BURUNDI: U.N. Plan on Sending Guards as Crisis Worsens

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 26 1996 (IPS) - After years of passivity in dealing with Burundi’s tense political and ethnic crisis, the United Nations is prepared next week to move towards deploying U.N. Guards to that country if fighting there worsens.

On Friday, a three-member U.N. technical team, led by Charles Petrie of the U.N. Department for Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), left for Bujumbura to begin a week-long investigation on how best to deploy U.N. Guards to protect humanitarian workers in Burundi.

The team includes Col. Poul Dahl of Denmark, the current commander of the U.N. Guards in Iraq. Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, some 150 U.N. Guards have been deployed in Iraq to protect deliveries of humanitarian aid, particularly in the country’s turbulent Shi’ite south and Kurdish north.

The team will investigate the feasibility of an operation in Burundi and submit a report to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali “outlining what specific role U.N. Guards could play in protecting, facilitating and supporting humanitarian operations.”

The concept appeals to many diplomats here as a way to address Burundi’s problems without sending in a U.N. peacekeeping force — which, many diplomats argue, is “a non-starter” anyway.

One U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS that several senior officials in Burundi are “open to the U.N. Guards concept” after months of resisting any U.N. force.

That is good news for Boutros-Ghali who said this week that the plan to send the guards, whom he refers to as “blue guards” for their distinctive berets, is the same idea he has been promoting for six months.

At the same time that the technical team explores the situation in Burundi, the U.N. Security Council — which since 1993 has repeatedly refused to send peacekeepers to Burundi — is also showing a new willingness to act.

Ambassador John Weston of Britain predicted that the Council will give Boutros-Ghali a “green light” Monday to involve the United Nations more closely in Burundi’s affairs.

The Council is expected to approve a resolution supporting the technical mission to Burundi and consider further steps.

A draft copy of the resolution obtained by IPS states the Council will consider imposing “a ban on the supply of all arms and related materiel to Burundi and travel restrictions and other measures against those leaders in Burundi who continue to encourage violence.”

Those steps are the first signs that the Council and Boutros- Ghali are willing to get tough on the political leaders of Burundi’s Hutu majority and Tutsi minority communities who have been calling for attacks against each other.

In October 1993, the United Nations stayed on the sidelines as Barundi society exploded in a burst of massacres following the assassination of its first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye. Some 50,000 people were killed before an attempted coup was put down and a coalition government restored.

Since then, the coalition of the main Hutu and Tutsi parties has remained in power and largely avoided the horrors of the country’s similar northern neighbour, Rwanda. But recently, hundreds of Barundi have been killed each month in increasingly violent clashes, especially in the countryside. Meanwhile, politicians in and out of the government bicker across the ethnic divide.

The killings have been worsened by growing militancy among Hutu radicals — including some refugees implicated in Rwanda’s 1994 massacres — and sections of the nation’s Tutsi-dominated military.

The tense situation has prompted some countries, notably the United States, which had previously remained aloof from the fray.

Last week, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, visited Burundi to discourage any attempts by Hutu or Tutsi politicians to foment ethnic discord for political advantage.

According to Albright, she warned them of Liberian leader Charles Taylor’s words to her following years of unresolved civil war in his own country: “I started the war, and I didn’t know how to stop it.”

Concerned that new clashes could spin out of control, much as Rwanda’s 1994 massacres did, Albright this week suggested Washington may shift from its previous passivity.

The United States still will not consider any peacekeeping force, a U.S. diplomat told IPS. He added that Burundi is not yet willing to accept one. Burundi’s U.N. ambassador, Nsanze Terence, has argued such a force is unnecessary, since Burundi must handle its own problems through political negotiations.

But Washington now is insisting on “a strong message that we will not deal with a government that comes to power through coup or violence,” the U.S. official added. U.N. experts increasingly are worried that just such a government may replace the current one if tensions persist.