ABSTRACT: Charlie Warren talks with Dr. Roberto Sollazzo, a young expert on the Angolan civil war and conflict diamonds. The focus is on the role played by resources, diamonds in this case, in explaining the occurrence of war.
Dr. Roberto Sollazzo is a young expert on the Angolan civil war and conflict diamonds. He completed his Ph.D. at University of Cagliari, Italy, with a dissertation on “Diamond smuggling and the Angolan civil war.” He also studied political science at Federico II University of Naples, and completed a thesis on the smuggling of diamonds from Africa.
Angola has been the theater of one of the 20th century’s longest wars. At the end of the Cold War, competition for resources among Angolan groups came to play a fundamental role. In Angola there was a “longitudinal division of resources” — as Dr. Sollazzo defined it —between the oil-laden West and the diamond-endowed East, which reflected a political and territorial division between antagonist movements.
Good morning Dr. Sollazzo. You dealt with the issue of conflict diamonds for the last three-four years; can you give us a sense of why you chose this particular topic and how you happened to be interested in it?
It was by pure chance. In 2002, I randomly inserted the word ‘conflict’ in the search browser of the United Nations website: among many entries, one article on “The role of diamonds in fueling conflict” struck my attention. After considering that the issue was unexplored in Italy and at the same time very relevant, I decided to be the first Italian to write a monograph on this topic.
Can you give me a bit of historic background about the civil war in Angola before we get into the specifics of diamonds?
The conflict in Angola lasted with nearly no interruption from 1961 to the signature of the definitive peace agreement in 2002. Practically, we can divide the war in three main phases — and we will see later that the role of diamonds is key only in the third of these phases.
Until 1974, the independence war against the Portuguese took place, in which three Angolan ethnic-based movements confronted Portugal, as well as competed among themselves for who would be in power after independence: the MPLA [Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola], in power since independence, is a Marxist-leninist movement; UNITA [União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola] is the expression of the largest ethnicity in the country, the Ovimbundu (38 percent of the total); and the FNLA [Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola,] which disappeared soon after independence.
Once the Portuguese left, the so-called ‘guerra do mato’ [literally, ‘war of the bush’] among the three movements started. This phase was characterized by the intersection between guerrilla warfare and the Cold War. The Soviet Union and Cuba supported the MPLA in power, whereas the U.S., South-Africa, and for a short period of time, China, supported UNITA.
The war protracted for years and only the collapse of the USSR put a first end to the conflict. The 1991 peace agreement in Bicesse, Portugal, provided for the first general elections in Angolan history. The MPLA leader and Angolan president, Edoardo dos Santos, defeated his historic arch-enemy, Jonas Savimbi. The leader of UNITA did not accept the ballot response, and by 1993 Angola was back at war. The third and last phase was called ‘guerra das cidades’ [war of the cities] because we witness a more tight control over territory.
What was the fundamental change in the 1990s, and why did diamonds come into the game so abruptly?
Let me first introduce the topic. Under the Portuguese, since the oil production was nearly non-existent, diamonds constituted one of the main sources of income together with coffee production and other cash crops productions. After independence, diamonds started to play politically a greater role, because, in terms of resource, Angola was cut on a longitudinal axis from North to South: in the Western part there were the oil fields under governmental control, whereas the East — at the border with today’s DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] — was full of diamonds. However, it is only in the 1990s that from important, diamonds become fundamental. But let me go in order.
In the 1990s, the renewed importance of holding territory is a consequence of the end of the Cold War. For almost two decades, the MPLA and UNITA have received huge fundings for their military operations from the superpowers. Once the bipolar competition was over, the necessity of self-financing arose. This is the most interesting phase of the war because both parties had to find on their own territory the resources needed to keep up the conflict. Thus, the MPLA intensified the oil production, whereas UNITA engaged in the systematic exploitation and extraction of diamonds.
In this regard, it is useful to consider the theory of the geographic diffusion of resources. Diffusion is ‘tight’ when resources are concentrated in small and delimited areas, and so it is easy to control them. In Angola this is the case of the oil fields and of the traditional diamond mines. Diffusion is ‘wide’, instead, when resources are spread out. The case of diamonds in Angola belongs to this second type. In fact, diamond mining in Angola is mainly alluvial; meaning that diamonds are not under-earth — such as in South Africa and Botswana for example — but they are carried for very long distances in rivers beds. So, they are far from being concentrated in one single area. However, diamonds of this kind need to be washed and separated from other rocks. UNITA managed to take control over virtually all the washing factories, which were quite concentrated, and so managed to have the monopoly over the entire diamonds production in the country.
Thus, UNITA established an efficient system of production and commercialization of diamonds, thank to which it could finance its anti-government activities. To miners, UNITA offered protection from government troops in exchange for a 20 percent fee over their proceeds. Furthermore, since the diffusion of landmines in large areas of the country dramatically hindered agricultural production, illegal diamonds extraction (in Portuguese, ‘garimpo’) was the only form of livelihood for part of the population._
Was there a legal framework for the extraction and commercialization of diamonds under the government rule?
