Texas A&M University in College Station Texas,¹ has been conducting research into so-called “select agents,” i.e. biological agents that the government thinks can be turned into biological weapons. The university’s efforts are part of an $18 billion federal program to develop vaccines.

On April 20, 2007 the Centers for Disease Control — the CDC — issued a cease-and-desist order for Texas A&M’s work with the Brucella bacterium.² On June 30, the order was expanded to include all work with select agents and toxins.³ The CDC then conducted a five-day comprehensive inspection of the A&M labs and issued a report⁴ on August 31 listing numerous flaws in oversight, working conditions, and security, including missing vials of select agents, unauthorized research with recombinant DNA, access to the lab by unauthorized personnel, and exposures of lab workers to bacteria that cause brucellosis and Q fever that went unreported to the CDC.

Based on the comprehensive inspection, the CDC has extended the suspension of all select agent and toxin work at A&M until all the issues identified in its 21-page report are addressed.

On September 6, Texas A&M’s interim president, Eddie Davis, held a press conference to address the report.⁵ As to how the universities “select agent” program got into trouble, he said:

“I would tell you that it is our assessment that it we have not had the level of expertise in terms of plants and the complex processes required to run such a select agent program and we’re putting that in place with new personnel.”

On the eve of the press conference, the Sunshine Project, a small non-profit organization based in Austin, Texas, that is dedicated to biological weapons control, released documents it had just obtained through a Texas Public Records Act request.⁶ The documents indicated that a flood had occurred in one of the labs on campus.

In a phone interview, Edward Hammond, Director of the Sunshine Project, described what he knows so far about the incident:

“It was obviously a serious flood that happened. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of information. But what we know was that on the twenty-second of February, a biosafety level [BSL] 3 lab that was handling biological weapons agents flooded at the university. It flooded so badly — the water came from above — that the integrity of the lab was clearly compromised. A number of seals were broken. Water infiltrated into the lab from outside.

What’s really perplexing about this is that although the flood occurred on the twenty-second of February, there’s no record of any safety inspection of the lab until seven weeks later, the 16th of April, which probably not co-incidentally was the same day that federal agents arrived on the Texas A&M campus to probe their research program. So we have this nearly two-month delay between a flood that compromised the integrity of a laboratory handling biological weapons agents and any apparent action to assess the damage and get about the business of fixing it.”

University President Davis indicated at the press conference that he was hearing about the flood for the first time then and there.

Davis’ ignorance was no surprise to Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of Trivalley CAREs⁷ in Livermore, California, whose organization has sued to keep the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from opening its own BSL-3 facility.

“This is both a national problem and a specific problem at Livermore Lab,” she said in a telephone interview.

“Historically, the manager for Livermore Labs has been the University of California and historically, the University of California has known very little about what actually goes on at the laboratory. I would not be surprised at all to find out in the future that the [new] UC-Bechtel management is in the same position vis-a vis the Livermore biofacility that the Texas A&M President was in respect to the Texas A&M lab, which is they don’t know.”

Representatives of the CDC declined to be interviewed for this story. But in email to this writer, CDC spokesman Von Roebuck wrote that “[a]s part of the select agent rules, labs or entities that are certified are required to immediately report any potential lab exposures, releases or loss of a select agent. Historically, the entities in the program have alerted the CDC to these.”

The Texas A&M situation points out what can happen if the entity inadvertently or intentionally fails to report, and its managing institution –often a university is kept in the dark about what is going on at the lab.

Edward Hammond’s research has turned up similar problems at other labs. He cited a number of exposures to agents including anthrax, plague, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, at the University of New Mexico, the University of Chicago, and the University of California at Berkeley.

At the press conference, Texas A&M President Davis said, “I think it’s fair to say that the review that was done at Texas A&M in July was very intense, very thorough and very deep. My expectation is that other institutions, under that same level of review, would probably have findings that could be reportable to the CDC.”

Marylia Kelley questions the need for all the high-containment biolabs that are sprouting up across the country, and says money is behind the building boom:

“This country is building way too much biowarfare agent research capacity at other sites in addition to Livermore Lab. Tri-Valley CAREs believes that what is needed is an overarching national assessment of our biodefense capabilities, to look at whether, in fact, we have any deficiencies in our capabilities. The Bush Administration has thrown about $36 Billion on the table and initiated what is in fact a multiagency feeding frenzy to get part of this $36 Billion to build all these facilities willy-nilly across the country.”

Texas A&M hopes to have its labs reopened by the end of 2007.

Sources

¹Google Maps

²A copy of the order is in the Texas A&M files of the Sunshine-Project at http://sunshine-project.org/

³Ibid.

⁴A copy of the report is in the Texas A&M files of the Sunshine-Project

⁵This writer attended by telephone and recorded the event.

