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Preventing Genocide in Burundi Lessons from International Diplomacy

Regional African Diplomacy for a Negotiated Political Settlement

As Boutros-Ghali was launching his campaign for humanitarian military contingency planning, several East and Central African states, in conjunction with the OAU, were developing a much broader peace initiative. Over the past two years, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Zaire, Kenya, and Ethiopia (joined by Zambia after October 1996) have demonstrated an unusual degree of cohesion and determination in pushing for a negotiated settlement. In 1996 and 1997, they held five Presidential Summit Meetings on Burundi; engaged former President Nyerere as their “facilitator”; sponsored four major Nyerere-hosted political discussions among Burundian parties; began planning for the dispatch of thousands of regional peacekeeping troops to provide security and facilitate negotiations; adopted and modified economic sanctions aimed at persuading the Burundian government to restore constitutional legality and pursue unconditional, all-party negotiations; established mechanisms to regulate the sanctions; and worked to coordinate their efforts with those of other governmental and nongovernmental organizations.

      The regional group’s basic thrust—using its considerable political, economic, and military influence to nudge the Burundians into all-party negotiations—is unexceptionable. However, specific initiatives, particularly economic sanctions against the Burundian government and the priority given to African-led mediation, have suffered from lack of adequate Western support. Even when France, the European Union, or the United States accepted the region’s decisions, they usually declined to back them with measures of their own or to offer the region technical assistance in implementing them. And when they disagreed with the regional group, they were sometimes unwilling to defer to the African consensus.

      On balance, the regional states have made progress with their approach, despite uneven Western support. If they have not yet convoked full-fledged, all-inclusive negotiations on democratic power sharing, they have clearly edged the Burundian parties in this direction. They have also outlined the gist of a settlement based on power sharing. And they have become involved in planning for the largely African peacekeeping force that is a sine qua non of any political resolution. The Europeans and Americans have had arguable concerns, but their fears and expectations were almost certainly overdrawn. Still, the Africans have stumbled in their inefficient implementation of sanctions, and they have been slow to deal with the reality that Nyerere’s effort at mediation has been affected by his government’s and his own deteriorating relations with the government of Burundi.

      Had the African and Western states collaborated to provide strong backing for the conditional sanctions and regional political mediation, they would have put terrific pressure over time on the conflicting parties to reach a compromise settlement. What seems desirable is a new and closer collaboration between African and Western states based on (1) a mutual recognition of the basic soundness of regional policy; (2) more open and joint discussions between African and Western leaders (compared with typical one-on-one diplomatic lobbying) that could enable the Africans to benefit from Western experience and detachment as they pursue their objectives; and (3) a mutual realization that strong Western backing of African consensus decisions is essential for effective international action.

Regional African Initiatives

The region’s activism on Burundi constitutes a notable reversal of African states’ past reluctance to intervene against the continent’s major human rights abuses. This is partly a reaction to events in Rwanda and Burundi. Systematic violence and coups generated massive refugee flows to neighboring countries, often with attendant threats of political unrest, yet the international community did not intervene to prevent these calamities.

      The new regional energy also reflects the advent of a new generation of civilian African politicians, led by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania. Although their regimes vary considerably in their commitment to democracy, these leaders’ experiences have convinced them that basic moral values have a prominent place in foreign policy and that they need to act together to resolve many of their economic and political problems. Indeed, one of the remarkable aspects of regional decision making on Burundi has been the willingness of participants to make the compromises necessary for joint action. For example, according to well-placed African and Western sources, the regional decision to impose economic sanctions against Burundi was a middle ground between Uganda’s preference for an ultimatum to the military to relinquish power immediately and Rwanda’s desire for a delay in action. And the subsequent easing of sanctions on “humanitarian” goods represented a compromise among countries that wanted to maintain restrictions, partially relax them, or expand existing humanitarian exemptions.

