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TOC | Summary | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | About the Author Preventing Genocide in Burundi Lessons from International Diplomacy Five Lessons from International Diplomatic Peacemaking in Burundi Some particularly important lessons can be drawn from recent international policies toward the conflict in Burundi. Discussion of these lessons may be helpful to peacemakers dealing with other internal conflicts, particularly genocidal ones. 1. Burundi cannot make peace by itself. Strong international pressure is essential to stop the violence and foster a political settlement. At the same time, collateral international efforts are necessary to engage all groups, including the extremists, in the negotiation of a feasible political compromise. Although Burundi lacks a long history of violent interethnic conflict, a recurrent cycle of genocidal violence has been established since 1965. Efforts to interrupt this cycle have been mainly driven by outside pressure. The post-1988 movement for liberalization and democratization was a response by Burundian political leaders to Western threats to withdraw assistance and to Africa’s rising democratic wave. The 1994 negotiations to patch up the disintegrating political order after Ndadaye’s assassination were largely the result of UN–led preventive diplomacy. The Burundi government’s 1996 request for regional security assistance was strongly influenced by threatened UN humanitarian intervention and Ugandan President Museveni’s persistent advocacy of regional military assistance to reform the army. And the major impetus behind the government’s halting cooperation with efforts to restore the National Assembly and political parties and foster all-party political negotiations was its desire to lift regional economic sanctions. If external pressures have not succeeded in ending genocidal violence, this is not because they have proved irrelevant or counterproductive. Much evidence suggests that they may not have been strong enough. The international community failed to augment Ould-Abdallah’s preventive diplomacy with a credible threat of coercion, even as violence drove the course of events in the capital. And the West did not give full backing to the UN secretary-general’s attempt to wield the threat of humanitarian military intervention or to the regional African states’ use of economic sanctions to promote negotiations. The international community has also failed to adequately address the imperative to engage all Burundian parties, including powerful extremists, in the negotiation of a political compromise that protects the essential interests of both Hutu and Tutsi. Top-down processes of democratization and preventive diplomacy evaded realistic internal discussion of how the burning issues of the country could be resolved. Boutros-Ghali failed to synchronize his proposal for military contingency planning with African efforts to engage Tutsi factions in political negotiations. Regional African leaders took insufficient account of the impact of Tanzanian-Burundian tensions on their attempts to lure the Tutsi leadership into all-party negotiations. The Community of Sant’Egidio, with support from the West, sponsored a long series of narrow-based secret talks that had the positive result of bringing government and CNDD representatives together but diverted momentum from the regional drive toward broader, more inclusive political negotiations. 2. The main international impetus for genocide prevention and conflict resolution in Burundi has come from a relatively cohesive and determined group of regional African states. This group has demonstrated the clearest grasp of the major elements of peacemaking in Burundi: outside pressure and the engagement of all parties in compromise political negotiations. And it has evinced the political will to act. Yet its efforts have been tarnished by weaknesses in implementing sanctions and a reluctance to make necesssary adjustments to ensure its credibility as a politically committed but fair mediator. The regional governments have devoted considerable time to the Burundi crisis, created important structures for continuing action, and endured significant financial sacrifices as a result of the economic sanctions. Using their political, economic, and military influence, they have succeeded over time in moving the Burundians in the direction of all-party negotiations. In doing so, they have also highlighted two of the three elements of a possible political settlement: democratic power sharing and outside peacekeeping forces. They have not yet broached the issue of accountability for past crimes. However, the regional effort has been hampered by deficiencies in the economic sanctions regime, particularly leakages from regional countries and inconsistencies of implementation. These problems have weakened support among certain participating countries, international humanitarian agencies, and Western states. Even more serious has been the region’s slowness in addressing the growing impact of tensions between the regional leader, Tanzania, and Burundi upon the Tanzanian facilitator’s difficult task of convening all-party negotiations. 3. Attempts by Western governments and the Community of Sant’Egidio to stimulate all-party negotiations by dangling “carrots” before relatively moderate government or insurgent leaders appear to be based on an exaggerated view of moderates’ influence in Burundian politics. Efforts to cajole these leaders into cooperating by easing sanctions or elevating their status have not succeeded because their constituencies are relatively extremist. The moderates’ weakness was revealed by the collapse of democracy and emergency power sharing and the resulting militarization of conflict. Subsequent Western encouragement for President Buyoya and the April 1997 easing of sanctions failed to produce serious proposals for political compromise in Rome or participation in anticipated all-party negotiations in Arusha. Nor did Buyoya alter the governing elite’s orientation toward using military pressure to achieve a resolution on its own terms. Similiarly, hopes that relatively moderate CNDD leaders would be willing to join in a suspension of hostilities in return for the government’s agreeing to “principles” of a political settlement appear to have underestimated the CNDD’s distrust of the Tutsi-led regime. Approaches that focus on the “moderates” alone also neglect the problem of extremist “out-bidders” who could potentially threaten the constituencies of both the government and the CNDD. 4. Given the strengths and weaknesses of recent international approaches to peacemaking in Burundi, it would be useful to reconsider the current relationship between regional efforts and those of other important actors, including France, the European Union, the United States, the United Nations, and the Community of Sant’Egidio. A more effective international approach to Burundi would combine greater outside support for regional policy choices and greater regional consultation with external partners to gain the benefit of their broad experience and detachment. Such an approach would also be based on the recognition that it is the region’s political will and resources that will largely determine the outcome for peace in Burundi. If interested Western countries had done more to back regional approaches on sanctions and political mediation—including the provision of technical assistance and other resources—there would have been strong pressure over time for a political settlement. If the regional states had consulted more with outsiders, they might have better addressed problems in the implementation of their key policies. 5. A more effective Western contribution to peacemaking in Burundi will require some revision of current policy perspectives. This is not likely to occur without firm political leadership. Key Western states responded to the Burundi crisis with a repertory drawn from past policies, bureaucratic agendas, and generic diplomatic responses. To a large extent, the French stance was a mid-point between France’s historic support for the Tutsi-led regime and its embarrassment at the consequences of its similar relationship with the former Hutu elite in Rwanda. American policy was mainly the outcome of struggles between politically appointed advisers anxious to avoid “another Rwanda,” State Department officials concerned about offending France and missing opportunities for negotiation with the coup regime, and Pentagon representatives worried about committing American resources to “another Somalia.” Western policymakers also tended to apply their normal diplomatic approach of backing the moderates in an abnormal, genocidal situation where the moderates lacked decisive influence. Determined political leadership could overcome these obstacles to more effective international policies toward Burundi—and the Great Lakes region in general. Presidents and prime ministers might begin with strong public statements underlining the moral importance of opposing the continuing genocidal massacres of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Central Africa. They could also point out the West’s material interest in saving the billions of dollars it has been pouring out in heartfelt humanitarian aid to victims of unaddressed political conflict in the region. And they could underline the danger that continued erosion of the international standard against genocide in Burundi, Rwanda, and Congo poses for future communal conflicts in strategic areas such as Eastern Europe, South Asia, and North Africa. Finally, concerned NGOs could also play an important role by promoting new policy approaches and mobilizing new political constituencies for them. TOC | Summary | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | About the Author
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