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TOC | Summary | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | About the Author Preventing Genocide in Burundi Lessons from International Diplomacy Introduction The October 1993 assassination of Burundi’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, by soldiers from the country’s Tutsi minority provoked interethnic massacres that took approximately 50,000 Hutu and Tutsi lives and destabilized a fledgling democracy. The situation quickly inspired diplomatic and other initiatives to prevent further conflict. But the greatest impetus for international peacemaking was the spring 1994 genocide of an estimated 800,000 Tutsi (and liberal Hutu) in neighboring Rwanda. It was widely recognized that the international community had failed to prevent or stop the Rwandan holocaust. The conviction grew that in Burundi, “The international community must not again be caught unprepared.”1 Nevertheless, it is clear that the international community has been unable to control the onrushing violence, much less mediate a political solution. The death toll in Burundi has risen to an estimated 150,000, 21/2 percent of the population of six million. At least 800,000 Burundians have lost their homes, including approximately 250,000 refugees, 250,000 internally displaced persons, and 300,000 forced into official “regroupment camps” as the government battles a rising Hutu-led insurgency.2 Despite the internationally supported effort by UN Special Representative Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah to foster a transitional political settlement, a long “creeping coup” culminated in a full-scale Tutsi military takeover in July 1996. A sustained African regional peace initiative, facilitated by former Tanzanian President Nyerere and buttressed by economic sanctions, has struggled to convene all-party political negotiations. UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s campaign for UN contingency planning for preventive humanitarian military intervention ended in failure, and a year of unofficial “second-track” mediation by the Community of Sant’Egidio between the government and the major insurgent group produced little more than an agenda for discussions. In the past twenty months, elements of the Burundi conflict have spread to the Congo (formerly Zaire), and military tension has grown between Burundi and its other large neighbor, Tanzania. The Burundian conflict places tens of millions of people at risk in Central Africa, and its continuation erodes the international norm against genocide, which could have a negative impact on future violent conflicts in such volatile and strategic areas as South Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. Why then have the world’s peacemakers, despite considerable investments of time and effort, faltered in Burundi? To ask this provocative question is by no means to ignore the fact that genocidal communal conflict poses the most difficult of all challenges to outside amelioration—as events in Rwanda, Bosnia, Chechnya, Sudan, and, to a limited extent, Liberia have painfully illustated. Yet cogent analyses of many of these cases have indicated that the international community might have taken more effective actions to constrain violence and promote longer-term political solutions.3 An examination of the response to the Burundi crisis can hold yet another mirror to contemporary international policy toward genocide—the “odious scourge” that at least 120 countries have legally undertaken “to prevent and punish”4—and can furnish valuable lessons for future policymaking in Burundi and elsewhere. This report analyzes major international diplomatic reactions to the Burundi conflict, particularly from late 1995, when emergency diplomatic efforts to foster temporary power-sharing arrangements visibly collapsed, to September 1997. Since then, despite some progress in internal peace talks, the basic political and diplomatic parameters of the conflict remain largely unchanged. While it would have been useful to give equal attention to the diplomacy of the critical 1993–95 period, when the cycle of violence intensified, my research opportunities (and limited resources) dictated an emphasis on the more recent past. By studying events as they occurred and interacting with key international and Burundian participants, it seemed possible to develop an unusually solid firsthand analysis of the subject. I have, of course, used others’ studies to provide the reader with necessary historical background on Burundi. I focus on diplomatic efforts, official and nongovernmental, to address the broad parameters of the Burundi conflict. The ongoing crisis has provoked an enormous range of international responses, including the dispatch of Organization of African Unity (OAU) military observers, UN and human rights group investigations of political assassinations and massacres, the establishment of a UN Human Rights Center, various small projects to foster interethnic reconciliation, dozens (if not hundreds) of conferences and reports, and so on. However, I have chosen to concentrate on more general political, military, and economic initiatives to promote a political settlement and prevent genocide. The report explores several basic questions: What is the nature of the political conflict in Burundi, and what is the range of potentially feasible solutions? Is international assistance necessary to prevent genocide and achieve a peaceful political settlement? If so, what kind of intervention is appropriate? To what extent have the UN, the Organization of African Unity, African regional states, and key Western nations manifested the political will and capacity to contribute to conflict prevention and resolution? How effective were the Community of Sant’Egidio’s second-track diplomacy and the concerted effort to prevent violence by American nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)? What lessons have been learned and how might the international community achieve more in the future? Beyond the customary academic and documentary sources, this study has benefited from my interviews of a broad variety of important actors in the Burundian drama. A number of these interviews were conducted during a three-week visit to Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, France, and Belgium during December 1996. Between March 1996 and September 1997, I interviewed approximately 80 individuals, many repeatedly. All of these conversations were conducted on a “not-for-attribution” basis to maximize candor. Among my most prominent interlocutors were former President Nyerere, the designated African “facilitator” for peacemaking; OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim; Ugandan ministers of state Rebecca Kadaga and Anasas Mbabazi; Richard Bogosian, U.S. special coordinator for Rwanda and Burundi; Howard Wolpe, special envoy to Burundi; former national security adviser Anthony Lake; and UN Assistant Secretary-Generals Yashiko Akashi and Alvaro De Soto. I also spoke with a variety of Burundian military, political party, and insurgent leaders and representatives as well as policymakers, diplomatic representatives, and human rights monitors from France, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Tanzania, and the United Nations. Last, but not least, I profited greatly from my participation in the monthly Washington, D.C., meetings of the Burundi Policy Forum (recently renamed the Great Lakes Policy Forum), which brings together concerned American and European NGOs, U.S. and foreign officials, and other informed observers. Research for this report was supported by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace from October 1996 through July 1997. Previously, two short consultancies with the International Crisis Group had introduced me to this significant and haunting subject. TOC | Summary | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | About the Author
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