"I'm sick of writing about victims," says the agonised journalist (Jennifer Connelly) in the film Blood Diamond. "It's nothing new; it's not enough to make it stop." She is surely right: the majority of western coverage will focus on the "humanitarian" disaster; but pictures of thousands queuing for food tell us next to nothing about what is driving these conflicts.
Yet, it is easy to slip from the fantasy that "we" are the solution (feeding all those victims) to the belief (which has elements of truth) that we are the problem. There may be narcissism in both positions, a narcissism that is neatly encapsulated by a film about Sierra Leone starring a concerned white journalist going head-to-head with a cynical white mercenary (Leonardo DiCaprio).
It was reports of al-Qaida's involvement in west African diamond trading that helped put "conflict diamonds" on the map, as Africa's security suddenly seemed linked to security in the west. Drawing on work by the NGO, Global Witness, in particular, the film attempts to deepen our understanding of Sierra Leone's war by broadening the category of "evil" people, from the greedy Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels to the greedy mercenaries and western diamond traders. It may be a step in the right direction, but is it enough?
It is not just mercenaries and rebels who may be dazzled by diamonds. Although researchers at the World Bank, in particular, have fingered "greed" as the key source of contemporary civil wars, even Sierra Leone's war cannot be properly understood as the expression of greed: in fact, an exclusive focus on diamonds risks reinventing some of the fundamental political and social grievances that drove the conflict. The reason that a small group of RUF rebels were able to cross from Liberia in 1991, and displace up to half the population of Sierra Leone, was that they found a society deeply divided by grievances, notably the collapse of a state that had once provided a moderate level of health and education.
Young people felt oppressed by the lack of job and educational opportunities and by a system of local chieftaincies - bolstered by British colonialists and now being revived in post-war "reconstruction" - that tended to impose arbitrary justice and exorbitant fines. Externally-encouraged devaluation had fuelled hyper-inflation. Collapsing civil service salaries were fuelling corruption (and these salaries are still being pegged by World Bank and IMF officials suspicious of the state). Privatisation, also still very much on the international agenda, had led only to the creation of oligopolies run by the cronies of President Siaka Stevens (who ruled from 1968 to 1985), and the funds in the national treasury were collapsing. In these circumstances, diamonds actually served, for a while, as a kind of safety-valve for the frustrations of young people.
When rebellion broke out, the Sierra Leonean state was so corrupt, so run-down and so depleted of resources that it could not even fund an army to suppress the rebels. Many of the young and virtually untrained soldiers shared similar grievances to the rebels, and they proceeded to imitate the rebels' looting and diamond-mining, often avoiding armed confrontation with the "enemy" and sometimes even selling weapons to the rebels. That was the context in which South African mercenaries, in the form of Executive Outcomes, were invited to take on the rebels, in association with local civil defence groups known as "the kamajors".
The overall impression from the film reflects media accounts at the time: in a series of harrowing scenes, a bunch of drug-fuelled and greedy rebels are shown attacking innocent villagers and city-dwellers, stealing and indoctrinating children, and brutalising conscripted diamond miners. Yet, unusually for Hollywood, there are hints of something more complex.
"No one has ever given you respect," a rebel leader explains to his boy soldiers as he brandishes a rifle. "But with this in your hand, they will fear you." My own research suggests that the desire for respect and recognition was a major driving force in the violence. The hardships and humiliations of peacetime and wartime fed into a desire to compel "respect", and to exercise power over powerless civilians. This included hardships within the government army and its offshoots. As one former hostage of the rogue army faction, the West Side Boys, explained:
They were angry with the system. Truly, there has been misrule with those at the top amassing wealth and using the young people [for example, as hired thugs at elections] ... One way they tried to compensate some people was to put them in the military. But even within the army, they feel they are not treated fairly, not receiving sacks of rice, and feel they are being used or bullied... When they find themselves in the bush, they inflict the same injustice on those under them that they are complaining about ... They're finding worth, attention and respect ...
Villagers were often forced to applaud their attackers, and any hint of condemnation or criticism was punished in the most vicious ways. The more that rebels and other armed groups were demonised and criminalised, the more vindictive they became. Finding a way back from this most vicious of circles is not easy. But the film offers tantalising glimpses of insight.
The most important message is that "evil" is not fixed or finite. The main Sierra Leonean character (Djimon Hounsou), a fisherman who tracks down his captured and deeply disoriented son, tries to mend the family ties the rebels have severed: "I know they made you do bad things, but you are not a bad boy." Even the main rebel "baddie" at one point explains why he wants to get diamonds and leave the country: "You think I am a devil, but only because I have lived in hell."
After the reforms of the army and police that were promoted by the British in Sierra Leone, one young man said he had wanted to get into the army but had been denied because he lacked the right connections. But he was optimistic, nonetheless:
The soldiers now have pride in the job, because they have been given the basic things ... They are proud. They have mobile phones. If you deprive him, he will become undisciplined ... You can be naturally peaceful, but the situation can make you behave like an animal. People can change. The environment is the thing.
Sustained security sector reform will be vital - not just in Sierra Leone and neighbouring Liberia, but also in a range of other beleaguered countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Otherwise, poor conditions will continue to feed into poor behaviour. More "hell" will make more "devils".
The fisherman's fatherly words also point to a delicate balance when confronting violence of many kinds: the need to condemn atrocities without making them worse by humiliating or dehumanising those responsible. One aid worker with ActionAid discussed a peace campaign called "Never Again", in which that agency was active:
When you go to ex-combatants and say you must demonstrate remorse, they will kill you. You have to time it. As far as he is concerned, he has done the right thing ... When they have evidence of their colleagues being reintegrated and their colleagues have not been in jail and have schools, jobs, they can use that as a basis to trust. So they can talk more openly and feel remorse.
Spurred on by human rights organisations in particular, the international community has often prioritised condemnation and prosecution. But those who already feel themselves to be victims will need for more positive encouragement and opportunities, if they are to feel the kind of remorse that does not feed into further violence.
In the town of Bo, a major diamond-trading centre, one local aid worker explained to me how he secured his food store and prevented his store guards from defecting to the rebels or the government army. He said he did it by paying a small wage, but also by providing some medical care, food and spending time with them, knowing their names: "Trust and confidence - it's not much money they want. But when they know you have no trust or care for them, all they want to do is make money on the side."
Trying to explain "the longing or greed for good things", the psychoanalyst Joan Riviere said, "they stand as proof to us, if we get them, that we are ourselves good, and full of good, and so are worthy of love, or respect and honour in return." If the "human right" to jobs and health and education is loudly proclaimed and yet, at the same time, people are consistently and repeatedly deprived of these things, what message does that send? What does it say about the degree to which these people are treated - and even regarded - as human? That message can, in itself, be a powerful seed for violence.
"Since I am a dog," as Shylock put it in The Merchant of Venice, "beware my fangs." Greed is part of the explanation for modern conflicts, and Blood Diamond dramatically illustrates the point; but greed is also something which itself needs to be explained.
