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While territory, oil, and water are frequently mentioned as resources likely to promote interstate conflict, diamonds have emerged as a prominent factor in explanations of civil war. In this article, the authors report on a new database on diamond deposits and production and analyze the relationship between diamonds and armed conflict incidence. They find a strong bivariate relationship between diamonds (particularly secondary diamonds) and the onset of civil war. Adding diamond dummies to standard models of civil war, the results are more mixed. The production of secondary diamonds increases the risk of onset of ethnic war, but not other types of war. The authors find evidence that secondary diamonds are positively related to the incidence of civil war, especially in countries divided along ethnic lines. Primary diamonds, on the other hand, make ethnic war onset and incidence less likely. The authors also find that the impact of diamonds has been substantially stronger in the post-cold war era.
Keywords: civil war; conflict; diamonds; natural resources
Abundance of natural resources has emerged as a significant factor in explaining civil conflict. The idea that rebels would use natural resource riches to finance their activities was discussed by Jean and Rufin (1996) and later in Collier and Hoeffler's (2004) seminal article on "greed and grievance." A number of case studies suggest that natural resources have been used by rebel groups to finance warfare and even to enhance rebels' private income (Ross 2004a). A notable case is Sierra Leone with its blood diamonds (Smillie 2002; Smillie, Gberie, and Hazleton 2000). As the country's minister of finance, James Jonah (2000), puts it, "The war in Sierra Leone is simply about diamonds." In Angola the UNITA rebels used revenues from diamonds to finance their long conflict with the government, which in turn relied on offshore petroleum riches to finance its military (Le Billon 200Ia). In the Democratic Republic of Congo, various Congolese rebel groups as well as armed groups from neighboring African states joined in a general plunder of natural riches, including diamonds (United Nations Panel of Experts 2001).
Systematic empirical research has so far yielded ambiguous evidence relating natural resource wealth to the propensity for conflict (Ross 2004b; Sambanis 2002). The general argument has been that abundant natural resources provide...