BURUNDI-POLITICS: New Military Regime Under Fire from All Sides

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jul 26 1996 (IPS) - