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Preventing Genocide in Burundi Lessons from International Diplomacy

“Second-Track” Unofficial Diplomacy and Other Nongovernmental Initiatives

Peacemaking in Burundi has been distinguished by at least two unusual and sustained interventions by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

The Community of Sant’Egidio

In the middle of 1996, the Community of Sant’Egidio—the Rome-based lay Catholic group that helped mediate an end to the civil war in Mozambique—began to arrange secret peace talks between the government and the CNDD. In testimony to the power of extremism

      in Burundian politics, both sides considered it politically dangerous to meet “the enemy” openly. Between September 1996 and May 1997, four rounds of discussions took place in Rome. According to participants, the purpose of these talks was to achieve a suspension of hostilities based on agreement regarding the general principles of a political settlement. Such an accord between the two main armed parties would establish the framework for future Nyerere-led all-party negotiations. The Rome process received strong support from the European Union and the United States, whose special envoys attended as observers, although they did not directly participate in the discussions. Also present was a South African special envoy and, beginning in December, Nyerere’s top aide, Felix Mosha.

      It was not until March that the talks produced any written agreement, but this agreement concerned only the framework of the ongoing discussions and their agenda. The parties would first consider the “reestablishment of constitutional and institutional order,” “questions of defense forces and public security,” and a “suspension of hostilities.” When they reached agreement on the “fundamental principles” for resolving all three issues, along with their “modalities of application” and “guarantees,” a suspension of hostilities would go into effect. Then the parties would discuss “the question of the functioning of justice” (including an international tribunal to judge genocide and other political crimes since independence and the proscription and repression of the ideology of genocide); “the identification and modes of engagement of other parties”; and the cease-fire.⁴⁵

      By early May, the parties were at an impasse on the first agenda item: constitutional principles. The CNDD demanded a return to the 1992 constitution, which had produced a FRODEBU-dominated government, while the current regime insisted upon a new constitution. At the same time, the Rome process, which was increasingly an open secret, became public through press leaks and a subsequent Burundi government news conference. Amidst growing doubts about their future, the talks were recessed, and they have not yet been revived. The focus shifted back to Nyerere’s renewed efforts to convene all-party political negotiations.

Evaluation

Certainly the Sant’Egidio initiative was useful in getting the representatives of the major armed parties to talk to each other. Despite its lack of substantive results, one CNDD delegate spoke of “significant progress” because, “At least we were able to agree on something” (that is, the agenda). Still, the fruits of this year-long effort were disappointing, and there is reason to question the basic premises behind it.

      In the first place, the mediators assumed that the CNDD would be willing to join the Burundi government in a formal, internationally sanctioned suspension of hostilities preceding all-party negotiations in exchange for agreement on the general principles of a political settlement. While the mediators did not insist on an official cease-fire, they clearly envisioned a very lengthy truce that would continue during prolonged negotiations. Once signed, such a truce would be costly, in terms of international diplomatic support, to break. However, from Cambodia and El Salvador to Mozambique and South Africa, insurgent movements have generally required more specific political commitments and actions before voluntarily agreeing to anything more than unilateral or short-term interruptions in fighting. In genocidal Burundi, the CNDD was, if anything, even less inclined to put down its main instruments of self-defense and political pressure on the basis of vague promises by what it called “the monoethnic army.” CNDD officials consistently maintained that, while they would respond to a Burundi army decision to stop killing civilians with an order to their units to fire only in self-defense, there could be no mutually agreed-upon military stand-down without the full restoration of the 1992 constitution (which might subsequently be amended), parliament, and political party rights.⁴⁶ Indeed, it was the CNDD’s insistence on the constitution that contributed to the breakdown of negotiations. Next to these convictions, Western assurances that the CNDD would gain “status” over other nongovernmental political groups by helping establish the “framework” for all-party negotiations counted for little. Even if the CNDD had agreed to the kind of lightly monitored suspension of hostilities envisioned, it is questionable whether it would have held, given the unclear military lines and likely challenges from rival Hutu guerilla groups and Tutsi extremist forces.

      The Rome participants were not totally unaware of this problem. Indeed, some of the language in the agenda seemed to look beyond general principles toward somewhat more specific understandings on “modalities of application” and “guarantees.” But if the talks had veered off in that direction, they would have trespassed on the territory of the envisioned all-party negotiations. This would have taken them down the dangerous path of trying to formulate a political pact without the participation of key groups that had the power to disrupt any settlement. As we have seen, that course led to destruction in Burundi in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994.