⁶The documents are posted on the website of the Sunshine Project

⁷The Tri-Valley CAREs website

The Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL), a premier nuclear weapons research facility, is unique among America’s national labs in that it is in an urban area. It is in Livermore, California, cheek-by-jowl to homes built across the street. Moreover, Livermore itself is part of San Francisco’s East Bay region. Seven million people, including this writer, live within a 50-mile radius of the city. Airplanes heading in and out of San Francisco International, Oakland International, and Minetta International (San Jose) fly over it daily.

Scientists at the lab perform experiments with plutonium, highly-enriched uranium, and tritium (radioactive hydrogen) in an earthquake zone. There are three major seismic faults in the region: the Calaveras, the Hayward, on which thousands of homes and businesses sit — this fault bisects the Cal Berkeley football stadium — and the famous San Andreas Fault, which is west of the San Francisco Bay, but still capable of causing tremendous damage to the East Bay region if it quakes in the “right” place.

LLNL is the rectangular area between S. Vasco Rd. and Greenville Rd (upper right of this image).¹

Closer to home, the Las Positas fault zone is less than 200 feet from the Livermore Lab site boundary. The Greenville fault caused a quake in 1980 that created a 120-meter discontinuous crack in the earth near Livermore Lab’s Hazardous and Radioactive Waste Storage yard. A laser slipped off its supports during the quake, triggering an internal tritium leak². Up until that time, the Greenville fault was not listed as an active fault, which goes to show that a future catastrophe could come from a heretofore unrecognized source.

Likelihood of intense shaking³

Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)⁴, a local organization that has been monitoring the lab’s activities for more than 20 years, says this:

“The Department of Energy has done a very inadequate job of the addressing the earthquake risks. They’ve postulated a ground motion that is less than what earthquake experts believe is possible. So we’re in a situation where if an earthquake cooperates with the Department of Energy’s analysis and doesn’t go outside the boundaries the Department of Energy has looked at, then the results will likely be no catastrophic accident. However, Nature being Nature and doing what she will and not necessarily paying any attention to the Department of Energy’s calculations, if there’s a ground motion that’s greater than or different than what the Department of Energy has calculated, there is the possibility for a very serious accident and a large release of radioactive material.” ⁵

Probability of Big Quake⁶

LLNL’s neighbors are adamantly against the lab’s proposal to build a BSL-3 high-security biotechnology facility on the property. BSL stands for biohazard safety level. There are four biohazard safety levels: 1-4. The number refers to the types of procedures, precautions, and equipment that laboratory personnel must use when working on organisms at the lab. By extension, the number also refers to the types of bioagents that can be present in the lab. BSL-3 is a high-containment level, where scientists work with potentially life-threatening microorganisms such as live anthrax and bubonic plague. BSL-4 facilities harbor microorganisms that cause diseases for which there is no known cure, such as the Ebola and Marburg viruses.⁷ So one can readily see why a community would not be eager to have a BSL-3 or BSL-4 facility in its midst.

In addition to the obvious concerns about accidental or deliberate discharge of dangerous microorganisms into the community, people against the BSL-3 lab at Lawrence Livermore cite additional threats posed to world peace by experimenting with potentially deadly organisms in a facility that also conducts classified nuclear weapons research.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention⁸ (BWC), to which the United States is a party, permits biological research that is prophylactic or defensive in nature, e.g., research to develop vaccines and antidotes. The trouble is, to develop these vaccines and antidotes, one must first to discover how the bioagents work. That knowledge opens up the realm of illegal offensive research.

Moreover, research is more likely to be deemed suspicious when it is done under the auspices of a military agency such as the Department of Defense, or an agency with heavy military connections, such as the Department of Energy or the Department of Homeland Security, than when it is done by an agency such as the Department of Health and Human Services or the Environmental Protection Agency. Openness to inspection is a confidence-building measure that supports the BWC. But inspections are not likely to be allowed if the biological research is on the same premises as classified nuclear weapons research. The suspicion such research, and the refusal to permit inspection, creates in other countries could lead to the proliferation of bioweapons, and thus threaten not only US national security but the security of the entire human race.

The thought that the United States could be pursuing illegal bioweapons, in the name of needing to know what the terrorists might do, is not idle speculation. Dr. Robert Gould, M.D., a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility⁹, has expressed concern that the US government wants to genetically modify anthrax. “This is a threat of developing offensive capabilities,” he said, “because you’re modifying an organism to be resistant to antibiotics and therefore increasing its capability to be a weapon.”¹⁰ The lab already works with dead anthrax in its BSL-2 facility.

