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* "Put a bra and panties on this guy's head" * His "Do This" List for Abu Ghraib * Driving Jose Padilla Insane
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Today's Stories March 16, 2007 R. T. Naylor March 15, 2007 Alison Weir Patrick Cockburn Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity Franklin Spinney Standard Schaefer Conn Hallinan Maureen Webb Sonja Karkar Margaret Kimberly Anthony Papa Katherine Hancy Wheeler Bush's Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost Video of the Day Website of
the Day
March 14, 2007 Tao Ruspoli Philip Agee Bruce Dixon John Walsh Sunsara Taylor William Johnson Richard Thieme Jeffrey Klein Nicola Nasser Dave Lindorff Website of
the Day
March 13, 2007 Catherine Wilkerson,
M.D. Jonathan Cook Robert Bryce Corporate Crime
Reporter Pierre Rimbert Dave Lindorff Elizabeth Schulte Norman Solomon Kevin Zeese Jeff Conant Website of the Day
March 12, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Col. Dan Smith Paul Craig Roberts Ingmar Lee Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader John Ross Stephen Fleischman Eva Carazo Vargas Website of
the Day
March 9 / 11, 2007 Sameer Dossani Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Marsh Patrick Cockburn Jennifer Van Bergen James P. Stevenson Arthur J. Versluis Corporate Crime
Reporter Missy Beattie Michael Simmons Kevin Zeese David Swanson John A. Murphy Dave Lindorff Nikolas Kozloff Christopher
Fons Mike Roselle Mike Mejia Susie Day Michael Donnelly Tao Ruspoli Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
March 8, 2007 Elaine Cassel Yifat Susskind Corporate Crime Reporter Col. Dan Smith William S. Lind Mark Engler Roger Burbach Dana Cloud Isabella Kenfield Lucinda Marshall Tao Ruspoli Website of
the Day
Christopher Ketcham Christopher
Ketcham Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey
St. Clair Winslow T.
Wheeler Sean Donahue Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Tao Ruspoli Website of the Day
March 6, 2007 Gary Leupp Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Mike Roselle P. Sainath Joshua Frank Aniket Alam Dave Zirin Website of
the Day
March 5, 2007 Greg Moses Patrick Cockburn James Petras Frida Berrigan Marjorie Cohn Douglas Kammen
and S.W. Hayati Sen. Barack Obama Michael Young Dave Lindorff Sonja Karkar Website of the Day
March 3 / 4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Corporate Crime
Reporter Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader M. Shahid Alam Gilad Atzmon Fred Gardner George Ciccariello-Maher Rock &
Rap Confidential Gillian Russom Michael McPhearson Kevin Zeese Sunsara Taylor Wendy Thompson Kenneth Rexroth Missy Beattie Don Monkerud Tina Louise Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
March 2, 2007 Roger Morris Phil Gasper Mike Roselle Robert Bryce John V. Walsh Sherwood Ross China Hand David Rosen Chris Genovali Peter Harley Website of the Day
March 1, 2007 Laura Carlsen Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Christopher
Brauchli Najum Mustaq Brent Bowden Tina Richards Ethan Nadelman Mike Stark Wadner Pierre
/ Jeb Sprague Mike Whitney Website of
the Day
February 28, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Tao Ruspoli China Hand Marjorie Cohn Sarah Olson Susan Van Haitsma Nicole Colson Harvey Wasserman William S. Lind Nicola Nasser Website of the Day
February 27, 2007 Tariq Ali Tom Barry Uri Avnery Antonia Juhasz / Raed Jarrar Jeff Nygaard Hugh O'Shaughnessy Mitchell Kaidy Carl Finamore Anne McElroy
Dachel Ramzy Baroud Andrew Rouse Website of the Day
February 26, 2007 Franklin Lamb Bill Quigley Greg Moses Col. Dan Smith Ralph Nader Paul Buchheit Jeff Leys Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Michael Dickinson Website of the Day
February 24 / 25, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair R. T. Naylor Gary Leupp Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Jeffrey Blankfort Chris Sands Gary Freeman Larry Portis P. Sainath Lee Sustar Kevin Wehr Ken Couesbouc Soffiyah Elijah Kathlyn Stone Dave Lindorff Jason Kunin Kevin Zeese Remi Kanazi Missy Beattie Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
February 23, 2007 Franklin Spinney Jonathan Cook Patrick Cockburn Kathy Kelly Chris Dols Evelyn Pringle Stephen Pearcy Dan Brook Yifat Susskind Website of
the Day
February 22, 2007 Robert Fantina Tariq Ali Michael Shank John Ross Christopher Brauchli Cindy Litman Niranjan Ramakrishnan Kevin Zeese Aseem Shrivastava Reza Fiyouzat Illinois Students Against the
War Website of
the Day
February 21, 2007 Maass / St.
