“The Diamond Pipeline”: Between Africa and the Arab World

Abstract

The term “diamond pipeline” (used in the diamond industry) is the medium through which discourses characterizing Afro-Arab relations have been rendered. Through journalistic and human rights narratives, framed by discourses of security and containment characterizing the “War on Terror,” blood diamonds have highly profiled the relationship between Africa and the Arab world. This article argues that the logic of containment is exclusionary in casting Lebanese migration as a threat. It analyzes two novels on Lebanese migration to Africa in order to address the logic of containment, also in the form of Lebanese nationalism. The novels and the rhetoric of journalism and human rights reporting are analyzed to show how one discourse promotes containment and the other disrupts it, as well as to delineate the scope of discourses that bind and unify Africa and the Arab world.