      The first step in the region’s campaign was actually taken by leaders of the OAU who had strong regional connections. According to knowledgeable regional officials, in mid-1995 the new chairman, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, and the veteran secretary-general, former Tanzanian Foreign Minister Salim Salim, began encouraging former Tanzanian President Nyerere to “become involved in Burundi.” A structure for peacemaking started to emerge in November when former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, through the Carter Center, facilitated an African Summit Conference in Cairo. There the presidents (or their representatives) of Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi considered the “persistent tensions, hostilities, insecurities, and recent genocide in the Great Lakes Region.” Although Nyerere was unable to accept an invitation to help “mediate” at the conference, he subsequently made a number of visits to Burundi and discussed his possible role with UN officials in New York. At the follow-up Tunis summit of March 1996, he accepted the mandate “to assist the people of Burundi in finding means to achieve peace, stability, and reconciliation,” including “the resolution of fundamental problems relating to the access, control, and management of power, so that either the ethnic or political minority is reassured.”³⁴ Given his great prestige, Nyerere would become far more than a facilitator for the Burundian parties. He would be a principal adviser to the regional presidents, helping to ensure continuing priority for the Burundi crisis.

      In the spring of 1996, Nyerere sponsored two meetings of Burundian political parties in Mwanza, Tanzania, but little progress was reported. Representatives of FRODEBU and UPRONA quarreled over whom to include on a list of genocidal killers and whether or not to endorse the largely moribund Convention of Government. UPRONA rebuffed Nyerere’s effort to broaden the discussion by inviting delegates from the armed rebels.³⁵

      In June, the regional states held their first Burundi-only summit in Arusha, Tanzania, adding the presidents of Kenya and Ethiopia to their number. The summit accepted the surprise (and domestically ill-prepared) request of Burundi’s Hutu president and Tutsi prime minister for a regional peacekeeping force to guarantee security for all and established a technical committee to plan the assistance.³⁶ In making their request, the Burundian leaders appear to have been responding to pressure from the insurgency and the United Nations, and to President Museveni’s urging that they reform the army with the help of outside trainers. Following the July coup and the withdrawal of the Burundian request, the second Arusha summit imposed comprehensive economic sanctions against the regime. These were conditioned upon the restoration of the National Assembly, the unbanning of political parties, and immediate and unconditional negotiations with all political parties and armed factions.³⁷

      The third Arusha summit in October included the president of Zambia, which controls part of an important lake route to Burundi. The regional leaders noted that they had granted sanctions exemptions for the importation of fertilizer and vegetable seeds because of President Buyoya’s partial steps toward resurrecting the parliament and parties. But they stressed the centrality of unconditional and inclusive negotiations, which they envisioned beginning within a month.³⁸ Nyerere’s Mwanza Three meeting finally came off in December, attracting representatives of a broad variety of political groups, including the government, CNDD, FRODEBU, and many smaller Tutsi parties. UPRONA, no longer a governing party under the coup regime, was a notable stayaway. The format was restricted to Nyerere’s individual “consultations” with the parties about their positions along with useful informal contacts among the delegates. Nyerere had reluctantly concluded that there was little space for a more ambitious effort because two key parties, the government and CNDD, had become engaged in separate, Western-supported secret negotiations for a suspension of hostilities under the auspices of the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome. Ironically, regional sanctions pressures had helped give life to the Sant’Egidio effort, pushing regional mediation into the background.