Clair Sharon Smith Greg Moses Margaret Kimberly Ralph Nader Nicola Nasser Mike Whitney Tao Ruspoli Byeong Jeongpil Corporate Crime
Reporter Josh Mahan Website of
the Day
February 20, 2007 Sgt. Martin
Smith Werther Corporate Crime Reporter Carl G. Estabrook China Hand Joshua Frank Megan Boler John Feffer Daryll E. Ray Alan Gregory Website of the Day
February 19, 2007 Paul Craig
Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Michael F.
Brown Robert Jensen Roger Burbach Monica Benderman Sonja Karkar John Walsh Talli Nauman Website of the Day
Feburary 17 / 18, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Tao Ruspoli Gary Leupp Jeffrey St.
Clair Roger Morris Uri Avnery James Brooks Sen. Russell
Feingold Linn Washington, Jr. Michele Brand Fred Gardner Mitchel Cohen Mike Ferner David Swanson P. Sainath Mike Stark Missy Beattie Jonathan Franklin Website of the Weekend
Marc Levy Andrew Cockburn Glen Ford Greg Moses Ron Jacobs John W. Farley James Marc Leas Tim Rinne Albert Wan Website of
the Day
Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Stephen Lendman Evelyn Pringle Michael Simmons Kevin Zeese Dave Lindorff Pete Shanks Peter Rost Lenni Brenner
/ Gilad Atzmon Website of the Day
February 14, 2007 Tao Ruspoli Dick J. Reavis Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Paul Craig
Roberts John Ross Michael F.
Brown Dave Lindorff J.L. Chestunut,
Jr. Don Fitz Michael Donnelly Dr. Susan Block Website of
the Day
February 13, 2007 Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Marjorie Cohn Col. Dan Smith Col. Douglas
MacGreagor Thomas Power Nicola Nasser David Swanson Columbia Coalition
Against the War Website of the Day
February 12, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts John Walsh Dr. John Carroll,
MD Greg Moses Nicole Colson Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Doug Giebel David Swanson Website of the Day
February
10 /11, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Gabriel Kolko Patrick Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Kevin Alexander Gray M. Shahid Alam Greg Moses Paul Craig
Roberts George Ciccariello-Maher Kevin Zeese Turner / Kim George Duke Walter Brasch Shepherd Bliss Missy Beattie Peter Harley Pat Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Day
Conn Hallinan Gary Leupp Lee Sustar Nikolas Kozloff Newton Garver Yitzhak Laor Dave Lindorff David Swanson Website of the Day
February 8, 2007 John V. Walsh Marjorie Cohn Trish Schuh Ron Jacobs Laura Carlsen Ramzy Baroud Brenda Norrell Bryan Farrell Judith Scherr Website of
the Day
February 7, 2007 Daniel Wolff Tao Ruspoli Tony Swindell Sharon Smith Ken Couesbouc Jeff Cohen Col. Dan Smith Tom Kerr Joshua Frank Adam Elkus Stephen Fleischman Website of
the Day
February 6, 2007 Diana Johnstone Gregory Wilpert Norman Solomon Dave Lindorff William Blum Mike Ferner CP News Service Evelyn Pringle Christopher Brauchli Alan Cabal Website of the Day
Dave Zirin Uri Avnery Ron Jacobs Paul Craig Roberts Newton Garver Bruce Anderson Saul Landau Ralph Nader James T. Phillips Mike Whitney Kenneth Rexroth Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Tao Ruspoli Jeffrey St.
