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Conflict diamonds from Zimbabwe - Briefing Note
Richard Saunders
September 2009

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1. Introduction: 'Conflict Diamonds' in Zimbabwe

Since 2005, Zimbabwe has reportedly been home to one of the world's most important 'diamond rushes'. In successive and increasingly chaotic waves of influx, private title holders were succeeded by tens of thousands of informal and illegal miners, state mining companies and finally state security personnel and organized syndicates, to exploit the alluvial diamond fields of Chief Chiadzwa's area in Marange District in south-eastern Zimbabwe. Four years later, however, the promise of the apparently vast resource seems a broken one. In the wake of spiraling cycles of violence associated with the sealing-off of the area by state security forces, and successive attacks upon illegal diamond miners, rival syndicates, rough diamond traders, vendors and surrounding local communities, it is likely that hundreds have died with untold more left wounded, traumatized - and poor. Meanwhile, the main beneficiaries of diamond fields remain hidden from view, with only a relatively small production of Marange rough diamonds reported in official state statistics.

In Zimbabwe, which has seen an extended period of economic decline and political turmoil since the emergence of concerted opposition to President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF ten years ago, the rapid emergence of diamonds as a new and valuable source of accumulation has fuelled not economic recovery, but instead a violent and spiraling competition for resources that has wide ranging repercussions for local communities and the national political economy alike. With both legal and illegal mining increasingly under the control of state institutions and security agencies broadly aligned with ZANU-PF, Marange's diamonds stand as a potential point of division as the country moves tentatively forward under a new Inclusive Government formed in 2009.

Marange's diamonds have emerged as 'conflict diamonds' in a period of intense political and social conflict inside and outside the state. In Zimbabwe, conflict diamonds have fuelled not rebel groups, but rather the militarization of the state from within. The privileged access to this secreted resource by state security agencies has enabled a degree of autonomy and power to the security forces and those politically-linked to them in the multi-party state, to the detriment of electoral sovereignty and democratic government. In the struggle for political ascendancy, the Marange diamond fields have injected new elements of violence into the political realm by sustaining the capacity for political violence by partisan interests controlling the trade. Violence has also evidently involved the victimization of local communities surrounding the diamond fields, as well as those people involved in the burgeoning illegal and informal trade in diamond panning and trading, who have come to the area from across Zimbabwe and further afield in desperate search of fortune. Both have been subject to waves of extreme violence and intimidation at the hands of state security forces and others. A key finding of most human rights reports focused on Marange in the past three years is the extent and violent brutality of human rights abuses related to the exploitation of diamonds, mostly perpetrated by state security agencies.

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