(I thought the ’Treasure of Allah’ was Oil?)
Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrilla movement is siphoning profits from West Africa’s diamond trade, in part by threatening Lebanese diamond merchants, U.S. diplomats charge.
| Blood diamonds, a terrorist's best friend. |
"One thing that’s incontrovertible is the financing of Hezbollah. It’s not even an open secret; there is no secret," said Larry Andre, deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in diamond-rich Sierra Leone. "There’s a lot of social pressure and extortionate pressure brought to bear: ’You had better support our cause, or we’ll visit your people back home,"’ Andre told The Associated Press. More than 100,000 Lebanese live in West Africa, where they have made up the core of the merchant class for over a century and have long handled much of the diamond business. Only 6,000 Lebanese are thought to remain in Sierra Leone after this country’s 1991-2002 war for control of the eastern diamond fields surrounding Koidu, West Africa’s richest-known deposits. West Africa’s so-called blood diamonds helped buy arms and fighters in insurgencies that roiled the region in the 1990s. With the end of fighting and the advent of an industry-backed certificate of origin program, Sierra Leone estimates its legal exports of diamonds have soared from $1.4 million in 1999 to $76 million last year. The U.S. Embassy in Sierra Leone says between $70 million to $100 million worth of rough gems still are smuggled out of the country each year. It’s due largely to the illegal trade that Hezbollah can extract cash by threats, beatings and destruction of property, analysts say. Victims, many of whom may have business dealings they do not want exposed, have little legal recourse. "They’re (Hezbollah) asking for contributions and they’re going to use the culture card and the nationality card," says Joseph Melrose, former U.S. ambassador to Sierra Leone. "Will they use threats? Sure." The amount of money is huge: in December 2003, an airliner that crashed off Benin had a courier on board carrying $2 million in Hezbollah-bound funds, diplomats and news reports said. One of Sierra Leone’s top diamond exporters denied any ties to Hezbollah. "This is a lie. There’s never been any connection between these people and Hezbollah," said Kassim Basma, who was born in Sierra Leone to a Lebanese family. "For me, I couldn’t support them. For what? To cause myself problems?"
Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says stepped up enforcement in South America drove some Hezbollah hard boyz activists to West Africa. As a result, the group’s illegal fund-raising efforts in the region - including protection rackets and threats - may be on the rise, said Levitt, a former FBI agent. "As we crack down on one part of the world, things will crop up elsewhere," he said.
| You can't squeeze the balloon, you have to pop it. |
In Koidu, indigenous Sierra Leoneans make up only about 35 of the roughly 200 legal diamond buyers, said Prince Saquee, chairman of the Diamond Dealers Association. Most of the rest are Lebanese, he said. Many in the State Department and officials at U.S. embassies in West Africa have long played down any West Africa conduits to Hezbollah, saying any contributions to Hezbollah appeared to be voluntary donations by individuals. Alex Yearsley, of London-based Global Witness, alleges that the CIA and FBI long had tried to publicly minimize links between conflict diamonds and Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaida. The U.S. security agents feared exposure of their own longtime links with Charles Taylor, the ousted Liberian leader who played a main role in West Africa’s insurgencies and blood diamond trade, Yearsley said.
| "Liars and thieves, all of them!" |
Taylor received CIA payments until January 2001, Yearsley claimed in a telephone interview. Diplomats and some independent experts have questioned some of Global Witness’s allegations about links between West Africa diamonds, al-Qaida and Hezbollah, saying they are short on proof.
| "What proof? The witnesses are all dead!" |
The fate of West Africa’s diamonds ultimately bridges faiths and rivalries: Sold by the Lebanese merchants, many of the gems are brokered via Jewish or Israeli traders in Antwerp, Belgium, and Tel Aviv, ending up in the United States. "To us, we don’t see Christian or Muslim or Jew," said Basma. "We’re businessmen."
"It's all blood money to us." |
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