This BBC feature looks at the collapse of the government of Sierra Leone into years of civil war and the role of the diamond trade in that tragic development.
An excerpt from the Jan. 12 piece:
Diamonds have always been at the heart of Sierra Leone's problems. Ever since the first commercial mines were opened by the British colonial authorities in 1931, they have been both the prize and the fuel in conflicts.
Study
Sierra Leonean researcher and journalist Lansana Gberie argues in his new study of the war that diamonds gave the RUF insurgents both a motivation and a resource base to fight.
Mr Gberie's analysis centres on the criminalisation of the state, funded largely by diamonds, which began under long-time leader Siaka Stevens, in power from 1968 to 1985.
He argues that Stevens steadily undermined the institutions of state (the army, the courts, and social services like education and health care) by corruption, much of it through Lebanese intermediaries.
Mr Gberie's study shows just how crucial an army, or the lack of a decent one, can be to the life of a nation
This, Mr Gberie says, meant the RUF had a relatively easy task in mounting its insurgency because there was little resistance from rotten state structures - including the army, which not only failed to stop the RUF but partly ended up joining them.
The insurgency was characterised by terror attacks on civilians, including the widespread hacking off of people's limbs.
This had the twin effect of making populations flee - so making looting easier - and terrifying others into submission.
In the end it was the UN - with backing from a British military intervention - which restored the elected government to Sierra Leone after war and coups had almost destroyed it.
Mr Gberie's thesis is not new, of course. But the detail he gives from his perspective as a Sierra Leonean journalist who has also worked as a researcher into the international diamond market, is probably unique.
He has worked for the organisation Partnership Africa Canada which lobbied effectively for Sierra Leone to fight against the trade in "conflict diamonds".
