of the civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone during the 1990s. The movie--which centers around a father and son who are enslaved by rebels and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a cynical diamond smuggler--is fiction, but the context is historically accurate: From 1991 to 2002, rebel soldiers from the brutal Revolutionary United Front kidnapped civilians, forced them to work in diamond mines, and smuggled the gems they unearthed to neighboring countries. From there, the diamonds were shipped to Europe and sold by conglomerates, such as De Beers. The proceeds filtered back to Sierra Leone, where they paid for even more kidnapping and violence. Blood Diamond is a withering critique of the diamond industry's role in exacerbating a savage war and its callous disregard for human rights in Africa. Zwick had every reason to expect that Mandela--one of the world's greatest living advocates for human rights--would be pleased.He wasn't. In his letter to Zwick, Mandela wrote that "it would be deeply regrettable if the making of the film inadvertently obscured the truth, and, as a result, led the world to believe that an appropriate response might be to cease buying mined diamonds from Africa. ... We hope that the desire to tell a gripping and important real life historical story will not result in the destabilization of African diamond producing countries, and ultimately their peoples." None of this makes much sense, unless you take into consideration something that isn't widely known about Mandela: The man who ended apartheid and became the late twentieth century's most eloquent spokesman for human dignity is also a shill for the diamond industry. Mandela's affinity for De Beers and other diamond companies is the result of both geography and personal relationships. South Africa produces more than $1 billion in diamonds per year; and, even though Mandela's African National Congress had significant Marxist and communist elements, the party proved broadly supportive of the diamond industry once it took power. In addition, there was Mandela's friendship with Harry Oppenheimer, the late chairman of De Beers--who, as white South African businessmen went, was relatively sympathetic to the anti-apartheid movement. Oppenheimer encouraged the creation of black trade unions and funded a political party specifically to oppose South Africa's racial disparities. Mandela and Oppenheimer became close before Mandela's presidency and would grow even closer: After Mandela's election, Oppenheimer frequently hosted him at his luxurious estate. Mandela was also known to bring De Beers representatives on foreign trips. By the late '90s, political pressure was mounting on De Beers--which, at the time, controlled 70 percent of the world diamond market--to stop the flow of "conflict diamonds" from Sierra Leone. (The phrase typically refers to diamonds whose sale is used to finance warfare.) Conflict diamonds had already helped fund Angola's bloody civil war, and they began to play an equally devastating role in Sierra Leone. (In 2000, Ryan Lizza documented in these pages the Clinton administration's bungled efforts to broker peace in that West African country.) Human rights organizations called for steps to ensure that conflict diamonds did not reach the world market. Still, Mandela spoke