Clair Patrick Cockburn P. Sainath Sen. Russell Feingold Diane Christian Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Timothy J. Freeman Conn Hallinan John Ross Greg Moses Missy Beattie Joshua Frank Evelyn Pringle Stephen Fleischman Muhammad Idrees Ahmad Poets' Basement Website of the Day
Chris Kutalik R. Gibson /
E. W. Ross Pam Martens John Feffer Daryll E. Ray Ronald Bruce
St. John Mitchel Cohen Website of
the Day
Diane Farsetta Marjorie Cohn Mark Scaramella Ranni Amiri Christopher Ketcham Winston Warfield Corporate Crime Reporter Thomas P. Healy Website of the Dau
January 31, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Jean Bricmont Tao Ruspoli James T. Phillips William Johnson Tim Wilkinson Evelyn Pringle Joshua Frank Ramzy Baroud Mickey Z. Website of the Day
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March 16, 2007 From 007 to OsamaThe Political Economy of DiamondsBy R. T. NAYLOR A few years before 9/11, the world's curiously selective conscience was shocked by images from the little West African country of Sierra Leone. There, an insurgent group fond of hacking off hands and feet with machetes funded its war by exploiting slave labor in diamond fields, smuggling gemstones via complicit dealers (Lebanese, naturally) to Liberia, then onto world markets. To horror stories from Sierra Leone (and Liberia) were soon added those from Angola, where the government was locked in a protracted battle with the UNITA guerrilla movement (created and long sustained by the CIA), and from the Congo (AKA Zaire), on which neighboring countries descended in a multisided scramble for spoils after the death of its US-sponsored president-for-life. What to do about African "conflict diamonds" became one of the hottest topics discussed by the New York cognoscenti as they puffed contraband Cuban cigars and sampled poached Russian caviar while seated at tables made from illegally cut Brazilian big-leaf mahogany in dining rooms embellished with looted Egyptian, Greek, and, more recently, Iraqi antiquities. Thus, conflict diamonds (later reincarnated as "blood diamonds," when the original images started to lose their shock value) were already high on the international agenda before the conveniently timed discovery that behind the trade could be found the evil hand of al-Qaeda. The "conflict diamonds" story actually began in Sierra Leone after World War II, when native soldiers who had been with British Special Forces returned home to find a country still under colonial rule and its leading industry still in the grip of a British monopoly. Most diamond mines produce a majority of industrial-grade stones, but in Sierra Leone an unusually high proportion were (are) gem quality and in widely dispersed alluvial fields rather than concentrated in deep mines where security is easier, as in South Africa or Botswana. Initially the main problem was in company-run areas where miners would steal stones to sell to local merchants who would then pass them on to smugglers. But by the early 1950s more native diggers ventured into fresh territory. While the British regularly sent the police and Army to try to clear illegal diggings, the miners applied skills they had learned in irregular warfare to evade capture. For every informer kept by the company in the illegal mining camps, the miners seemed to have one in the local police. Illegal production required a covert marketing channel. That was the role of Lebanese traders. The initial wave of Lebanese immigration into West Africa around the turn of the twentieth century had been mainly Christians fleeing economic crisis or Ottoman oppression. Their first destination was usually Marseilles, from where they hoped to move to the United States. Some unable to get to a New World whose streets were reputedly paved with gold ended up in West Africa, where, a little later, they found alluvial fields genuinely seeded with diamonds. Initially prominent in retail commerce and real estate, with some smuggling as a sideline, during a post-World War II diamond boom, Lebanese traders advanced digging equipment and supplies, then arranged to move the diamonds to Liberia, which had low taxes and a US dollar-based financial system. The traffic threatened the tight control over the world rough-diamond market held by the British/South African corporation De Beers Consolidated. Apart from feeding newspapers with claims that smuggling was sufficient to threaten the British balance of payments when the country had still not fully recovered from World War II, De Beers tried two other tricks. The first was for "John Blaize," a self-proclaimed undercover agent for the International Diamond Security Organization, the De Beers private policing affiliate, to approach a former Naval Intelligence officer. Ian Fleming had already published Diamonds Are Forever in which the dashingly decadent James Bond foils international smugglers working on behalf of Terror International. Who better to write the "true story" (entitled The Diamond Smugglers) of the underground diamond trade than someone with the right political credentials and a proven capacity to concoct fantasies with the desired political spin? The problem De Beers faced was that existing methods to control trafficking in West Africa were failing. Within its own mining concessions, it had traditionally relied on X-rays to stop miners from stealing stones. But, as John Blaize explained to Fleming, "You can't go on X-raying men, even if they're black." Another technique consisted of