COLUMN ONE : Diamonds, Smugglers, AK-47s : In a mad rush for the world’s best diamonds, hundreds of prospectors arrive daily in a remote Angolan province. With gems worth upwards of $100,000 scooped up, the law of the gun prevails.

John Wilson left his secure job in South Africa a few months ago and trekked 1,500 miles into deepest Angola to make his fortune in diamonds. Arriving in the remote province of Lunda Norte, he found an African version of the Wild West.

More than 50,000 ragged prospectors with shovels and big dreams were digging up some of the best-quality diamonds in the world. They slaked their thirst in makeshift taverns, told tall tales by campfire and guarded their booty with AK-47 rifles.

Diamonds seemed to be everywhere, sparkling like sequins in the sandy soil. And Wilson, a 63-year-old professional diver, made some quick calculations. In a few days, he figured, he could rake in several years’ salary in diamonds.

“We all knew we could make a small fortune,” he said.

He might have made that fortune, too. But he was arrested for illegal prospecting and made those remarks from a dingy Angolan jail, where he had spent the past three months. He was deported this week.

Such are the risks of joining the mad rush for some of the world’s best diamonds in Angola. Yet several hundred new garimpeiros , or “unofficial” prospectors, arrive in Lunda Norte every day from the far reaches of Angola and half a dozen foreign countries. And, by each nightfall, another $1 million worth of diamonds is smuggled out, industry experts say.

Prospecting, dealing and smuggling have turned Angola’s rich diamond district into a moonscape, crowned a bevy of instant millionaires and robbed the national treasury of millions.

“It’s a complete, uncontrolled bonanza,” said Peter Gallegos, a representative of De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., the international diamond company, after a recent visit to Lunda Norte. “It is shocking. Really shocking. Absolutely dreadful.”

Dreadful for De Beers, perhaps, which controls 80% of the world diamond trade and has spent $200 million this year to scoop Angolan diamonds off the European markets in order to prop up prices.

But it’s been a blessing for a few thousand impoverished Angolans--and opportunistic Zairians, South Africans, Belgians and even Americans. From Lunda Norte to the Angolan capital of Luanda, the modern-day diamond rush has created a wild, chaotic culture of money, graft and greed.

The main source of the diamonds lies about 300 miles east of the seaside capital, in a province about the size of Virginia. The once-peaceful villages in Lunda Norte now are crowded with all-night saloons that sell eight brands of imported beer to the big-spending prospectors.

The law of the gun prevails there. Prospectors are frequently robbed, and sometimes killed, for the diamonds they carry in their pockets. Police are paid handsomely to look the other way or, if necessary, provide armed escort. And some prospectors hire armed sentries to watch their tents and shacks while they sleep.

The landscape bears witness to the bonanza. Rivers have been redirected, and the frenzied activity of thousands of prospectors working with shovels, and often their bare hands, has created deep craters and soil mountains. In their haste, prospectors ignore the smaller diamonds and reach instead for the multi-carat stones that fetch upwards of $100,000 in Luanda.

Luanda, a city of 2.5 million, has become an African mecca of diamond-dealing. The diamond rush has applied a veneer of prosperity to the shantytowns of this beleaguered city, with fancy new German-made cars on the potholed streets and new boutiques selling T-shirts for prices exceeding an ordinary Angolan’s monthly salary.

Although more than half the people of Angola are unemployed, the $160-a-night hotels of Luanda are filled with foreign diamond dealers who dine on $100 luncheon buffets of South African lobster and Mozambican shrimp. Outside the hotels, the streets are filled with gunfire each night, a reminder of the 16-year civil war that has just ended. And bandits in army uniforms stalk the streets.

“People’s values have become completely warped by diamonds,” said one Western diplomat in Luanda.

The largest contingent of foreigners in the new trade are South Africans, lured by the prospect of a quick buck, and by Angolans who claim that they have “government contracts” to dig. In the capital, South Africans and Belgians arrive with containers of beer, cold drinks--even new cars--to barter for diamonds.

“When they (prospectors) come into our embassy,” said a South African diplomat in Luanda, “I take bets on when they’ll get arrested.” Foreigners, especially white foreigners such as Wilson, make easy pickings for the authorities, who are under pressure to stop the diamond mining.

The rush was touched off by a key change in Angola’s diamond laws last year. Until then, only the government could legally own and sell uncut diamonds. But the new law allows anyone to possess diamonds and to sell them to the government.