      In April 1997, the fourth Arusha summit eased sanctions on certain products (food, medicine, educational and construction materials, and agricultural inputs) to “alleviate the suffering of the people of Burundi.” According to African and Western observers, this moderate relaxation resulted as much from the suspicions of Kenya and other countries that their partners might be profiting from sanctions evasions as from reports of limited progress in the Rome talks. At the same time, the regional leaders kept up their pressure for peace by calling on Burundi to restore full freedom of movement to the FRODEBU speaker of the assembly (who was being investigated for possible participation in the 1993 massacres) and disband regroupment camps, and by appealing to the international community to “exert full political, economic, and diplomatic pressures on all the parties to pursue a negotiated settlement . . .” including an arms embargo and the denial of visas to those obstructing the peace process.³⁹

      The Sant’Egidio talks stalled in May, opening the way for African-facilitated negotiations. Nyerere prepared a two-week meeting in Arusha and the prospects for broad-based, high-level participation seemed favorable. But at the last minute the government declined to show up and prevented others from departing Bujumbura. Insisting on a three-week postponement, the government cited its worsening relations with Tanzania on account of the latter’s “ever-increasing campaign” for sanctions and its alleged toleration of armed attacks by Burundian refugees from its territory. Throwing down a gauntlet, the Burundi government observed that such circumstances made “the mediation—no matter how illustrious—of a Tanzanian citizen very hard for Burundians to accept.”⁴⁰ According to well-informed Western diplomats, the immediate cause of the government’s withdrawal was Buyoya’s inability to overcome internal resistance to allowing the speaker of the assembly, another high FRODEBU official, and former President Bagaza to travel to Arusha, and his knowledge that their absence, particularly that of the speaker, would be intolerable to Nyerere.

      After presiding over a truncated meeting at Arusha in September, Nyerere offered to step aside as the facilitator. But the fifth summit, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, confirmed his “crucial role” and urged him to continue. It also rejected President Mkapa’s offer to no longer host political negotiations, insisting that the next round at least would be in Arusha. In a strong statement, the regional states expressed their “disappointment” with the Burundi government’s refusal to attend all-party talks, reaffirmed existing sanctions, and established a new secretariat to ensure their “scrupulous application.” It also called on the government to create a propitious climate for the talks by disbanding regroupment camps, halting trials for the 1993 massacres until a negotiated solution is in place to deal with such crimes, and permitting the speaker as well as former presidents Ntibantuganya and Bagaza to travel freely and participate in the talks.⁴¹

The Western Reaction

The West looked benignly, if sometimes critically, upon the African effort, but it did not put its weight behind some of the most important initiatives. The thrust of its reservation was that overly blunt efforts to prevent genocide ignored the need to continue to work through moderate politicians in Bujumbura. France opposed sanctions from the beginning, maintaining that it was necessary to support Buyoya’s government lest it fall to more extremist forces led by former President Bagaza. As an alternative, France favored a vaguely defined international conference to resolve the problems of the Great Lakes region. But the major vehicle for French and other European policy in Burundi was the European Union. Through Special Envoy Aldo Ajello, the Europeans sometimes lobbied for limited easing of sanctions against the Buyoya regime or greater official recognition to reward its willingness to talk with the CNDD in Rome.

      Like the French, the Americans’ first instinct had been to oppose sanctions as undermining a relatively moderate leader. This propensity had been overcome by a last-minute appeal from Special Envoy Howard Wolpe, but the United States soon joined the Europeans in recurrently lobbying for a modest but politically meaningful relaxation, such as the suspension of restrictions on commercial air travel. The West’s desire to bolster and encourage Buyoya as a moderate alternative (the normal diplomatic response in an abnormal country) also made it disinclined to back the regional sanctions with its own actions. For example, the Americans did not revive earlier proposals to deny visas to Burundi government officials or to freeze their foreign assets. No Western government adopted the African sanctions. And the UN Security Council went no further than to threaten to impose an arms embargo and other undefined measures against those obstructing peace.⁴² Furthermore, while it was quickly apparent that there were considerable “leakages” in the embargo, the West did not offer intelligence or other technical assistance to help plug them up.