planting irradiated stones, then trying to pick them up with Geiger counters as miners passed the turnstiles or to trace them to buyers. That, by definition, caught only the irradiated stones--of little use if large numbers of miners lifted large numbers of gems. Nor could the company irradiate en masse--stones had to be found before they could be so treated. And presumably there might be fears of a skin-cancer epidemic among the blushing brides who were its primary clientele. In the alluvial fields outside direct company control, the problem was worse. Here the company's most important technique was to plant its own agents to outbid the illicit buyers. While that permitted the company to control the output, it drove up the price and encouraged more illegal production. For a time the company combined that strategy with a buy-and-bust approach. But judges kept throwing out the cases--most of those entrapped were amateurs, with no previous history, who were lured into the traffic, then arrested in a blaze of publicity to try to scare away others. So John Blaize appealed to Fleming's patriotic, literary, and, undoubtedly, financial sentiments to help them publicize "the biggest racket being operated anywhere in the world." According to the story, the
Evil Empire (at that time Atheistic Communism rather than Islamic
Terrorism) ran the traffic for two purposes. One was to obtain
industrial diamonds (in the face of a NATO embargo) to aid the
Soviet nuclear weapons program. John Blaize assured Fleming that
"our man in East Berlin" reported that the diamonds
were distributed thus: the USSR and China each taking 25 percent,
the rest going to various places in Eastern Europe, "all
presumably for the various armaments industries." This was
some accomplishment given that stones from Sierra Leone were
so commonly gem quality, and that the USSR was already producing
so many diamonds of its own that De Beers had entered a secret
agreement to sneak them onto Western markets in violation of
anti-Soviet sanctions then in force. Therefore, apart from alerting the public to these early conflict diamonds, De Beers arranged for Sir Percy Sillitoe, former head of Britain's MI-5, where he had made a reputation as a Commie-hunter, to be hauled from a pleasant retirement selling chocolates to spearhead the counterinsurgency. He soon realized that the real point was to permit De Beers to consolidate its monopoly with the British taxpayer picking up the tab. Not only had the Soviet Union already discovered enormous supplies of natural diamonds, but it was at the forefront of world synthetic-diamond research. The notion that it would buy black-market diamonds to fund guerrilla groups made no financial sense. The only traceable flow of smuggled diamonds into Arab hands ran from Christian traders of West Africa to Lebanon, then across the ceasefire line into Israel in defiance of the Arab League embargo against the Zionist state. Nonetheless De Beers hired a Lebanese storekeeper who put together a gang of thugs and petty criminals to ambush convoys of smugglers, steal their diamonds, and collect a reward of one third their value. Despite this, rising nationalism and more smuggling made the company's position increasingly difficult. Eventually its holdings were opened to state-licensed miners and buyers. After the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon in 1975, the established Lebanese traders in Sierra Leone were joined by more Shi'a and by an influx of Israeli smugglers, eager to find a way, independent of De Beers, to feed Israel's enormous diamond-cutting business. For a time Sierra Leone became a scene of coup and countercoup in which Israel, South Africa, Iran, and the US manipulated clients. For De Beers the problems were complicated by developments in other alluvial producers whose rising output threatened the system by which it had long controlled the market. Historically De Beers acted as buyer of last resort. With cooperation from the major producers, it took off the market surplus rough stones, including (by keeping its own buyers in black-market centres) smuggled material, then resold to selective cutters when particular subsets of the market began to heat up. (Any broker or manufacturer not on the De Beers "sight" list had to obtain their stones off the secondary market in Antwerp or create direct links to producers, legal or illegal.) The key to control was the company's ability to carry a stockpile of several billion dollars "worth" - which also enabled it to dump selected types at strategic times to undermine any producer who tried to strike out on its own. Most major cutters were content to participate: the arrangement offered the security of steadily rising prices; and they could profit indirectly from the De Beers effort to convince the buying public that diamonds were "forever." But throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, this strategy became harder to implement. For a long time the diamond market had been a duopoly. De Beers purchased Soviet stones to comingle with others in a market-rigging ploy from which both sides profited. But in 1991 the Soviet Union disappeared, replaced by a Russia chronically short of foreign exchange and eager to establish itself as a major gemstone cutting and polishing centre. New producing frontiers opened in Australia and then Canada, in neither of which De Beers held significant direct ownership interest. Alluvial mining spread farther in Central and West Africa, much of it in areas