Opposition to army presence means not only lack of interest in the peace and security of Zimbabwe but also points to the hypocrisy that the anti-Zimbabwe diamond industry has increasingly shown.
This relates to the treatment of Zimbabwe per se, which is better than many other players on the continent in all aspects, and Chikane whose reputation only comes to question when it concerns Zimbabwe.
Such can only be motivated by malice and grave mischief.
Such can only be motivated by malice and grave mischief.
The Herald
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| The Bold and Admired...Spectators marvel at army drills during a state event |
By Tichaona Zindoga
All sorts of excuses and guises have been explored, and probably exhausted, to try and deny Zimbabwe’s legitimate sale of its diamonds.
However, these have continuously been exposed although the one excuse of the military presence in Marange has tended to find some sustenance to this day.
Government deployed the military in the diamond fields in 2006 to curb a wave of illegal panning in the area, where other vices such as disease and murder also took place, to stop the activity and avert a possible security and humanitarian situation.
Hundreds of thousands of fortune seekers, locals and foreigners had descended on this once little known place that now finds itself being a subject in the most prestigious of world capitals.
Unrivalled plunder and vice unravelled here, unabated and how and what the country lost and could lose can be a matter of guess.
But the involvement of the army restored sanity to the area, paving way for the regularisation of mining activities with Government now partnering two South African companies, Mbada and Canadile, in the full-scale exploitation of the resource.
Despite Zimbabwe’s detractors using all kinds of excuses to bar the country from trade in the gems via the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, a watchdog against “blood” diamonds, KP monitor and the body’s founding chair Abbey Chikane okayed not only the diamonds as having met minimum KP requirements.
He also okayed military presence in Marange — albeit until a civilian force can take over security.
This, butressed by a World Diamond Council meeting in Russia in July, led to Zimbabwe’s conditional sale of the gems twice this year, and the country is set to resume unconditional sales thanks to its commitment to satisfying industry requirements.
It can be argued that given his pedigree and role in KP, and as an industrialist, Chikane could well have been acute to any excesses of the military and rightly empowered to blacklist Zimbabwean gems.
In his informed wisdom, he could even set a precondition effecting to the removal of the army in Chiadzwa.
He, though, found the army desirable for security reasons, granting it presence at the fields — a vote of confidence in the institution that has also won plaudists worldwide as a peacemaker and never an aggressor.
(At some point this latter attribute has irked some countries who do not find interest in a peaceful world.)
The issue of the military was again recently ramped up for the audience of the November 1-4 KP meeting Israel.
The Human Rights Watch, for example, alleged that “soldiers still control most diamond fields”.
“The Government made a lot of promises, but soldiers still control most diamond fields and are involved in illicit mining and smuggling,” said Rona Peligal, Africa director of the organisation, which is not new to the game of speaking ill of Zimbabwe.
“Zimbabwe should mine its diamonds without relying on an abusive military that preys on the local population,” she added, contradicting the recommendation Chikane made in okaying Zimbabwe’s gems.
The recent Rapaport Diamond Conference in America also sought to play the military card, and expressly called for industry to shun Zimbabwe’s gems; not for the first time, though, having done so all along.
While grudgingly admitting that Zimbabwe’s diamonds do not in any way fit into the “conflict” or “blood” category, the conference typically peddled the lie of the military being so influential in Zimbabwe (junta-like) and laundering diamond proceeds.
One speaker, Peter Singer, said: “If the money made from these diamonds just goes into the pocket of the military elite, that is a theft of a natural resource, and I don’t believe it is ethical to be complicit in such actions.”
The obsession with the military presence by those opposed to Zimbabwe’s diamonds is hypocritical, malicious, mischievous and cynical for a number of reasons.
First and foremost is the technical aspect that 60 percent diamond fields in Chiadzwa are unallocated, and therefore without private security and the Government has deployed the army to protect the resource.
Chikane was not opposed to this.
The remainder, 40 percent of the fields, falls under the companies that are mining there and provide their security, which Chikane found satisfactory.
Opposition to army presence means not only lack of interest in the peace and security of Zimbabwe but also points to the hypocrisy that the anti-Zimbabwe diamond industry has increasingly shown.
This relates to the treatment of Zimbabwe per se, which is better than many other players on the continent in all aspects, and Chikane whose reputation only comes to question when it concerns Zimbabwe.
Such can only be motivated by malice and grave mischief.
