The diamond-fuelled civil war in Sierra Leone ended 5 years ago. The slow recovery has begun.
For over a decade, gems were a terrible curse for the west African country, but now it needs them for its recovery. Wisely used, legitimate diamond revenue could fund Sierra Leone's development; and with the world's highest infant mortality rate, that development is desperately needed.
As the government struggles back to its feet, it needs to ensure that more benefits from the mining and sale of diamonds flow back to local communities.
To do that it needs to tackle smuggling. And Sierra Leone is a smuggler's paradise. This is what it looks like.
Warner Bros
Let's take a trip to Kono
You can reach the south-eastern town of Koidu-Sefadu, better known as Kono, with a bush taxi from Sierra Leone's second largest town Bo.
The landscape is pock-marked with small pits, dug out of the red earth. They look rather like graves, but they're not. In them you'll find boys and men, stripped to their underwear, digging away for rough gems, digging for a way out of poverty.
They toil all day in these pits or in the region's muddy rivers. Mostly they find nothing. Day after day of back-breaking digging and nothing to show for it but wet feet. But if they do strike lucky, the stone will soon be on its way to the sandy back streets of town, where an illicit market is booming.
Rivers and pits. Kono sits on a wealth of alluvial diamonds.
Whose Best Friend?
Marilyn Monroe's conviction that diamonds are a girl's best friend is debatable, but that they are a smuggler's best friend is beyond any doubt. Even in their rough form, they are small, light weight and worth a fortune. What more could the black market ask for?
Add to the mix a country where the central government is still struggling slowly to its feet after years of anarchy, a nation which is unable to parol its porous, forested borders.
This is why the smuggling trade is booming.
Panning for diamonds in Sierra Leone
How the trade takes place
The diggers will arrive in town with the diamonds concealed in their mouths. It is regarded as the safest place to keep them. Under the shade of a tree, a trader is waiting. The seller will take the diamond out of his mouth and place them in the hands of the traders, who will pass an expert eye of their carat and their clarity. He might get out a jewelers eye-glass, but, with his trained eye, he rarely bothers. If he's impressed, he will take a wad of cash out of his pocket and peel off a bundle of well-thumbed notes. The deal is done. There are smiles all round.
It's hard to know where the cash or the gem will end up. The community hardly benefits at all, the digger will get very little for his hard-labour, the middleman is going to make a decent buck, but the real profits of this smuggling end up elsewhere. Where?
That's the worry on the international community.
Buying diamonds
Clamping Down?
Global Witness says it is vital this smuggling is clamped down on, not just to make sure diamond profits benefit the development of the whole country rather than line the pockets of a few gangsters, but also to ensure that the profits aren't channeled off to shady and perhaps violent organizations.
One thing is for sure: the traders in Kono don't seem too worried about any crackdown. There's not much secrecy, kids mill around watching, curious to see how the day's trade has been, anxious to find whether any big rocks have been found today. It's an almost festive atmosphere. They could be selling tomatoes.
Wouldn't they be better in school?
Lost Chances
If only the revenue from diamonds would flow back into the community from the diamond industry, local infrastructure such as health care or education facilities could be improved .
Smuggled diamonds might not be classic blood diamonds, but, nonetheless, they are bleeding Sierra Leone dry.
Vienna | 19.1.2007 | 12:07 
