The Lebanese Role

(via The Diamond World, 1981) David E Koskoff writes:
I have read the book several times. What interests me is the characters, traditions and cultures + the way diamonds are described and traded by locals and international markets + the role of immigrants in diamond producing countries. I was really touched by the violence and sufferings of Sierra Leoneans + the movie Blood Diamond added a bit more luster (I think) to the character (s) of the trade. It's educational.

Here is an excerpt from The Diamond World:
The Lebanese community, and principally the Koidu Lebanese, represent the alternate market in which the diggers and small dealers can sell their stones. The Lebanese are the dominant economic factor in Sierra Leone, and in much of the rest of West Africa. They first began to arrive in Sierra Leone in the mid-1890s. They arrived very poor, lacking skills or useful experience, ignorant of the country and of the native languages. They took to trading and shortly became established participants in the life of the country. Until the diamond rush of the 1950s, however, they remained a largely impoverished community, many of whom lived in the style of the black Africans, some of them marrying Sierre Leonean women.

At the time of the illicit diamond rush, the Lebanese were in a position to take a big chunk of the traffic, but the Mandingo were ahead of them. Until the late 1950s the Mandingo held their own against the Lebanese for control of the non-Diminco production, but gradually the Lebanese became the dominant factor. ‘They are firm and controlling people and they know the black,’ an Antwerp rough dealer explained to me. H.L. van der Laan, author of The Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone, believes that it has more to do with historical and economic circumstances: The Lebanese had greater access to finance; they could make bigger deals and could finance mining operations that were beyond the Mandingo traders. They also had greater rapport with the officials of the British colony of Sierra Leone, and after 1961 with the officials of the independent nation of Sierra Leone. Mandingos found it increasingly difficult to get or to renew buyer’s licences.

Today virtually all of the Lebanese are wealthy by Sierra Leone standards, and many of them are wealthy by American or European standards, living as well as is possible in an underdeveloped country, and refueling with regular vacations abroad. Though their wealth orginates in the diamonds, they have used their diamond money to gather control of every other aspect of the country’s economy, with the predictable result that most black Sierra Leoneans resent them. Where has the country’s diamond wealth gone? Any black man in Sierra Leone can tell you in a word: ‘Beirut’, a convenient oversimplication.

The diamond diggers and smaller African dealers are largely very tribal people, and though they may have ill will toward the Lebanese, still, they feel more comfortable dealing with Lebanese whom they have known for years than with a European. They are more likely to trust a Lebanese-especially those diggers who either began or are now operating illicitly. Every digger knows that he can bring his stones directly to the Diamond Corporation in Kenema for sale or for an offer, but few do, even though they know that their Lebanese buyer may sell their stones to the Diamond Corporation at a profit. Many of them are financially tied to a particular Lebanese, and most of the rest are tied to one by a sense of trust.

In the days when the Diamond Corporation was the only exporter, a Lebanese could tell the buyer if he didn’t get his price, he would take the stone away. The buyer understood what that meant: that the stone would be smuggled across to Monrovia and sold on the outside market to a competing buyer—the stone would be traded outside De Beers’ control. But that kind of talk did not make much sense coming from a native Kono digger. The result was that the Diamond Corporation did pay the Lebanese a better price than the African—and may still.

Koidu, the commercial center for the Kono district and the Yengema lease area, and center of the Lebanese diamond traffic, is a busy, out-of-repair backwater city of tin shacks and shanties and scattered masonry structures that house the Lebanese-owned stores. In Koidu everything turns on bribery, from electricity and telephone service to the more conventional corruptions of police. Diamond dealing has always been illegal in Koidu.

The Koidu trade is much less active today than it was in the raucous fifties and sixties, but is still very far from dead. Much of the trade is ‘licit’ from Sierra Leone’s point of view—except for the fact that its mere existence is illicit. It involves buying the diamonds illicitly mined in neighboring Guinea, which are smuggled from Guinea into Sierra Leone. Koidu is on a convenient road link to the diamondifeous area of Guinea; it is closer to Guinea than Monrovia, where the Guineans would otherwise to; there are more buyers—and thus more competition—in Koidu than in Monrovia; and the Koidu Lebanese are officially unofficially (or unofficially officially) permitted to pay for Guinean stones in US dollars (also the official unit of currency in Liberia). Many of the Koidu dealers end up smuggling stones to Monrovia principally to get dollars with which to purchase more Guinean stones. The Guineans are fond of Liberian currency, more than of leones, let alone of sylis (the Guinean unit of currency).

