This Is how they push governments in Africa to give their resources to the private companies and merceneries.
Full article at…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/daily/oct99/sierra16.htm
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – When Sierra Leone's lone combat helicopter blew an engine one day last year, it meant disaster for the government. The aging Soviet-built gunship had been the government's most effective weapon against a rebel army that was marching on the capital, burning villages and killing and mutilating civilians.
Officials scrambled to repair or replace the helicopter. But rather than relying on conventional arms dealers, they took bids from mining companies, gem brokers and mercenaries, most of whom held or wanted access to Sierra Leone's diamond fields. The government finally agreed to buy $3.8 million worth of engines, parts and ammunition through a firm set up by Zeev Morgenstern, an executive with Belgium-based Rex Diamond Mining Corp.
In the end, the parts proved unsuitable, and the helicopter stayed grounded. The rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) seized Freetown, killing thousands of residents and – in their signature atrocity – amputating the arms or hands of hundreds of civilians.
Although the government later retook the capital, the rebels' success forced the government this summer to accept a deal to share power. Though controversial, the peace agreement has drawn enough U.S. and other international support that Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright will visit here Monday on the first day of an African tour.
The key role of mining interests in the fighting was nothing new in Sierra Leone. The eight-year conflict that has shattered this country and brutalized its 5 million people has been fueled by foreigners' hunger for diamonds. Rival mining companies, security firms and mercenaries – from Africa, Europe, Israel and the former Soviet Union – have poured weapons, trainers and fighters into Sierra Leone, backing the government or the rebels in a bid to win cheap access to diamond fields.
Across Africa, foreign firms are fueling wars for natural resources that in some ways recall the 19th-century "scramble for Africa" by European imperial powers. Since the end of the Cold War – when major countries pulled back from African conflicts – oil and mining companies, security firms and mercenaries have filled the void. They have provided arms and expertise for civil wars in Angola, Congo, Liberia and here.
These conflicts are singularly brutal, scholars say, because many of their sponsors are outsiders with little motive to limit destruction. The superpower patrons of Cold War conflicts "did not allow the wholesale ripping up of the economy, the use of children as soldiers, the attacks on relief groups" that have become the norm in Sierra Leone and elsewhere, said Herbert Howe, a Georgetown University political scientist.
In Sierra Leone, both the government and the RUF have attracted military backers by offering payment in diamonds or diamond-mining rights. The fortunes to be made from such ventures have prolonged and escalated the war, analysts say. According to documents and African, U.S. and European sources, the spoils have also encouraged the involvement in the conflict of a number of prominent foreigners:
Charles Taylor, president of Sierra Leone's neighbor, Liberia, and his son, Charles Jr., have helped the RUF obtain foreign arms and military training, said African and Western military intelligence sources and Liberians. An American with military experience described watching at Liberia's main airport as members of one of the president's security forces supervised the unloading of two truckloads of automatic rifles and ammunition that he said were then sent to the Sierra Leonean border.
A Liberian government spokesman denied that Taylor or his son had provided weapons to the RUF, or had interests in Sierra Leone's diamond trade. International diamond merchants and other sources say that by helping the RUF control Sierra Leone's diamond fields, Liberia can divert more Sierra Leonean diamonds through its territory on the way to world markets, reaping part of the profits.
A retired South African army intelligence officer, Fred Rindle, has provided training to Taylor's forces and to the RUF, African and Western military sources say. Rindle, who also helped arm UNITA rebels in Angola, is also exporting diamonds from Liberia, according to other African and Western sources.
A Ukrainian businessman, Leonid Minin, has supplied arms to Taylor and the RUF, according to a senior officer of the West African peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone. Minin, who is well connected to government officials in Ukraine, operates a timber company in Liberia that also is dealing in arms and diamonds, according to the officer and Liberian sources.