protectorate), became the country’s first prime minister, and oversaw the creation of a new constitution. He was idolised by his people but died in office in 1964 and was replaced by his brother Albert. The country then steadily deteriorated under weaker leaders leading to political violence and military coups. In the 1970s, Siaka Stevens consolidated power through the military and eventually declared a one-party state.

In 1991, a new opposition movement emerged called the Revolutionary United Front. The RUF's aim was to overthrow the government but it had no clear platform on what to replace it with. Its leader Foday Sankoh was bankrolled by neighbouring Liberian president Charles Taylor. In March 1991, Sankoh began to attack villages in eastern Sierra Leone from their base across the Liberian border. The RUF soon gained control of the mines in the Kono district which produces two-thirds of Sierra Leone’s diamonds. Armed with the profits from these mines, they pushed the army back towards the capital Freetown. The official government was overthrown in a coup and the RUF used the power vacuum to take over more of the country. By 1995 they were at the gates of Freetown itself with a victory seemingly inevitable.

But the increasingly desperate government turned to a mercenary army, a South African private military company called Executive Outcomes (EO). EO was a powerful paramilitary organisation founded from the nucleus of the shadowy South African Special Forces which were being disbanded as the apartheid era came to an end. Within a month of deployment in Sierra Leone, EO had successfully repulsed the rebels and recaptured the Kono mines.

With international pressure mounting, the central government agreed to hand over power to a civilian government via presidential and parliamentary elections, held in April 1996. The new government was led by an experienced UN diplomat Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Kabbah wanted to end the war which had already killed thousands, created a humanitarian crisis and ruined the country’s economy. He met Sankoh in Cote d’Ivoire where the two men signed the Abidjan peace accord in November 2006. But Sankoh was overthrown as leader of the RUF in May 1997 and the new leaders reneged on the agreement. Around the same time, a new military group in Freetown called the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council carried out a successful coup against Kabbah.

The AFRC then joined forces with the RUF to take united control of the country. But within nine months, the exiled Kabbah won back power with the aid of a Nigerian-led multi-lateral force called ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group). Kabbah signed a second peace agreement in Togo with Sankoh, restored as leader of the RUF, in 1999 called the Lomé Peace Accord. Once again, the RUF broke the peace. Finally an international force of British and Guinean troops entered the country in 2001 and routed the last remnants of the RUF. In 2003, Sankoh died in prison awaiting trial. The chief prosecutor said Sankoh's death granted him "a peaceful end that he denied to so many others".

The war claimed tens of thousands of deaths and two million (one third of the population) were made refugees. It was a war characterised by child soldiers, killings and amputations. By 2001, Sierra Leone was officially the poorest country in the world. Yet a 2002 report ranked Sierra Leone 11th of the world’s diamond producing nations with a total value of $70 million and 0.2% of the world’s market (Australia and Botswana are the world’s leading diamond producers with 50% of the market between them). Most of Sierra Leone’s diamond trade in the 1990s went overseas illegally to finance the RUF armed resistance against the government.

Half of the world’s trade in diamonds is controlled by the South African company De Beers. They control a cartel to keep the price of diamonds artificially high in order to maintain the precious status of the gem. Because of their status in the market, they were under pressure to lead the fight against the sale of conflict diamonds. Haunted by the obvious failure to stop Sierra Leonean diamonds reaching the market, De Beers and the New York based World Diamond Council, launched a certification scheme in 2002 known as the Kimberley Process (named for the South African city where the parties first met to discuss the issue). Countries signing up to the process guarantee that a) their diamonds do not finance rebel groups seeking to overthrow a UN-recognized government b) their diamonds are accompanied by a Kimberley Process certificate and c) they do not export or import diamonds to non-members of the scheme.

45 diamond producing nations (including Sierra Leone) have signed up to the Kimberley Process. But it is not without its flaws. A UK-based pressure group Global Witness criticised the process as lacking proper oversight of national registration schemes. It cited the Central African Republic as having has recently suffered a coup which gave rebel forces control over its diamond mines and yet is still part of the Process.

Meanwhile Sierra Leone is finally beginning to recover from the ravages of a decade-long war. The RUF metamorphosised into a political party. In the most recent election in 2002 they gained just 2.2% of the popular vote and no seats in the parliament. Kabbah was re-elected president in the same election with a landslide 70% of the vote. Sierra Leone will go to the polls again this year when his term expires and the constitution forbids him to stand for re-election. Many in the country are concerned that Charles Margai (nephew of the country’s founder Milton and son of second PM Albert) is about to set himself up a potential dictator when Kabbah finally calls it a day.