_There was and there still is, but extremely limited. In 1917, the Portuguese colonial authority established DIAMANG
[Companhia de Diamantes de Angola] with Belgian, British, and US assets. After independence, the MPLA nationalized the company, turning it into ENDIAMA [Empresa Nacional de Diamantes de Angola]. ENDIAMA holds an exclusive concession over mineral extraction in Angola. That said, the traditional diamond mining represents only a small portion with respect to the total production of diamonds; thus, even if the government has total control over it, this is mainly irrelevant with respect to the alluvial extraction.
This is the story as far as production is concerned. What about diamonds smuggling? How did that work?
Well, first of all, the advantage of smuggling diamonds is that they have the same three characteristics of liquid money. Diamond is a unit of account, since its value is clearly and universally codified; it is also store of value because it can be saved without losing its value nor deperishing; and diamonds are a medium of exchange. Moreover, they have an extremely high value to weight ratio that favors flexibility in transport; and also, by being composed of carbon, diamonds are not detectable either by metal-detector nor by police dogs.
Thus, UNITA established a wide and entrenched smuggling network. Common practice was trading diamonds for arms with neighboring countries (such as the DRC), and especially with the former eastern bloc and the former Soviet republics (such as Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Belarus), which, at the end of the Cold War, had enormous surplus of weapons. Of course, there were intermediaries, mainly South Africans — such as the renowned De Decker brothers. It is also worth noting that until 1993 diamond trafficking from Angola was internationally legal: the UN had never addressed the issue from a legal point of view, so that UNITA’s activities were only banned within Angolan boundaries. Thus, it is correct to talk about ‘smuggling’ only after 1993 when the first set of UN sanctions against UNITA was launched.
Can you tell us something about the international community’s effort of stopping the diamonds smuggling from Angola as a means of conflict resolution? Why are the two levels interrelated?
The reason for launching sanctions was to put pressure on Savimbi, for him to accept a negotiated solution to the Angolan conflict. Sanctions prohibited arms sales to UNITA and diamonds purchases from UNITA. They also froze the group’s bank accounts and banned international traveling for UNITA’s leadership. A second set of sanctions was launched in 1997, this time much more effective: the risk of smuggling diamonds was much higher, so that for UNITA the price of arms increased. A limitation on international flights from and to Angola was also enforced.
However, these incentives did not convince Savimbi of the necessity of a negotiated settlement. Thus, no negotiated solution was achieved, although it was clear to everybody that UNITA was progressively moving toward bankruptcy, isolation, and military defeat. Between 1998 and 1999, a U.N. panel further enforced sanctions at the point that by 2000 UNITA was on the verge of collapse. In the early 2000s, the Kimberly Process, an initiative promoted to halt diamonds smuggling, was signed by the U.N., several governments, multinational companies, and NGOs [non-governmental organizations]. Nevertheless, only Savimbi’s death in February 2002 put an end to the civil war: UNITA’s leadership finally accepted to depose arms.
What is the diamonds issue in Angola today, five years after the end of hostility?
As of today, the MPLA government does not have control over the alluvial zones of diamonds. Because it is not anymore in the hands of one group — UNITA — the garimpo has multiplied and widely spread out. Many people did not previously engage in this sort of activity because they feared government retaliation, whereas now they are motivated to do so. Moreover, as the government is focused on post-conflict reconstruction activities, it has no incentive to block diamonds extraction. The garimpo is surely considered a form of criminality, but it is tolerated by the authorities, if compared to the extreme poverty of the Angolan societies.
I would like to stress in the end that the illegal diamond mining is in some regions a structural phenomenon, which will require a long-term effort to be counteracted. In particular, the provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sur—once under the same administration—are among the most productive areas of diamonds in the country, and are historically refractory to government control.
In the end, what is the link between diamonds and international development in Angola? Why is solving the issue of conflict diamonds paramount to development and relief efforts? And, in what way are diamonds hampering reconstruction efforts in today’s Angola?
Diamonds are the second most important industry in Angola, just after oil, and it employs a large amount of work force. During the war, UNITA rebels boosted illegal mining, subtracting revenues to the Angolan government and preventing International Relief agencies from entering the areas under their control.
Since Savimbi’s death in 2002, however, MPLA government is trying to retake control of the production in the Lundas’ diamond fields and NGOs such as Human Rights Watch are taking care of the resettlement process of more than a million IDPs (internally displace people).
Moreover, under the Kimberley Process, revenues from the legal mining have greatly increased, permitting the government to invest in the building of infrastructures to start the post-war reconstruction. Although the illegal mining (garimpo) in the Lundas continues to be a problem, a transparent use of the revenues from the legal diamond sector remains the key to ensure the economic and consequently social recovery of the war-torn areas.
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