controlled by rebel movements and regional warlords who were harder to deal with than corrupt or thuggish governments. Meanwhile the world economy shifted from a generally inflationary post-World War II to a low- or zero-inflationary post-Cold War environment. In that context the De Beers stockpile ceased to be a good investment and became a drag on the company's share price. Just when things looked blackest, along came the uproar over conflict diamonds. In 1998 the UN imposed sanctions on purchase of diamonds from the UNITA guerrilla movement in Angola. Hitherto all diamonds from Angola were to be accompanied by government-issued certificates of origin. This had the happy effect of creating work for skilled forgers and an opportunity for corrupt functionaries to comingle UNITA's with official stones. Citing difficulties of separating real from fake certificates, De Beers shut down all its buying in Angola. A short time later the UN imposed sanctions on Sierra Leone's gemstones, too. Zaire, wracked by civil war, was next. Ambitious NGOs kept up the pressure while the diamond trade scrambled to placate consumer countries. The campaign had an important public sponsor. When the Canadian government heard the word "diamonds," its eyes began to sparkle, thanks to the conviction that Canada might soon account for 15-25 percent of the world's supply of gem-quality diamonds, all, of course, certifiable as "conflict free." In some ways it was a replay of the Apartheid era, when Canadian (and Australian) gold-mining firms led demands to embargo South African gold, while the Canadian government, whose Maple Leaf gold coin was the main international competitor to South Africa's Krugerrand, heartily seconded the motion. The last pockets of resistance to controls on conflict diamonds crumbled when, in 2002, the world learned that behind the traffic in "the world's most precious gemstone" stood the intensely ascetic Usama bin Laden. Apparently al-Qaeda had not simply been profiting from the traffic, but had rushed, after 9/11, to convert its assets into more easily hidden forms, including rough diamonds. Soon the UN demanded the ban not just of "conflict diamonds" but of all "illicit" stones. Member states and the diamond industry began negotiating conventions to shut out of the market not the 3 percent of the world's gemstones that came from conflict-ridden areas of Africa but the 15-30 percent (depending on the definition) that bypassed official marketing agencies. Smiling broadly in the wings was De Beers. To the extent that the bans actually worked, their immediate impact was to open space for De Beers to unload onto the market identical stones from its own stockpile. That stockpile, long a drag on its finances, shot up in value, the shares of the company along with it. The drive to eliminate stones that had bypassed formal government monopolies (which almost always marketed through De Beers) enhanced the company's power. The changes in international rules came, quite conveniently, while De Beers was drastically revising its marketing strategy.. Instead of just specializing in the control of rough stones to the wholesale market, it decided to sell cut and polished ones to the retail trade. Instead of spending money to advertise diamonds for the market as a whole, it decided to promote its own brand name. It began to microprint diamonds for retail with its own logo and ID numbers as a supposed guarantee that the stones were "conflict free." The claim was bogus - once cut, there is no way to confirm a stone's origin. But it gave De Beers an edge over competitors, few of whom would ever handle a "conflict diamond" but even fewer of whom would to be able to convey the same assurance. The logo also soothed a market spooked by the spread of sophisticated fakes, synthetics, or simulates. Not least, by downplaying the market stockpile business, De Beers hoped to ease its long-difficult relations with the United States, whose antitrust laws were a constant threat. These changes in commercial strategy were firmly cemented into place once the "al-Qaeda"-meets-conflict-diamonds tale grabbed the spotlight. This is not to suggest there was no "evidence." For one thing there was the discovery by the BBC that a twenty-eight-year-old al-Qaeda "member" named Mohammed Khalfan, arrested in Africa for involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings, was a leading shareholder of a Congolese diamond mine. The actual shareholder turned out to be Kamal Khalfan, a man in his sixties--the BBC publicly apologized and paid £500,000 in damages to his company. But that was not the end of such evidence. There were also abundant stories about a couple of Lebanese Shi'a diamond dealers "linked to" and "connected with" al-Qaeda--somehow they had missed the fact that at the time they were financially supporting bin Laden, his Taliban allies in Afghanistan were engaged, allegedly with the help of Arab auxiliaries, in massacring that country's Shia population. The Lebanese dealers later claimed (probably correctly) that rumors of their bin Laden association were spread by business rivals seeking to discredit them. Just who those rivals might be can perhaps be inferred from the fact that the UN found a group of ex-Israeli Air Force pilots moving smuggled diamonds from Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and that one of the first acts of a post-conflict government of Sierra Leone was to arrest Israeli Reserve-Colonel Yair Klein. Klein, who had won undying fame