For the time being, the Department of Energy’s plans for a BSL-3 lab at Lawrence Livermore have been halted. On October 16, 2006, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of environmentalists in a three-year-old lawsuit filed by Tri-Valley CAREs and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. The court held that the Energy Department’s environmental impact study was inadequate because it omitted any study of security risks and terrorist threats to the facility on the basis that such an analysis was not required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The 9th Circuit remanded the environmental review back to the Department of Energy for further analysis on terrorist risks.¹¹

In a press release announcing the decision, Tri-Valley CAREs staff attorney Loulena Miles said, “Now the agency can not merely cry national security and avoid hard questions concerning environmental impacts and terrorist risks.”¹²

But the victory may be only temporary. The decision was marked “Not for Publication” and a footnote states, “This disposition is not appropriate for publication and may not be cited to or by the courts of this circuit except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.¹³ It, therefore, cannot be used as precedent in other lawsuits.

Secondly, in its six-page decision, the Court stated that, “[r]eview of agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. section 706(2), is ‘highly deferential.’ Although Tri-Valley raised some substantial questions about the validity of DOE’s substantive conclusions, this Court may not substitute its judgment for the reviewing agency’s. NEPA is a procedural statute that does not mandate particular results, but simply provides the necessary process to ensure that federal agencies take a hard look at the environmental consequences of their actions.”¹⁴

DOE, undaunted by this temporary setback in Livermore, is pushing its plans to build a BSL-4 lab in the nearby city of Tracy, on the northern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, some of the best farmland on earth.

References
¹ Map Image: Livermore, CA. Google Earth.
² Phone interview with Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs for R.I.S.E. Program: Livermore: More Nuclear Bombs. The final program is available here
³ Image: Likelihood of intense shaking. Source: Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country: Your Handbook for the San Francisco Bay Region / U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 15, 2005
⁴ Tri-Valley CAREs
⁵ Phone interview with Marylia Kelley
⁶ Image: Probability of Big Quake. Source: Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country: Your Handbook for the San Francisco Bay Region / U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 15, 2005
⁷ Marylia Kelley & Jay Coghlan, “Mixing bugs and bombs.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2003, p 26.
⁸ The text of the BWC is here
⁹ Physicians for Social Responsibility
¹⁰ Kellia Ramares, “As Bush threatens Iraq with Nukes, U.S. ramps up its own biowarfare research.” Originally published in Online Journal, January, 2003. Now available here
¹¹ Press Release: “Community Groups Hail Victory, Court Grants Demand For Environmental Review Before Bio-Warfare Agent Research Facility Opens At Livermore Lab,” October 16, 2006.
¹² Ibid., p 1.
¹³ Tri-Valley CAREs, et al. v. Department of Energy, et al., p 1. link
¹⁴ Ibid., p 4.

Like so many African cities, Brazzaville’s history is one of imperialism and being dominated by European culture. The Portugese controlled the area as part of the slave trade until the late nineteenth century. The area then came under the influence of the French, who made it a protectorate and renamed it Middle Congo. Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza negotiated a treaty with King Teke on behalf of the French and the village of Nkuna was re-named in Brazza’s honour. It became the capital and the central city in French Equatorial Africa.

In 1944, as French influence in the region ebbed and Free French forces defeated the forces from France, Charles DeGaulle agreed to a meeting between leaders of French colonies in Africa, Free French political leaders, and French colonialists. The meeting, known as the Brazzaville Conference, resulted in the Brazzaville Declaration.

That declaration granted unprecedented rights to Africans living in French Equatorial Africa, including a statement that the French Empire would remain united; semi-autonomous assemblies, a form of self-government, would represent each colony; citizens colonies would have the same rights as French citizens. And be allowed to vote in French parliamentary elections; and the native population would be eligible for employment in the French colonial public service. The Brazzaville Declaration also began the establishment of economic reforms to reduce the worst effects of the exploitative system that had developed along with French colonialism.

While the results of the Brazzaville Declaration are not as positive as the declaration makes them sound, and western paternalism continues in the region to this day, they marked a major turning point in both French imperialism in Africa and African history.

In 1946, DeGaulle granted full French citizenship to the members of all colonies in French Equatorial Africa as recognition of the important role the area had played during World War Two. In 1959 Congo became fully autonomous and in 1960 it gained full independence. Three years later a period of unrest centred around the labour movement removed the president. A civilian government was then instituted and lasted until 1968.

In 1968 a military coup overthrew the government and over two decades of one-party rule, leaning heavily to Marxist-Leninist policy followed. The Soviet Union played heavily in the politics of the region until its collapse.