On the other hand, the hypocrisy of the organisations who were apparently irked by the Government’s stamping authority on the fields after the rampant illegal activities, which might have provided cover for a severe security and economic threat, is not hard to discern.
That regularisation of mining in the area entailed economic benefits to the country, is known as is the fact that forces that oppose the same are the ones that have imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Marange diamonds, said to be able to account for a quarter of world gems, have the capacity to bust sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West.
Also known is the fact that those opposed to the security of Chiadzwa are also opposed to the security of Zimbabwe, having imposed arms and defence embargo on Zimbabwe at a time the country got threats of war from as near as Botswana and as far afield as Britain.
In the main, the claims and or attitudes by the West towards Zimbabwean army smack of racism and as ever border on rank hypocrisy.
Here is a force that is portrayed as senseless, greedy, and preys and visits all kinds of horror on an innocent civilian population in a nook called Marange.
Take the latest hullabaloo, for example, which is based mainly on unsubstantiated accounts and claims by groups that are openly anti-Zimbabwe by reason of their creation and or funding.
While the Rapaports and Human Rights Watches of this world shout on the top of their voices over alleged violations in Zimbabwe, real atrocities are being committed elsewhere by the country they serve and love, America.
If they were concerned about human rights, and humanity, they would spare their energies and money to try and change the policy of America, which has visited appalling abuses in such areas as Afghanistan and Iraq.
As it stands, Wikileaks, a whistleblower organisation of computer hacks, has been releasing hundreds of thousands of reports that chronicle US human rights excesses in Iraq of which the majority are suffered by innocent civilian populations.
Just recently, on October 22, Wikileaks released the largest classified military leak in history.
Said the organisation of the release: “The 391 832 reports (‘The Iraq War Logs’), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.”
The reports, which drew outrage worldwide and got the American military industrial complex seeking to gag the young hackers, detail 109 032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66 081 “civilians”; 23 984 “enemy” (those labelled as insurgents); 15 196 “host nation” (Iraqi government forces) and 3 771 “friendly” (coalition forces).
Critically, the majority of the deaths (66 000, over 60 percent) of these are civilian deaths.
“That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period,” calculated Wikileaks.
“For comparison, the ‘Afghan War Diaries’, previously released by Wikileaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20 000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.”
This a real situation of human rights abuse that should not be diverted by petty, unsubstantiated reports.
It is not lost to any, though, that America is doing this, as it has done all along with its Anglo-Saxon allies, for the benefit of its capital.
That its more “humane” faces concerned with human rights elsewhere are not interested ceases to baffle the mind.
However, these have continuously been exposed although the one excuse of the military presence in Marange has tended to find some sustenance to this day.
Government deployed the military in the diamond fields in 2006 to curb a wave of illegal panning in the area, where other vices such as disease and murder also took place, to stop the activity and avert a possible security and humanitarian situation.
Hundreds of thousands of fortune seekers, locals and foreigners had descended on this once little known place that now finds itself being a subject in the most prestigious of world capitals.
Unrivalled plunder and vice unravelled here, unabated and how and what the country lost and could lose can be a matter of guess.
But the involvement of the army restored sanity to the area, paving way for the regularisation of mining activities with Government now partnering two South African companies, Mbada and Canadile, in the full-scale exploitation of the resource.
Despite Zimbabwe’s detractors using all kinds of excuses to bar the country from trade in the gems via the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, a watchdog against “blood” diamonds, KP monitor and the body’s founding chair Abbey Chikane okayed not only the diamonds as having met minimum KP requirements.
He also okayed military presence in Marange — albeit until a civilian force can take over security.
This, butressed by a World Diamond Council meeting in Russia in July, led to Zimbabwe’s conditional sale of the gems twice this year, and the country is set to resume unconditional sales thanks to its commitment to satisfying industry requirements.
It can be argued that given his pedigree and role in KP, and as an industrialist, Chikane could well have been acute to any excesses of the military and rightly empowered to blacklist Zimbabwean gems.
In his informed wisdom, he could even set a precondition effecting to the removal of the army in Chiadzwa.
He, though, found the army desirable for security reasons, granting it presence at the fields — a vote of confidence in the institution that has also won plaudists worldwide as a peacemaker and never an aggressor.
(At some point this latter attribute has irked some countries who do not find interest in a peaceful world.)
The issue of the military was again recently ramped up for the audience of the November 1-4 KP meeting Israel.
