ABSTRACT
Long dominated by a single company - De Beers - the diamond industry changed very little throughout most of the twentieth century. It created great wealth for governments but also empowered dictators, and by the end of the twentieth century, was buying diamonds from some of the most brutal non-state guerrilla armies in the history of Africa. Beyond the much advertised image of its primary product, little was known outside the industry about the unregulated pipeline that carried billions of dollars worth of diamonds each year from their volcanic resting places in Africa, Russia and South America through Antwerp, Tel Aviv and Bombay to glittering showrooms in Paris, London and New York. During the 1990s, a diverse range of ‘non-state actors’ would turn this comfortable and highly lucrative industry inside out, some of them destroying lives, communities and countries in the process, others attempting to stop them.