In the early 1990′s multi-party rule was established, but the 1993 elections were marked by violence and the 1997 elections brought a four month civil conflict that destroyed much of the capital of Brazzaville. In 1998, unrest broke out again and the Brazzaville-Pointe Noire railroad, which was economically crucial to the country and especially to the capital of Brazzaville. Many civilians were killed during the unrest and refugees from the fighting reached crisis levels. In 1999 the Congolese government began meeting with several rebel groups that had formed.

In the early 2000′s, former president Lissouba and ex-Prime Minister Kolelas were tried for treason in absentia. In 2002 the people of Congo ratified a new constitution and the country began repairing itself. In 2003, southern rebel groups agreed to a final peace accord.

Brazzaville, and the rest of the Republic of Congo, has been relatively peaceful since the ratification of the constitution, but the peace is tenuous at best. The problem of un-repatriated refugees represents a humanitarian crisis and is the source of some unrest.

In 2003, a survey found Brazzaville the worst city in the world in which to live. It finished 215 out of 215 candidate cities, below Baghdad which placed 213. Nearby Pointe Noire finished 212 in the survey which, according to the BBC, “was based on an evaluation of 39 quality of life criteria for each city including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport and other public services.”

Parasol in Pointe Noire. Photo credit: FredR

A related survey done around the same time found Brazzaville to be the sixth most dangerous city, which is not surprising since it is the capital of a country that has an estimated 40,000 weapons in the hands of civilians. The population of the country is under 4 million and half of that population is under 15 years of age, making that amount of weaponry in the hands of civilians a major threat to stability.

AIDS is a major killer in Africa, and the Republic of Congo is no exception. The pandemic has had devastating effects on young adults, reducing the median age of the population to 16 years old. Because it affects the immune system, those suffering from AIDS are more likely to contract and be unable to fight off other diseases. Malaria and tuberculosis are rampant in and around Brazzaville.

A lack of proper infrastructure for sewage and trash removal has left Brazzaville with some serious health issues. Water borne diseases are common in children and among adults. Diarrheal disease are common and fresh drinking water is often unavailable, which further spreads the illness.

AIDS and other illness has lead to a shortage of people of working age. In a major city like Brazzaville, that leaves infrastructure crumbling, schools and hospitals short-staffed. It has greatly increased the stresses on systems that were already struggling from years of internal strife. Children are often orphaned and in the poorest sections of the city, it is not unusual to see children as young as eight trying to raise their younger siblings or look after their sick parents.

Nor is the AIDs pandemic the only major issue facing the population of Brazzaville. The Republic of Congo depends heavily on oil money to keep its economy rolling. It took out massive loans in the past, using oil production as collateral, to back the loans. While the current high oil prices are providing somewhat of an economic boom, Congolese oil fields are beginning to run out. When the oil ceases to flow the economy will be cut by more than half.

Next to oil, logging is the second largest portion on the economy. That is threatened both by global warming which, combined with wood used for cooking fuel, and tracts of land being cleared for agriculture, is causing desertification. The excess heat now related to climate change by many experts has caused a seasonal shift that has changed the timing and amount of rains, making agriculture difficult. The agricultural subsidy regimes of the US and European Union have also made it uneconomical for farmers to grow food crops while pushing the price of food up for those living in cities such as Brazzaville.

The poverty, disease and hunger, combined with the easy availability of weapons, a history soaked in the blood of colonialism and unrest in neighbouring countries, could easily lead to further political instability. That would drag the Republic of Congo and the city of Brazzaville back into the cycle of violence that it has tried for so long to escape.

On Patrol in Mogadishu, Somalia, 1992. Photo: RichPix, via Creative Commons

Somalia first came into the common North American consciousness in the 1980′s. The news was suddenly featuring footage of a lawless country with no government to speak of. There was a civil war that still hasn’t truly ended and in the chaos that followed the overthrow of military dictator Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia became a failed state. Warlords and their makeshift armies patrolled the streets in trucks. Child soldiers carried AK-47 rifles openly and defiantly.


The world reacted by sending peacekeepers. The United States and Canada were part of that force. The US pulled out after a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down. A few Canadian troops tortured a man accused of theft to death, leading to Canada pulling its forces out of Somalia and a fairly major shake-up within the Canadian military.

With the peacekeeping forces gone, Somalia slipped out of the news for the most part. Mogadishu became a no-go zone for the international press. There were some attempts at installing a working government, and a powerless interim government does exist, but for the most part Somalia remained under the control of warlords. With little news coverage, it again slipped from the public mind in the developed world.

Terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, thrived in the mostly lawless country. Murders, politically motivated and otherwise, are every day events. Smuggling drugs, weapons, and other contraband from the Somali coast into the rest of Africa is a common form of income for many. Fighting between warlords breaks out often as they struggle for control of disputed areas or smuggling activity.

