A Hard-line Stand That Hurts Those That Deserve Our Protection

Two guys are put in a room with a suitcase full of cash. They are told they will not be allowed to leave the room until they decide on how they will divide the cash between them. Alternatively, they can leave the money in the suitcase and walk away with nothing.

The door closes and Abe immediately offers to split the money 50/50 and go home. Berry offers him in return a dirty look and replies, "I'm taking 90 percent of the money. If you don't like the idea, I'm OK with walking away with nothing at all. The choice is yours."

After a heated back and fourth, Abe sees that Berry is not budging, and concludes that the only way for him to get any money is by accepting Berry's hard-line stance.

The KP talks this week bare resemblance to this story. Prof. Robert Israel Aumann, who won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on understanding conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis, offers three points to improve Abe's bargaining position.

First, Abe must let go of the state of mind that made him feel that he must have some of the money. In the diamond industry traders say, 'never fall in love with the goods on the table.' Abe's inability to let go was the first step in allowing himself to fall victim to blackmail.

Next, he must take into account "repeat games." Abe treated this occurrence as a one time opportunity, to have or have not. If he would have been willing to walk away from the money, Berry would learn that his stand does not pay and in the long run, as the situation repeats itself, would seek to cooperate with Abe.

Finally, Aumann claims that belief in oneself is an important element in this kind of situation. If one has a strong belief in himself, the other will eventually accept it and be convinced by it. Abe, despite his rational desire to arrive at a fair compromise, caved in to an irrational and uncompromising stand.

On Monday I walked among the delegates at the KP Intersessional, asking them all the same question: What compromise are you willing to accept in order to resolve the Zimbabwe imbroglio? All but one indicated willingness to compromise. The one that didn't, the one that demonstrated a strong belief in her stand, was an NGO representative.

The NGOs represent the moral stand of the diamond industry at large, and serve as a moral compass for us all. It's right to follow their lead in many issues. But all of us know that life is not perfect. We need to give a little to gain some, instead of losing it all. The problem begins when one player decides to not compromise.

I would hate to think that the U.S., the diamond industry, and others, decided to make the irrational decision and adopt the uncompromising stand as if this week's meeting was a one time occurrence. It's not. The NGOs apparently were not willing to accept what most everyone else was willing to accept and as result we got nowhere.

Is this bad? Maybe it’s the Zimbabweans that are the hardliners, unwilling to remove the military from Marange, unwilling to release Farai Maguwu on bail. I'm told that Zimbabwe's speech at the conference expressed willingness to make concessions. After that speech many delegates moved closer to a compromise.

The NGOs keep asking us "what will the consumer say? How will they understand a compromise?" This almost sounds like a veiled threat. Is that what the NGOs have to offer? Accept our stand or else?

No one wants to see Mugabe or his army grow rich off legally mined and KP approved diamonds. But aren't we losing sight of the plight of the real victims, the poor diggers that only have a shovel to make a meager living? Isn't protecting them the moral stand we should adopt? Haven't their neighbors been shot and killed?

Here is what we have now and until a solution is found: illegally mined diamonds, smuggled out of the country and into India via Dubai, with no one ensuring that the weak and disadvantaged are protected. And that is only in the short run.

In the long run, these diggers and their families are not benefiting from clean water, decent education, health services or job training. I'm not naïve about these expectations: Rio Tinto is making that a living reality right now at a different part of Zimbabwe – by the Murowa diamond mine.

Basically it is a choice, and KP did not choose well.

KP failed this week. It failed diamond consumers and diamond digging villagers alike because it failed to arrive at a resolution that could have right the wrong. In Judaism we call it Tikun Olam, a series of small actions that improve the world. In game theory it's called the Paradox Conflict, where we yield to an irrational stand and lose most everything. Or at least so goes the theory.