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It's so easy to ignore what is happening in
other countries. We don't have to deal day to day
with the images of the people left behind. The
Winter, 2000 issue of Fader magazine,
basically a classy hip hop magazine, focuses on the
mother land - Africa - and tells of the civil war
in Sierra Leone and the thousands of dead and
thousands more mutilated. The signature of the
rebels is to cut off the hands of their victims,
leaving them both symbolically and literally
helpless. Many of the mutilated are children, as
are many of the rebels, themselves often abducted,
press-ganged and drugged by their leaders. And, all
for the control over the diamond industry, for
Sierra Leone is a major diamond-producing nation,
and one of the major causes of the conflict is
control of the diamond-producing areas. Our (the
US) gluttony for diamonds (the US accounts for
more than half of the world's diamond sales),
throws fuel on the fire of this internecine African
conflict. Guns-for-diamonds is a reality here, and
it is a further reality that the diamonds on
American wrists may have contributed to the
amputation of these Sierra Leonean hands. What's
more, hip-hop's current "bling bling" obsession
seems the more obscene for the fact that Sierra
Leone's population, who pay the ultimate price for
the sale o "conflict" diamonds, are the descendants
of enslaved Africans - part of the same diaspora
many MSN claim as their own. Take a look at these
children --
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Just an average day
in Sierra Leone.
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Left: A five-year-old shooting victim at
amputee camp. Top: A son helps his father
take a pull on a cigarette. Bottom: A 15
year-old daughter brandishing a rifle as a
member of the RUF. 
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Source: The FADER, 71 West 23rd
Street, Suite 903, New York, NY 10010, 212.741.
7100 www.thefader.com
* * *
Morality is contraband in war. - Mohandas K. Gandhi
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