The country went without an effective government until June of this year. Local governance was achieved by the local warlords and laws could change by crossing the street. Private wars fought by the warlords’ private armies were the norm, and getting caught in the crossfire or inadvertently offending somebody with power were constant threats.

Fight Hunger – Walk the World, May 2006. Photo: Walk The World Reporting, via Creative Commons

In recent years the Islamic Courts Union began settling disputes through a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law and Xeer, a form of local traditional law. They brought some stability and order to an area known only for anarchy and discord and so gained popularity with many Somali people. That popularity allowed the Islamic Courts Union to build a militia capable of defeating the warlords, which caused the warlords to cooperate with each other, at least to an extent. In the early part of June, through fierce fighting, the Islamic Courts Union took the capital of Mogadishu from the warlords and declared themselves the government.

The US government backed the secular warlords in an attempt to keep an Islamic fundamentalist government from taking power, but that backing was limited to financial support of $100,000 to $150,000 a month provided by CIA operatives. There was no detailed strategy developed and no help from the US military. US aid to the warlords amounted to throwing some money their way.

US diplomats in Nairobi criticized the US payments as being short-sighted and instead encouraged a policy of nation-building, saying that payments to the warlords would make the situation worse, but the Pentagon and CIA favoured backing the warlords and the payments were made. It now appears that the diplomats from the State Department had a better understanding of the situation than the Pentagon and CIA.

The involvement of the US, however minor, caused the Islamic Courts Union to step up their militia efforts. The warlords lost the fight and are currently being pushed from their remaining strongholds. They had regrouped at Jowhar, but were ousted from that position in the last week.

While they have offered assurances that they are not a Taliban-style government, the Islamic Courts Union have already taken steps such as banning western and Indian movies. Even watching the World Cup is presently being discouraged.

As part of assurances to the west, especially the United States, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed has invited western reporters to come and see the progress the Islamic Courts Union is making, but how much of that progress is real and how much is the result of extremist oppression is not clear.

Muddying matters more is the presence of moderate and extremist factions within the Islamic Courts Union. The present leadership of Sheik Sharif Ahmed is generally considered to be moderate, conciliatory towards western interests and capable of working with the clans, but there is a possibility that Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys will take control of the union.

Aweys was the leader of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a fundamentalist group linked to al-Qaida. al-Itihaad al-Islamiya is thought to be responsible for kidnappings and assassinations, including the murder of four western aid workers, in Somalia and several bombings in Ethiopia. If Aweys, who is currently close to the Islamic Courts Union leadership, were to gain control of the government, there is little doubt that a Taliban-like regime would exist in Somalia. What isn’t clear is how much influence Aweys has over the present leadership.

During all of the unrest and violence in Somalia, mostly centred around Mogadishu, the small area of Somalia that used to be the British Protectorate of Somaliland has strived to maintain some sort of law and order.

Perched at the top of Somalia on the horn of Africa, Somaliland has been operating as an independent state since Somalia became a failed state. Although they are not recognized as a state by the international community, Somaliland has managed to maintain a form of stable democratic government, its own currency, and a police force throughout the unrest. They are currently lobbying through the United Nations to be recognised as a sovereign state.

Such recognition could be the best way to keep Somaliland from falling into the same sort of anarchy that greater Somalia has suffered, but the international community has been slow to recognize the independence of Somaliland. There are growing concerns that attempts to placate the Islamic Courts Union in Mogadishu will keep influential western nations from supporting the independence of Somaliland.

The Bush White House now appears to be willing to work with the Islamic Courts Union. A spokesperson for the State Department said, “In terms of the Islamic courts, our understanding is that this isn’t a monolithic group, that it is really an effort on the part of some individuals to try to restore some semblance of order in Mogadishu,” in response to a letter from the new government in Mogadishu.

That may be the best course of action for Somalia, but Somaliland may suffer for it.

Imagine, the pressure the average man must feel to purchase the most expensive, perfectly cut diamond for his loving bride – it must be overwhelming. Perhaps, we should rephrase the slogan to “De Beers – Death, Poverty, and Despair,” which may ring true for many men preparing to march down the aisle.


But it is also an unbearable truth many countries face each day as war and destruction are caused by internal feuding over diamond mines. Sierra Leone was once a country that thrived off a strong agricultural economy, was one of the most highly educated countries in the world, and had an abundance of diamonds which were traded legally.

For over 70 years, Sierra Leone had been one of Africa’s top diamond producers. Recently, it has also become a nation of one of the lowest GNP rates in the world due to the onslaught of a corrupt government, and greedy mining companies, which all have played a part in Sierra Leone’s upheaval.

The history of Sierra Leone is a horrific story of government corruption, murder, and poverty. The country slowly began to unravel in the 1930s when these high-quality gems were discovered, and mining began through De Beers. It was also quickly discovered by that these precious diamonds were easy to smuggle illegally out of the country.

