Word: diamond
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...buyer is a diamond dealer, registered with the Zambian government. He will drive back across the border where there is no border, just thick bush, scrubland and cattle trails. Even if he passes one of the rare police posts, he will just drive through and wave to the guards, perhaps give them a cigarette. He doesn't have to declare the diamonds. All he has to do is go to the Ministry of Mines in Zambia and get an export permit. He makes up a name and address of the "supplier" in Angola. The diamonds are now instantly legal...
...Diamonds may be forever, but for producers in Africa they can be a curse or a blessing. They have taken at least one country, Botswana, from rags to riches. In terms of value, half the world's diamonds come from South Africa, Botswana or Namibia. The control of the diamond fields in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo has always been at the heart of dark and bloody civil wars in those nations as well. But Angola is a case unto itself, a land where a hijacked diamond industry continues to feed the fires of misery even...
...combat that link, De Beers, which controls 70% of the world's diamond trade, has spent the fall implementing a new set of policies designed to help keep the hard-earned money of newly engaged couples from ending up in the hands of the rebels. This fall the company has reaffirmed its commitment to trying to stop the trade and even added a bit of a spin: a sense that the boycott was aimed directly at the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA), the rebel group led by Jonas Savimbi that has been a target of largely...
...easy to stop the trade. UNITA has already amassed a fortune from illicit diamond sales, enough to continue its hostilities virtually indefinitely. Diamond analysts calculate that UNITA made more than $2.5 billion from diamond sales between 1992 and 1997, and last year collected at least $225 million. U.N. researchers and human-rights lobbying groups put the figure far higher. By any estimation, Savimbi's 40,000-strong UNITA must be the richest rebel movement in the world...
...evoked maturity beyond even the best of his recordings. The concert began with a tried and true favorite--"Gold to Me." It is hard not to be charmed by Harper's singing. He makes every breath count, every word becomes signified. If we could hear the sound of a diamond in the rough, that would be Harper's voice, so close to perfection that the imperfections hardly seem to matter and conversely add character and integrity. But this is not to say that Harper's voice is reminiscent of the feline mewls of Dylan. When his voice breaks...