Cleanliness or clarity

Recent months have seen a number of developments touching on the issue of “conflict diamonds,” the diamonds from countries where there are civil wars, paramilitary criminal gangs, or, in the extreme case, the total breakdown of the state.

The developments are mostly good ones. In Sierra Leone, which had known little but the rule of armed gangsters for more than a decade, a peaceful election confirmed Ahmed Tejan Kabbah as president and gave his party, the Peoples’ Party, a legislative majority. The elections were supervised by the United Nations, and peace was enforced by an international military force, but in Sierra Leone, that is still a vast improvement.

In Angola, the governing Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola — which has held on to its increasingly absurd name for the 25 years since the Portuguese empire shut up shop, a time during which the old Soviet empire and Cuba turned Angola into a client state — is at the table talking to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). UNITA rebels are filing into refugee camps, turning in weapons, and wondering where a meal might come from in the next week or so.

In Liberia, the government of Charles Taylor has taken the offensive against rebel factions in the northwestern part of the country. The Taylor government — which has poor relations with most other West African governments, and is under an arms embargo ordered by the United Nations Security Council — may be in sufficient trouble to listen to other West African governments and seek a negotiated settlement to civil strife in that country.

None of these developments has rid these countries of the situations that created the problem of conflict diamonds in the first place, but all three countries are unquestionably better places than they were a year or two ago. It has become possible to imagine a time when diamonds won’t be seen as the currency of civil strife any more.

That would be good for the world, and especially good for those long-suffering societies. But, taking an admittedly crass view, it would not be so good for the “clean” diamonds that other diamond-producing nations hoped to market at a premium. The day might come when the diamond industries in those countries will one day not profit from the misfortunes of other countries, and that the virtue of having stable and orderly societies will be its own reward.

The Canadian diamond industry has the advantage of being seen as a “clean” diamond producer, an advantage it will quite likely exploit whenever and wherever it can. If the conflict diamond issue subsides, however, the Canadian industry will need to compete on quality and the old commodity-producer’s advantage, cost.

Quality is one of nature’s blessings, and while she does not dole it out purely at random, a mine must take the stones it gets. She has been kind with per-carat values at both Ekati and Diavik, but it has to be recognized that high values per tonne are part of what makes those mines feasible. Not all the projects in the Territories have been as lucky. During the history of diamond exploration, alongside grade disappointments such as Tli Kwi Cho, there have been projects that did not offer high unit prices as well.

The quality element is crucial to creating a downstream diamond industry in Canada. Governments’ mercantilist impulses may have bred the hope of creating a cutting industry in the Territories, but it was nursed on the possibility of access to cheap, good-quality rough.

The need for that rough to be good raw material has not been sufficiently remarked on: there could be little hope that Yellowknife would compete with the bottom end of the cutting industry in India, so it would perforce have to take on the top-end cutting centres in New York, Antwerp and Tel Aviv. Poor-quality stones are of no use to high-end cutters — the value added to a poor stone does not repay the expense of good cutting. Only good material, at low prices, would give Yellowknife the advantage it sought.

Ekati and Diavik do have good material, and if there is a “branding” advantage for Canadian diamonds beyond their ethical standing, the top quality of the stones is it. The polar bear is an unusual choice for diamonds that come from the home of the barren-land grizzly, but should conflict ease and conflict diamonds become a thing of the past, it could do a turn as a symbol of clarity and brightness, with good effect.