Since that early revelation, diamond smuggling has become a rampant source of despair for a once prosperous country. In 1968, Siaka Stevens became Prime Minister, bringing the country one party rule, but by this time diamond smuggling had already begun to get out of control. Under Stevens, legitimate diamond trading dropped from more than 2 million carats in 1970 to 48,000 in 1988.

It had become so corrupt that De Beers sold its mining rights and the Precious Metal Mining Company. Stevens resigned from parliament, and the government transformed itself into a multi-party system.

In 1991, it was noted that the country was being run by a corrupt and immoral government which openly accepted illicit diamond trading, and was suffering from an inequitable economy. Sierra Leone had become a exposed and attractive site for armed rebellion. On March 23, a civil war began when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a group of 100 fighters from Sierra Leone and Liberia, invaded east Sierra Leone.

Foday Sankoh, an ex-army sergeant led the RUF representing “The Urban dispossessed” and “promising impoverished peasants a greater share in the mineral wealth misused by the corrupt government.” However, Sankoh used brutal tactics, such as mutilation and amputation, against these same peasants to allegedly expose the government’s inability to protect its citizens.

Sankoh believed that the mutilation and amputation of too many of these impoverished people would prevent them from working in the mines, and make them powerless to fight back against his rebel army. His primary focus was not to help the people of Sierra Leone, but to ravish their countryside and gain complete access to their abundant sources of diamonds.

He was zealously aware that if he could take over the major diamond fields than he could effortlessly afford to support his brutal rebellion, mining more funds into soldiers and military weapons. This onslaught placed Sierra Leone in complete isolation. The country could no longer even trust its own soldiers as they were known to be “rebels by day” and “soldiers by night.”

A UN expert panel report published in December 2000 estimated that the RUF diamond trade moved from $25 million to $125 million in diamonds per year in the late 1990s. Also in this decade-long battle over diamonds, it has left over 50,000 dead, half a million refugees, and a thousand amputees attempting to rebuild their lives.

The people of Sierra Leone have suffered an ongoing nightmare that no person could truly comprehend or understand. They have been beaten, raped, and mutilated by these rebel forces. Yet, they still have the strength to attempt to rebuild an impoverished country that has been beaten to the core, over a shiny, senseless rock which is precious to so many people in Western countries.

Since the onslaught of the civil war, Sierra Leone has attempted to rebuild its country. With the U.N. ban on Sierra Leone’s diamond exports and De Beers’ promise to help the country learn to peacefully profit from its resources, the government again has a chance to regain power over legitimate mining and thereby the nation.

Until the 1980s, De Beers was directly involved in Sierra Leone but its involvement has since become indirect. It maintains a diamond trading company in Liberia and a buying office in Conakry, Guinea.

Interesting, that DeBeers would pull itself out of Sierra Leone during a time of struggle, and position itself in Liberia, were most diamonds would be smuggled out to be resold.

DeBeers is one of the largest mining companies in the world and sets the price for rough cut diamonds on the global market. It is also has the ability to manipulate the supply and demand of diamonds based out of its Central Selling Organization headquarters in London.

De Beers claims that it does not purchase Sierra Leonean diamonds; but with its purchasing companies in West Africa, the company procures diamonds that could have come from virtually anywhere in the world. It is highly unlikely that the company is not purchasing illegally smuggled diamonds from Sierra Leone.

Last year alone, Americans spent over 12 billion dollars in diamonds for every special occasion. “How many diamonds of those 12 billion dollars was are actually legal diamonds that have not been smuggled across the borders of Sierra Leone to Liberia and then resold to billion dollar corporations?

It is estimated in 2002, only $41 million of the $300 million diamonds mined in Sierra Leone were legally exported.

Imagine the capital losses for this country each year when it is trying to rebuild itself, and become prosperous once again – for its children and its people.

Imagine, if De Beers marketed to the bride on her wedding day, the precious truth about the gem resting on her finger. Perhaps, as she gazed down at longingly, she could be reminded that children under the age of ten were sent into mines under appalling conditions each day digging over a period of eight hours making less than 50 cents a day in order to feed their families.

Imagine, if jewelers informed the groom before purchasing this precious gem for his lovely bride to be that whole families were wiped out, and many left behind mutilated and amputated, so they would never be able to work, again.

Do you think diamonds would be as precious to North American consumers if we actually told the truth behind their dazzling story? I wonder what the sale of diamonds would be and how these people would react to discover they were wearing a true symbol of death, the death of childhood, the death of families, the death of culture, and the eternal cycle of poverty.