The Human Rights Watch, for example, alleged that “soldiers still control most diamond fields”.
“The Government made a lot of promises, but soldiers still control most diamond fields and are involved in illicit mining and smuggling,” said Rona Peligal, Africa director of the organisation, which is not new to the game of speaking ill of Zimbabwe.
“Zimbabwe should mine its diamonds without relying on an abusive military that preys on the local population,” she added, contradicting the recommendation Chikane made in okaying Zimbabwe’s gems.
The recent Rapaport Diamond Conference in America also sought to play the military card, and expressly called for industry to shun Zimbabwe’s gems; not for the first time, though, having done so all along.
While grudgingly admitting that Zimbabwe’s diamonds do not in any way fit into the “conflict” or “blood” category, the conference typically peddled the lie of the military being so influential in Zimbabwe (junta-like) and laundering diamond proceeds.
One speaker, Peter Singer, said: “If the money made from these diamonds just goes into the pocket of the military elite, that is a theft of a natural resource, and I don’t believe it is ethical to be complicit in such actions.”
The obsession with the military presence by those opposed to Zimbabwe’s diamonds is hypocritical, malicious, mischievous and cynical for a number of reasons.
First and foremost is the technical aspect that 60 percent diamond fields in Chiadzwa are unallocated, and therefore without private security and the Government has deployed the army to protect the resource.
Chikane was not opposed to this.
The remainder, 40 percent of the fields, falls under the companies that are mining there and provide their security, which Chikane found satisfactory.
Opposition to army presence means not only lack of interest in the peace and security of Zimbabwe but also points to the hypocrisy that the anti-Zimbabwe diamond industry has increasingly shown.
This relates to the treatment of Zimbabwe per se, which is better than many other players on the continent in all aspects, and Chikane whose reputation only comes to question when it concerns Zimbabwe.
Such can only be motivated by malice and grave mischief.
On the other hand, the hypocrisy of the organisations who were apparently irked by the Government’s stamping authority on the fields after the rampant illegal activities, which might have provided cover for a severe security and economic threat, is not hard to discern.
That regularisation of mining in the area entailed economic benefits to the country, is known as is the fact that forces that oppose the same are the ones that have imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Marange diamonds, said to be able to account for a quarter of world gems, have the capacity to bust sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West.
Also known is the fact that those opposed to the security of Chiadzwa are also opposed to the security of Zimbabwe, having imposed arms and defence embargo on Zimbabwe at a time the country got threats of war from as near as Botswana and as far afield as Britain.
In the main, the claims and or attitudes by the West towards Zimbabwean army smack of racism and as ever border on rank hypocrisy.
Here is a force that is portrayed as senseless, greedy, and preys and visits all kinds of horror on an innocent civilian population in a nook called Marange.
Take the latest hullabaloo, for example, which is based mainly on unsubstantiated accounts and claims by groups that are openly anti-Zimbabwe by reason of their creation and or funding.
While the Rapaports and Human Rights Watches of this world shout on the top of their voices over alleged violations in Zimbabwe, real atrocities are being committed elsewhere by the country they serve and love, America.
If they were concerned about human rights, and humanity, they would spare their energies and money to try and change the policy of America, which has visited appalling abuses in such areas as Afghanistan and Iraq.
As it stands, Wikileaks, a whistleblower organisation of computer hacks, has been releasing hundreds of thousands of reports that chronicle US human rights excesses in Iraq of which the majority are suffered by innocent civilian populations.
Just recently, on October 22, Wikileaks released the largest classified military leak in history.
Said the organisation of the release: “The 391 832 reports (‘The Iraq War Logs’), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.”
The reports, which drew outrage worldwide and got the American military industrial complex seeking to gag the young hackers, detail 109 032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66 081 “civilians”; 23 984 “enemy” (those labelled as insurgents); 15 196 “host nation” (Iraqi government forces) and 3 771 “friendly” (coalition forces).
Critically, the majority of the deaths (66 000, over 60 percent) of these are civilian deaths.
“That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period,” calculated Wikileaks.
“For comparison, the ‘Afghan War Diaries’, previously released by Wikileaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20 000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.”
This a real situation of human rights abuse that should not be diverted by petty, unsubstantiated reports.
It is not lost to any, though, that America is doing this, as it has done all along with its Anglo-Saxon allies, for the benefit of its capital.
That its more “humane” faces concerned with human rights elsewhere are not interested ceases to baffle the mind.
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