Jamil, charming and colorful, shrewd and hardworking, has risen to the top of the heap. He is an Afro-Lebanese (his mother is from the politically important Temme tribe) and an ostensible Muslim, though not one thta would pass any mullah’s muster. He drinks liquor and works on Friday.

Jamil started, so it goes, as a lorry driver involved in small scale diamond smuggling, then became bigger and with the aid of a ‘handyman’ was able to rope lesser illicit dealers into his arena. Out of it came an empire that extends to most aspects of the Sierra Leone economy, and to all of the seamier aspects of it. President Stevens is generally believed to have interests in many of Jamil’s ventures, and Jamil is reputed to enjoy a second-to-none influence with the head of state. This is the kind of legend that revolves around one or more people in every African country; in the case of Sierra Leone’s Jamil, it may have some truth to it.

In 1959 Jamil was arrested, sentenced to six months in jail, and banished from the Kono diamond district for unlawful possession of diamonds—no disgrace in Sierra Leone, where diamond offenses have always been viewed ad tut-tut matters. In 1965 he was rehabilitated, issued a diamond dealer’s license, and permitted to return to Kono. There he quickly rose to the top as the partisan of the prime minister, Sir Albert Margai. When Margai used the threat of expulsion from Kono to raise campaign contributions from the Lebanese, Jamil was one of the bag men, assessing contributions on an ability to pay basis. Meanwhile, Henneh Shamel, Jamil’s main rival, cast his lot with Stevens and the opposition party, and with Steven’s success, Jamil faded rapidly into obscurity, while Shamel rode high and ostentatiously to the front as the king of the diamond dealers.

In November of 1969 an SLST shipment of one month’s diamond production was waylaid at the small Hastings Airport south of Freetown by armed thieves who made off with $3.4 million worth of stones. People high up in company security had to have been involved. Shamel was arrested and charged with having masterminded the theft, but at trial he was acquitted. The presiding judge criticized the prosecution for having presented its case badly. Two days later Shamel left the country.

Shamel was declared a prohibited immigrant and barred from returning to Sierra Leone. Thereafter, Jamil began working his way into Steven’s good graces, and has continually improved his position since. Insofar as the country’s diamond policy is concerned, he probably has more input than anyone else in Sierra Leone. His allocation of the Dominco production is likely to increase—at least so long as President Stevens remains in office—to the extent that it is advantageous for Jamil to have it increase. He was almost certainly responsible for the government decision in 1974 to make export licenses available to others than the Diamond Corporation. He became a licensed exporter, but so long as the export duty remained pegged at 7.5 percent he exported almost nothing through official channels. Within ten days after the duty was reduced to 2.5 percent in 1978, Jamil surged past the Diamond Corporation to become the number one alluvial-scheme exporter.

Jamil’s considerable experience has made him a thoroughly competent rough evaluator, and he now has a network of trading and diamond cutting contacts in Antwerp, but at this point he is more of a financier than a diamantaire himself. He is the godfather of the Lebanese diamond traders, most of whom conduct their diamond businesses to greater or lesser degrees as his agent. Any Lebanese who becomes big enough works for Jamil or gets out. One of his Koidu operatives explained why: ‘He’s got the cash, the guts, and the power. He gets people to cooperate with him.’ Jamil doesn’t have to use threats of violence to secure cooperation (though many claim that he will); he influences people through matters such as who gets a renewal of his diamond dealer’s license or a permit to reside within Kono. Most of the Lebanese export under Jamil’s license, sending their goods either to Jamil’s Antwerp man, Sulaimen, or to other buyers. Sulaimen get the biggest chunk. He too is an Afro-Lebanese and brother to one of Jamil’s high-ranking lieutanants.

The Lebanese Role (continued)