Several Initiatives have taken the lead in helping rebuild Sierra Leone. The Peace Diamond Alliance and The Kimberly Process are both working to improve the management of Sierra Leone’s diamond resources and its capacity, in order to ensure the profit from diamonds flows back into Sierra Leone’s communities. It is time to build a future for Sierra Leone where corruption and poverty are no longer a part of the future.

References

Snapshot of Sierra Leone and its turbulent history with the exploitation of diamonds

Transition for Sierra Leone as it rebuilds its country and regulates diamond trade through initiatives with USAID and Diamond Alliance Planning Task Force.

Overview of diamond trade and DeBeers link to Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone from The Diamonds and Human Securities Project, examining the past, present, and future of Sierra Leone (pdf).

United Nations focus on Sierra Leone

Snapshot of Sierra Leone economy

Offers valuable insight into Sierra Leone’s trade, and history

Sites several mining fields, and corporations operating in Sierra Leone

Peace Diamond Alliance Website

One Sky Diamond Campaign to end blood diamonds

The Kimberly Process and their initiative with conflict diamonds

Insight into child labor in diamond mines

DeBeers website and Strategic Marketing

“The Rules of the Engagement Ring”, a prime example of North America’s obsession with marriage and diamonds.

marketing, and more marketing

Involved in mining in Sierra Leone for several years

When the story about torture in Abu Ghraib broke, most of the world was appalled. Members of the American military were not only torturing Iraq prisoners, but they were photographing each other committing the torture.

Some tried to write off the torture as mere pranks, the kind of thing that goes on in college dorms all of the time. Being forcibly sodomized with a broomstick is not a prank though, it is rape. Being forced to stand in the hot sun with your arms outstretched under threat of electrocution is not a prank, it is torture.

The Taguba Report, commissioned by the US government, lists the many abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in detail.

Among the findings were: Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; Forcing detainees to remove their clothing andkeeping them naked for several days at a time; Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture; A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

According to many, both in government and in the press, we haven’t seen the worst images of the abuse and torture that were carried out at Abu Ghraib yet. There are stories of much worse brutality, including the rape of women and children, by members of US military and intelligence organizations. There have also been several cases, not just in Abu Ghraib but in the rest of Iraq and Afghanistan, of prisoners being beaten to death.

The government claims that there were just a few “bad apples” carrying out the abuse, but this does not stand up to scrutiny. Documents obtained in March 2005 by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act contain reports of “ghosting” prisoners, making them disappear, when the Red Cross inspections of the prison were carried out. Some of the ghosted prisoners died from abuse.

Statements by Brigadier General Karpinsky and others also refer to “releaseaphobia”, the fear of releasing innocent detainees. Many of the Iraqis being detained at Abu Ghraib are innocent and were originally picked up for questionable reasons, such as being in a certain area when a sweep was made. To hold them after their innocence has been determined is again against both international law and US military codes.

There is growing documentation of children being held at Abu Ghraib. Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz was arrested and held at Abu Ghraib for 74 days. Al-Baz told the Scottish Sunday Herald, “I saw a camp for children there. Boys, under the age of puberty. There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp.” He went on to describe an ill 15 year old boy being repeatedly soaked with hoses and a 12 year old girl being stripped, soaked with water, and beaten.

A transcript of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski’s interview with Major General George Fay includes the description of an 11 year old boy being held in the prison. “He told me he was almost 12. He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying.”

There are other accounts of children being held in what has become on of the world’s, and history’s, most infamous prisons. Some of these reports contain details of children being mistreated to force confessions out of their parents, a clear breach of international law and US military conduct.

Seymour Hersch, who was instrumental in the original prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, has claimed that the Pentagon has videotape of children being raped at the infamous prison.

Speaking at an ACLU event, Hersch said, “Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

The videos and additional images have yet to be released, but Hersch’s claims have been at partially supported by statements by Donald Rumsfeld that, “If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse,” and by a statement by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham that, “The American public needs to understand, we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.”

One of the defenses those who would sweep the nightmare of Abu Ghraib under the carpet use is that Saddam Hussein also used the prison for detaining the innocent and torturing people. It’s true, he did. Human rights groups reported on those crimes at the time and have continued to report on them since.

Saddam’s guilt does not absolve the US of guilt. Saddam Hussein is an acknowledged monster. Saying that he committed torture at Abu Ghraib first in no way forgives those who still abuse prisoners. The abuse at Abu Ghraib is part of a widespread pattern that indicates a systemic problem. Systemic problems start at the top, and there is little indication that this one has been fully addressed.

High Res Images for this article (as slideshow)

According to the International Action Center article Iraqi cities ‘hot with depleted uranium’ reporters have measured radiation levels that are between 1,000 and 1,900 times higher than would normally be expected in parts of Iraq.