      As for the Africans’ focus on political mediation, the Europeans and Americans prevailed on Nyerere to delay efforts to achieve all-parties political negotiations in favor of the secret Rome talks on a suspension of hostilities between the government and CNDD. Although they recognized that these talks had succeeded in getting the government to dialogue with the CNDD, both Nyerere and the regional leaders were uncomfortable with the degree of Western emphasis on the Rome process. In December 1996, Western envoys had to push Nyerere into changing the format of his planned Mwanza Three negotiations from a “conference” (which would have emphasized, at least symbolically, future African-led negotiations) to “consultations” (which deferred more to the Rome process). Furthermore, the West periodically pressed the Africans to relax sanctions in response to the Rome talks, which fell far short of the broad, all-party negotiations the region demanded. In August 1997, on the verge of a two-week all-parties conference in Arusha, Buyoya withdrew. Western diplomats echoed many of his complaints about Nyerere’s lack of adequate consultation and Tanzania’s alleged toleration of the insurgents. Rather than continuing to press Buyoya to attend the long-planned conference and take up his issues there, they supported his request for a three-week postponement and subsequently sought to advance consideration of his proposal for a change of venue.

Evaluation

While one could argue about the merits of particular measures, the weight of the evidence is that the regional sanctions have, to a limited degree, “worked”—and that they might have worked even better with more Western support. There is every indication, in both official statements and the evolution of policy since mid-1996, that Burundi endorsed the principle of unconditional all-party negotiations, engaged in secret talks with armed rebels in Rome, and participated in some of Nyerere’s meetings largely in the hope of meeting conditions that would enable sanctions to be lifted.

      Considering both these positive steps and the government’s long reluctance to enter all-party negotiations, it appears that stronger international pressure would have been desirable. In interviews in December 1996, high Burundian military and civilian officials described their policy as one of continuing to push for military successes that would enable them to “negotiate on our terms.” This was hardly consistent with the regional states’ repeated calls for urgent, “unconditional” negotiations. Nothing reveals the continuing lack of effective support for this idea in the Burundian government more than one Western official’s recent private observation that Burundian leaders need to “see how [they] are perceived internationally”:

The military has gone from 15,000 to 40,000. The Tutsi think they can win a military victory and sanctions are crumbling. There have been executions [mainly of Hutus judged by Tutsi courts to have committed genocide] and regroupment camps. And we have, at the same time, been advocating relaxation of sanctions. . . .

      The West argued that easing rather than intensifying sanctions in reaction to Buyoya’s positive moves would strengthen moderate forces for peace in Burundi. But if this were true, one would have expected to see greater flexibility in the government’s position after sanctions were partially relaxed in April 1997. No change occurred, partly because the government was buoyed by its improved military position following the events in eastern Zaire. Even if Buyoya himself was relatively moderate, the dynamic forces in Burundi politics were, as we have seen, relatively extremist. In fact, they had become more extremist than ever since the October 1993 genocidal massacres and the April 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. As one of Buyoya’s colleagues noted in December 1996, “The president’s political constituency is unclear.” If it was indeed the extremists who held the political balance, what was required, as explained in chapter 2, was outside pressure to get them engaged in negotiations for a form of democratic power sharing that protected their interests. Of course, there had to be a balance between coercion and political explanation and reassurance in order to avoid a backlash. In the absence of adequate pressure, extremism would inevitably spawn continued violence.

      By oversimplifying the political contest in Bujumbura as one between “the moderates” led by Buyoya and “the extremists” looking to Bagaza, Western officials may have also overdrawn the contrast between the two presidential cousins. It was true that Bagaza had been a particularly authoritarian ruler, that he had financed a violent Tutsi militia, and that some of his followers were younger, more militant Tutsi. But in his maneuvering for power, he had helped finance FRODEBU’s political campaign, favored a national conference instead of the patch-up Convention of Government, and agreed to all-parties negotiations with the CNDD and FRODEBU. He also had a long relationship with President Museveni who, despite Hutu suspicions, was a strong critic of the Tutsi-led coup government and a firm advocate of ethnic integration of the army. It may be significant that a number of important CNDD and FRODEBU leaders make little political distinction between Buyoya and Bagaza.

