Yo, Themobman:

I love questions like yours. My generation goes out and invents what we now call the Internet where you can look up just about any kind of information you want. Just to test what we created for you I went to Yahoo’s Home Page and typed Diamond Mining Congo and you’d be amazed at the number to “hits” I received!

I am now in the process of writing a speech for you as you’ve demonstrated here on Yahoo Answers that this is what you expect. It will take me another couple of hours to complete this and then I’ll reopen my answer and post it here for you to copy. I know that you won’t give Flyboy any credit when you receive all the kudos you’re bound to get from a speech that I’ve written. But, that’s OK. What are friends for anyway?

Those diamonds that are are illegally mined to trade for weapons of war are called “blood diamonds,” and it is a huge topic. If you Google “blood diamonds” you will see , aside from links about the movie, Blood Diamonds, plenty of information on the subject. Here are two links:

I do not know much about this, but when I was buying my ring, I was informed that there are “conflict zones” where people kill each others for diamonds. I was sure to stay away from a diamond that someone may have shed blood over. They just aren’t that valuable.