Blood Money

Since 1975, almost unheeded by the rest of the world, the African nation of Angola has been engulfed in a bloody civil war. Just over the past decade this tribal conflict has left half a million dead and a further 2 million homeless.

What is little known is that it is the West that is wittingly funding this war.

It works like this. The Angolan government relies on oil sales to finance its armies. Their antagonists, the rebel independence army, pay for their weapons with money derived from diamond exports. As the civil war between the two escalates, sales of Angolan oil and diamonds increase so as to fund the fighting.

As Earth Island Journal recently reported, undeterred by the blood money which their custom provides, foreign multinationals line up to benefit. BP Amoco, Exxon and Elf-Aquitaine have all acquired major concessions on Angola’s virgin oil fields, while the diamond trader De Beers continues to profit from the strife-torn country.

What is even worse is that Angola’s oil and diamond traders have close links to another industry which stands to profit from this messy war: Defense-related corporations in the West have equity holdings in all of Angola’s major oil contractors. Thus the civil war in Angola proves to be quite a profitable racket for greedy Western merchants.