The government hoped the new law would fill its pockets with what it thought were large caches of illegal diamonds in the countryside. But instead, it spawned a massive increase in illicit mining--a boom aided by the reopening of rural roads after the war. When the rainy season ended in May, rivers receded, exposing diamonds for the picking, and prospectors flooded into the province.

Diamonds are a smuggler’s best friend--small, light and valuable. And getting the stones out of Angola has not proved too difficult.

More than $500 million in diamonds have left the country illegally this year. Some were smuggled overland, across Angola’s borders with Zaire and Namibia. But many were taken out through lax security at the airport, to South Africa or directly to diamond markets in Europe.

“Angola is being robbed blind,” the South African diplomat said. “It’s unbelievable.” A few days ago, he said, a South African left the country in a chartered plane carrying 12,000 carats of uncut diamonds, worth about $2.5 million.

Government officials now realize that the law was a mistake and that the smuggling “has prejudiced the state,” according to Joao Lourenco, the government’s chief spokesman.

But officials have been afraid to repeal the law, because the diamond trade has pumped instant wealth into the country--and the law’s repeal might expose high-level diamond dealing. The government had been facing the country’s first national elections, conducted earlier this week, and this was no time to rock the boat.

Under pressure from De Beers, though, the government has staged a few raids in the province, rounding up foreigners who were considered likely to smuggle the diamonds out of the country. Government soldiers expelled 309 Zairians from the province in August. But a week later, they were back with their shovels.

John Wilson arrived in Angola in May with a friend, Denis Wilsnach, 31, after what Wilson remembers as a “nightmare journey.”

They drove in the dark, paying off soldiers with cans of Castle, South Africa’s favorite beer. When they slept, they were guarded by heavily armed Angolans, some from the government army and others from the rebel movement of Jonas Savimbi. And, during the day, they fought the bugs of Africa. Wilsnach spent a few days in bed with malaria.

The pair, both of them trained construction divers from Cape Town, were escorted to Lunda Norte by an Angolan acquaintance they knew as “Milka.” Milka said he had a contract with the government and promised them a commission of $100,000 for a month’s work.

“In this business you go where the better deal is, so we came here,” said Wilson, a slightly built man with a dark mustache and a weather-beaten face. “We thought we would just be in and out of the country.”

Most of the amateur prospectors in Lunda Norte were digging with shovels in dry river beds. But the South Africans planned a more expert approach. They had brought $6,000 worth of their own equipment, intending to harvest diamonds in gravel pumped from the river bottoms.

But, soon after they began diving, they were arrested. The government said they were caught with 72 diamonds; Wilson denied that they had any.

“We saw plenty of diamonds,” said Wilson, wearing a blue wool cap and dirty khaki slacks and sitting at a wooden table in the jail. “And we had the experience and the know-how to get them. But we didn’t get the chance. If it had been just a day later, they would have caught us with plenty. . . .”

Wilson and Wilsnach, along with another South African and one American, were held for more than three months in the Criminal Investigations Center, a 10-story building with broken elevators in a city beset by frequent, lengthy water and power outages.

Their possessions and diving gear were confiscated by the police, and they had to borrow clothes from other prisoners. At one point, they ate orange peels to survive.

The men were never charged, and they deny any wrongdoing. They seemed not to know that while diamond possession is legal in Angola, prospecting is not.

“It’s great how hard people are working for their families in Lunda Norte,” Wilson said. “It’s wonderful that these poor people have a way to get back on their feet again.”

In fact, though, the illicit diamond trade has richly rewarded only a select few Angolans, including employees of the state-owned diamond company who have used their positions to do their own dealing and pad their bank accounts.

The capital now is awash in foreign diamond dealers, who buy from the illegal prospectors and sell legally to the government. One such office sits on a busy traffic circle in the center of town, heavily fortified behind doubled-barred windows, a metal detector and several armed guards.

There is no sign out front. As the proprietor, a Belgian who identified himself only as “Raf,” explained: “We are very confidential people.”

Kraft, chief of The Times’ Johannesburg Bureau, was recently on assignment in Angola.

A Diamond Primer

Angolan diamonds are among the highest quality gem diamonds, and experts can easily identify them on the European markets.

Gem diamonds are graded according to weight, clarity, color and cut.

* Weight: The unit of weight for diamonds is carats; a carat equals 200 milligrams.

* Clarity: The clarity of a diamond can be lessened by various kinds of flaws.

* Color: The best diamonds are completely colorless. Very few diamonds reach this standard.

* Cut: The way a diamond is cut may affect its value. A stone that is not properly proportioned lacks the brilliance of a well-cut stone.

Source: The World Book Encyclopedia