in the late 1980s for training narco-militias on behalf of Colombian drug lords, had arrived in Sierra Leone to sell "security services" to Israeli diamond traders trying to recover territory lost to the Lebanese Shiah in an earlier round of diamond wars. There were a few other problems with the Usama-sells-conflict-diamonds story. For one thing, how did an organization supposedly spearheaded by a Saudi "Wahhabi fundamentalist" make a breakthrough into an area where most of the population in the trade was Shi'a Muslim from Southern Lebanon? True, those intent on the tale of al-Qaeda peddling conflict diamonds could resurrect the fatuous but widely believed "link" between al-Qaeda and Hizbullah. But even that begged a few questions. It was never clear from any of the sensationalist stories if Hizbullah was supposed to be actually running "cells" of diamond dealers or just getting contributions from time to time from members of the Lebanese Diaspora who made money in diamonds, or real estate, or selling powdered milk and cans of tuna. Furthermore Hizbullah was never a serious presence in West Africa. To the extent Lebanese Shi'a in the region have any consistent political preferences, it would be not for the radical Hizbullah but the far more mainstream and rival AMAL movement, whose leader, senior Lebanese politician Nabih Berri, was born in Sierra Leone. In any case, participation would be interspersed in a matrix of undercover activity that would be almost impossible to unscramble. The diamond begins its commercial life in mines rife with theft; crosses borders in smugglers' pouches or, what is often the same thing, diplomatic luggage; comes briefly into daylight again in cutting and polishing centres whose practitioners, more often than not, grant themselves a general tax exemption; re-enters underground freight channels via informal bourses where deals have traditionally been done in cash and sealed with a handshake; sneaks again across borders to dodge import duties or excise taxes; then finally arrives in a retail marketing network replete with commercial fraud. En route the diamond might pass through the hands of impoverished diggers and backwoods traders, career criminals and corrupt functionaries, spies and insurgents, counterfeiters and money-launderers, and investment sharks and telemarketing scam artists before coming to rest around an especially elegant neck or a languorously beckoning finger - at least until some enterprising jewel thief thinks differently. In addition, only cut and polished diamonds are really effective as capital flight vehicles. Even the most adroit trader in rough finds it difficult to guess a stone's ultimate value - amateurs usually lose their shirts. If, just before 9/11, al-Qaeda had really shifted its supposed assets from traceable forms into things like diamonds that were nicely anonymous and easy to move, its supposed financial managers made a dumb move. During the latter part of 2001, a glut drove down prices of some leading categories by 30 percent. In that case, the involvement of al-Qaeda in conflict diamonds is presumably something the world's anti-terror experts ought to welcome, for it would work faster than investments in Sudanese agribusiness to deplete Usama's fabled fortune. Not least, the entire "conflict diamonds funding terrorism" tale misses a key point about the structure of the underground diamond business. Rarely do insurgent groups actually control diamond mining. As with virtually all other forms of contraband, they control the areas in which production occurs or across which traffic runs. Their major gain comes not from direct participation, though particular individuals might do so on their own account, but from taxation. Rebel groups manage through military power (which neither al-Qaeda nor Hizbullah could possible muster in sub-Saharan Africa) to impose import and export duties, license fees, transportation surcharges, and, in some cases direct bribes for particular officers. In other words, the insurgents form the quasi-public infrastructure within which the diamond trade is run by experts and industry insiders much as before any guerrilla group takes over. In the case of diamonds, some wandering mujahideen type is not likely to be in a position to cut much ice, so to speak. Nonetheless the campaign was a great success. The NGOs, peddling a mishmash of half-truths, unsubstantiated rumors, and spook disinformation, got their certification schemes, which gave officials of corrupt and repressive governments a pretext to knock out independent miners and turn concessions over to kin and cronies. De Beers had its market power confirmed. National security types got to reinforce their bin Laden myth. And the US took advantage of the tale to assign a Treasury official to work with banks in the Sahel region of Africa to disrupt terrorist operations in diamonds and in gold. On the other side, innocent people were smeared with association with terrorism and anti-Arab stereotypes further entrenched. But that was just more unfortunate collateral damage of the sort that any war, including one on terrorism, inevitably produces. R.T. Naylor is the author of highly original and
radical work on Money, Myth and Misinformation, now assembled
in Satanic
Purses, being published by McGill-Queen's University Press,
from which this essay has been excerpted. Naylor is professor
of Economics at McGill. He can be reached at thomas.naylor@mcgill.ca |
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