BURUNDI-TANZANIA: Border Clash

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Oct 28 1997 (IPS) - Tension is simmering along Burundi’s border with Tanzania, where troops from both countries are reported to be on high alert.

The tension heightened after Burundi announced on Monday that its military positions came under heavy artillery fire from Tanzanian troops.

A top Burundian army official, Lieutenant-Colonel Isai Nibizi, told journalists that at least 20 people, including two soldiers, were killed and three others wounded, when units of Tanzania’s defence force attacked southern Burundi.

Nibizi alleged the shells were fired during the early hours of Monday on the border towns of Kabonga and Mugina. He also said about 10 fighters of the exiled National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD) were killed by the Burundi army.

The CNDD, a rebel group made up predominantly of majority Hutus, has been fighting the Burundi army — which is led by members of the country’s Tutsi minority — for over two years now.

The shelling, which Nibizi alleged was done to cover the insurgents, was the second “serious incident” in two months between the Burundi and Tanzanian armies. Casualties were reported on both sides when their naval forces clashed on Lake Tanganyika i n September.

That incident followed a similar one in August in which a group of Tanzanian legislators alleged that four Tanzanians had been killed by the Burundi army in a raid inside Tanzania.

The claim was denied by Burundi, which in turn accused Tanzania of harbouring armed rebels among nearly 230,000 refugees from Burundi’s civil war. Tanzania has repeatedly denied such charges and it did so once again on Tuesday.

“We have not and we will not support any rebellion to attack its government. We have told their (Burundi) commanders at the border that Tanzania would not back any dissident group,” Tanzania’s Defence Minister Edgar Maokola-Majojo said on Tuesday.

State-owned Radio Tanzania quoted army spokesman Brigadier- General Romanus Hellella as saying, also on Tuesday, that it was Burundi troops which first attacked Kagunga area in Kigoma region before the Tanzanian army retaliated.

He said there were no casualties on the Tanzanian side and that the Burundi forces retreated after being hit by the Tanzanian army.

Emphasising their innocence, Maokola-Majojo said Tanzania had not ordered any shooting into Burundi. “My troops will never open fire unless they have been instructed to do so. We in Tanzania don’t want any trouble. We want to be in peace with all our neighbours,” he said.

The crisis in Burundi, which has now drawn in Tanzania, was triggered by the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye in a failed coup by Tutsi soldiers against his Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) government in 1993. About 150,000 people ha ve reportedly died there since then.

Experts on the region say the conflict in the tiny Central African nation is rooted in the fear of both Hutus and Tutsis for their existence. Hutus account for an estimated 85 percent of Burundi’s 6.8 million people and Tutsis about 14 percent.

Following the influx of refugees into Tanzania, relations have been at a low ebb between the two nations, although Tanzania hosted a series of talks aimed at reconciling Burundi’s belligerents until Bujumbura rejected Dar es Salaam’s mediation role, ac cusing it of partiality.

Bujumbura said former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, who is the internationally backed mediator on Burundi, had taken sides in the conflict by backing the Hutus.

Tanzania has further been blamed by Bujumbura for spearheading the embargo imposed on Burundi in July last year after military strongman Major Pierre Buyoya deposed civilian president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya.

The embargo, imposed by Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Rwanda, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, was meant to force Buyoya to return Burundi to multi-party democracy.

Burundi, which boycotted the latest talks in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on Aug. 25, has suggested that the next parley take place in a neutral venue such as Ethiopia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.