Diamonds sharpen Zimbabwe power struggle
3rd October 2010
The military’s control over the vast Marange fields — the source of a quarter of the world’s diamonds — has become an important factor in the future of Zimbabwe.
The eight-member Joint Operational Command (JOC) of military and police leaders earns revenues from the mines through the control of companies.
The campaign group Global Witness says smugglers also sell on stones dug by forced labour gangs overseen by the military. The group’s researchers say locals are made to mine them by gun-wielding soldiers.
The diamonds are smuggled over the Mozambican border, where they are traded on the black market.
The revenues then return to the military.
Zimbabweans are lucky they are no longer suffering under the boot of the racist white former regime Thank God for the U.N. and the international community, or who knows what kind of hell they would be living in now.