      This brings up two other questionable premises of the Rome talks. First, it was assumed that the privacy of the discussions could be preserved over a relatively long period even though their existence was an open secret and source of suspicion among the main groups that were excluded: PALIPEHUTU rebels, FRODEBU parliamentarians and party leaders, UPRONA officials, several small Tutsi-led parties, and military and civilian sympathizers of Bagaza. Second, it was assumed that the CNDD would continue to tolerate a situation in which “progress” in the secret talks was frequently invoked by Sant’Egidio, Western, and African officials as a justification for public regional decisions to relax sanctions against the Burundi government.

      Both of these assumptions exploded in April-May 1997, when the regional states eased the sanctions on humanitarian grounds. The CNDD angrily protested Buyoya’s reference to the Rome talks in his first permitted appearance at the summit. Then news about the talks was leaked to the press, reportedly by the CNDD and leaders of a small Tutsi party. Finally, Buyoya held a press conference to defend the talks against internal Tutsi opposition. With the genie now out of the bottle, it was difficult to justify renewed discussions that did not include a broad variety of groups.

      In retrospect, the Sant’Egidio effort might have been better conceived as a short-term and limited effort to break down the barriers between the government and the CNDD. That would have kept the focus of international peacemaking in Burundi where it belonged: on the patient and persistent quest for all-inclusive political negotiations. Even if separate government-CNDD (and PALIPETHUTU and FROLINA) talks were required to establish a suspension of hostilities and an internationally monitored cease-fire, there was no reason why these could not have been subsumed in broader all-party negotiations. With more realistic objectives for Burundi, Sant’Egidio and its largely Western supporters could have done more to strengthen the African-led mediation process. Today, as that process still struggles to establish its credibility, there may be an opportunity for the Community of Sant’Egidio to bring its energy and experience to bear in a new and more collaborative fashion.

Other NGO Initiatives

Motivated by what close observers called “a mixture of guilt and outrage over events in Rwanda,” other American and European NGOs established collaborative mechanisms aimed at preventing further bloodshed in Burundi. The most notable was probably the Washington, D.C.–based Burundi Policy Forum (BPF), which was established in January 1995 by Refugees International, Search for Common Ground, the Center for Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the African-American Institute. The BPF’s monthly meetings have been regularly attended by representatives of InterAction (the umbrella advocacy organization for most U.S.-based, nonprofit humanitarian, refugee, and development agencies), many of its members, human rights groups, and representatives from the U.S. and foreign governments.⁴⁷

      Beyond its important role as a “clearinghouse for ideas and information,”⁴⁸ the BPF has been a theater for various efforts to influence American policy toward Burundi. In July 1995, more than 30 BPF organizations signed a statement calling for the United States to appoint a special envoy to Burundi, deploy UN military observers to refugee camps in Zaire and Tanzania, and address the issue of accountability for past crimes.⁴⁹ In January 1996, 18 InterAction agencies wrote President Clinton expressing support for contingency planning for humanitarian intervention.⁵⁰

      Furthermore, a small BPF Security Working Group, led by representatives of Refugees International and Search for Common Ground, has “served as an informal body for . . . off-the-record exchange of ideas among government, UN and NGO representatives where the dialogue is candid and solution-oriented.” Among the working group’s accomplishments, BPF co-founder Lionel Rosenblatt of Refugees International cited its contributions to speeding up the assignment of a new ambassador to Burundi, increasing the presence of a U.S. military attach¹ in Burundi, provoking a high-level review of possible action against “hate radio stations,” and promoting studies of potential U.S. assistance to improve the police and justice systems. In addition, BPF discussions and pressures helped persuade certain U.S. officials to contribute to the establishment of UN commissions to investigate arms flows to Rwanda and the assassination of President Ndadaye and the ensuing massacres.⁵¹

Evaluation

In the end, the BPF has made only a marginal contribution to peacemaking in Burundi. In February 1997, one of its co-founders bluntly informed the group that it had “not succeeded” in “its objective of preventing genocide.” Much of the BPF’s advocacy was concerned with relatively minor details of policy, not with its broad direction. Even public expressions by InterAction members (including BPF co-founder Refugees International) in favor of contingent humanitarian intervention did not develop into a sustained political effort.

      As a large and diverse group, the BPF would have confronted a formidable challenge in attempting to develop a consensus for alternative U.S. and international policies toward Burundi. Moreover, to significantly advance such initiatives, members would have had to contemplate unprecedented steps to organize their donors and supporters into vocal political constituencies. As it was, the policy perspectives most consistently heard at the forum were those of its various U.S government participants.

      According to American officials, the BPF did have a diffuse influence on policy, because visible outside concern helped justify the time they spent on the Burundi issue and whatever they did about it. More specifically, the NSC staff and its allies used the existence of outside support for contingent humanitarian intervention as added ammunition for their inter- and intra-agency wars. Thus, the major American NGO policy initiative for preventive action in Burundi appears to have had a marginal impact on official U.S. policy agendas and to have largely avoided developing one of its own.

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