      Regional sanctions have bitten in Burundi, but their implementation has suffered from serious deficiencies. According to a thorough Western government analysis in April 1997,⁴³ Burundi was able to export almost all its 1996–97 crop of coffee and tea by air and lake, although at a lower price and higher cost than usual. Most fuel needs were satisfied by smuggling from Tanzania and Rwanda, but shortages and sanctions premiums caused a tripling of the price of gasoline. (This was a prominent complaint of members of the political elite, although a narrow segment of that elite has certainly profited from the sanction-busting trade.) Burundi’s small industrial sector, a major source of government revenue, was significantly affected by the cutoff of raw materials, but here too there were leakages; for example, through Rwanda.⁴⁴

      Members of the regional and national committees that were hastily appointed to administer the sanctions admitted they lacked the means to monitor and enforce them. Furthermore, regional modifications of sanctions to accommodate humanitarian needs were often hampered by irregular meeting schedules and weak coordination mechanisms. While the recent decision to establish a sanctions secretariat should help, resource and technical constraints will continue. In this regard, Western states have considerable experience with sanctions regimes and could make a major contribution by supplying intelligence, technical aid, and other resources as long as sanctions continue.

      The region’s focus on all-party political negotiations was clearly central for peacemaking in Burundi, and some progress was made toward this end. (The serious problem posed by the competing, Western-supported Rome process will be discussed in the next chapter.) But the regional mediation effort was not without flaws. Of course, any regional facilitator would have had a difficult job trying to overcome the fears and suspicions of the deeply divided Burundians. And the challenge was further complicated by the fact that the region was trying to establish a form of power-sharing democracy in Burundi and employing regional economic sanctions against a refractory government. Many Western diplomats also criticized President Nyerere and his staff for not spending enough time on the process or on the ground in Burundi, displaying a somewhat authoritarian style, and needlessly antagonizing the Burundi government with certain public and private statements.

      These charges are difficult for an outsider to fully assess. What is clear is that Nyerere and his home country were perceived by the Burundian regime as the most influential proponent of sanctions. (Indeed, all regional summits on Burundi were held in Tanzania, which was regarded, according to one African leader, as the “chair” country for Burundi.) Furthermore, Tanzanian-Burundian tensions increased greatly after October 1996, when fighting in eastern Zaire forced the CNDD to relocate many of its external cadres to Tanzania, albeit under the government’s injunction (not universally effective) to avoid military action. Since the regional states were, in a way, interested parties to the Burundi-Tanzania conflict, they were slow to deal with the Burundian government’s growing disaffection, which posed a threat to the negotiations. The problem could have been addressed in a number of ways, from dealing directly with the Tanzania-Burundi conflict to introducing additional non-Tanzanian personnel into the mediation process and altering the venue of some meetings.

      If the West had strongly supported conditional economic sanctions, including measures to reduce regional leakages, the poverty-stricken, besieged Burundi government would have come under enormous pressure over time to reach a negotiated compromise with its opponents. On the other side, Western support of the April 1997 arms embargo against the CNDD as well as the government would have put a brake on the insurgents’ hopes for total victory. Furthermore, the region’s drive toward all-party negotiations was hampered by an inability to correct for counterproductive national and regional interests. External partners might have introduced a greater measure of impartiality.

      Building on past progress, a more effective regional policy might be based on a revised relationship between the African states and other key actors: France, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations. Those other actors could provide consistent support and technical assistance for key regionally determined policies such as sanctions, all-party mediation and, in the future, UN peacekeeping. In return, the region could accept closer consultation with its external partners, which might enable it to profit from their broad experience and provide a useful corrective to regional self-interest. In the end, the region’s “friends” would accept the need to support African consensus decisions, as it is the region’s political will and resources that will largely determine the outcome in Burundi.

TOC | Summary | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | About the Author

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