The Dutch are concerned about this, as they plan to send troops to Iraq. They are slated to be stationed in the small town of Al-Samawah, where the U.S. insists it has not used D.U. However, according to the above referenced study, a Dutch journalist was able to confirm that when the U.S. Army fought Iraqi forces there, D.U. ammunition was “widely used.”

According to the American Gulf War Veterans Association, half of the soldiers who have returned to the U.S. since serving in the Gulf War have reported “serious illnesses.” About 30% of those suffer from chronic illness–a surprising number since the military screened soldiers for chronic conditions like asthma, cancer, diabetes, birth defects and heart conditions, before they were inducted. This unexplained incidence of chronic illness, therefore, has many believing it is related to exposure to D.U. radiation.

Under pressure to assess the dangers D.U. radiation poses to American solders, the Department of Defense hired the Rand Corporation to study the issue several years ago. The DoD briefing on the study was held on April 15, 1999. Interestingly, the Rand Corporation did not use the commission to gather data that would allow them to study health problems in soldiers and correlate them to data on actual D.U. usage. They focused, instead, on conducting a review of the literature.

Simply put, they compiled studies that had already been conducted by others. So the Rand Corporation’s final work is largely a science lesson on what D.U. is, and how it works. It does not delve into specifics regarding use of D.U. or numbers of soldiers/civilians who’ve been exposed to it, or the consequences of such exposure. In other words, it’s relatively useless for the purpose for which it was ostensibly designed.

What’s more, the study paid very little attention to the fact that D.U. can be internalized in more ways than one. In the press briefing that covered the literature review, Dr. Bernard D. Rostker said that while it is possible to ingest or inhale D.U., they don’t have any statistics on it. And in a surprisingly cavalier follow-up, added “Some people think that’s an issue.”

When asked for the actual number of soldiers believed to have been exposed to D.U. via friendly-fire instances (only U.S. soldiers were using shell casings made with D.U. during the Gulf War) or during D.U. clean-up, Dr. Rostker couldn’t seem to find the information in his report. When the reporter covering the briefing moved on to ask about airborne uranium left-over from battles in which D.U. shell casings were used, military spokesperson Col. Daxon was quick to point out that the tests showed the radioactive dust didn’t seem to travel more than about 50 yards, and “eventually settles.”

Perhaps that’s how the U.S. Military is now justifying its use in densely populated urban areas; in that case, even a 50 yard radius around a battle site would be a dangerous area to cover with uranium dust, wouldn’t it?

And doesn’t the dust just come back up again for somebody else to breath in when a car drives by or it’s particularly windy? In fact, even if the dust stays put, in water or in soil, isn’t that considered contamination? Wouldn’t ingestion vs. inhalation then be a problem? It’s not like the stuff just disappears. D.U. has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Yet, for some unknown reason, nobody during the briefing bothered to address these issues.

While statistics citing “mysterious” illnesses and “Gulf War Syndrome” abound, the military’s decision to separate those from any connection to D.U. exposure meant that only a small group of soldiers, 33 in all, who have actual D.U. shell casing fragments in their bodies, were included as part of the Rand study.

The military argued at the time that the soldiers in that group would, naturally, have a greater chance of suffering the effects of D.U. radiation because they had internal exposure to it; whereas, those who do not have actual shell fragments made from D. U. in their bodies (i.e., soldiers, Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops currently suffering from “mysterious” illnesses/and or Gulf War Syndrome), would be much less likely to be ill as a result of D. U. exposure. In other words, both the military and the Rand Corporation decided that D.U. radiation left over from U.S. military action is harmless. They didn’t research it; they assumed it.

Now, six years after the Rand Corporation published their literature review, veterans are even more concerned about the long-term health effects of D.U.; yet no more comprehensive work has followed that original study. More disturbing, the military has deliberately avoided the task of compiling the data that might answer questions concerning the relationship between the two. Instead, the military has continued to cite the Rand study as definitive evidence of the failure to connect D.U. exposure to the chronic illnesses suffered by veterans of both Gulf Wars.

But according to the International Action Center, Iraq’s National Ministry of Health put together a couple of international coalitions to do what the U.S. military would not, and their findings were quite disturbing. They showed “a six-fold increase in breast cancer, a five-fold increase in lung cancer and a 16-fold increase in ovarian cancer among those exposed to D.U.” Unfortunately, many are unaware of this because U.S. sanctions prevented the Ministry from publishing its findings in much of the world.

Meanwhile, Iraqis are focused on rebuilding their war-torn country: repairing power plants, securing clean water, fighting for jobs, and creating a Constitution that they hope will stave off civil war. Concerned about their immediate physical safety, they are totally unaware of the fact that their biggest battle–the battle for their long-term health–is still ahead.