ANGOLA: Illegal diamond sales funding UNITA war effort

Black market diamond sales are financing the Angolan rebel movement UNITA's dramatically improved military capability, regional analysts say. According to Christine Gordon, a London-based diamond specialist, since 1992 UNITA has earned between US $2.5-3 billion from sales of rough diamonds from mines it controls. "You can fund a very spectacular war with US $3 billion," she told IRIN. Despite the government's recapture last year of the main diamond-producing centres in Angola's northwest Lunda provinces, UNITA still holds mines in the north of the country close to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border, and more significantly, mines around Mavinga in the southeastern province of Kuando Kubango. "A tin full of diamonds will buy you a lot of new military equipment," Richard Cornwell of the Johannesburg-based Institute of Security Studies told IRIN. "Diamonds are mainly funding this new rearmament of UNITA." Angola's diamonds are high-quality and easily distinguishable. But UNITA has been able to circumvent a UN embargo imposed last year, aimed at the rebel movement, which bans the sale of diamonds without a government certificate. A UNITA cross-border network smuggles diamonds to traders in Zambia, Namibia and the DRC, for onward sale to diamond-cutting centres in Israel - among others - rather than the open market. "Once a diamond is cut, you cannot tell its origin," Cornwell explains. "We have heard of cases of dealers being financed through middlemen in London." The independent Zambian 'The Post' newspaper reported on Tuesday that the western town of Mongu, across the border from southeastern Angola, was becoming a major diamond trading centre with stones being sold openly. "The Zambian government is certainly turning a blind eye to it," Brown alleges. With the UN embargo still in force, the trade in UNITA diamonds is illegal - "but only if they catch you," Brown says. As many analysts believe, "the actual implementation of the embargo has not been thought through," she adds. See also IRIN-SA report, 'ANGOLA: UNITA acquires major conventional weaponry'. Further information is also available in an IRIN background report on the UNITA .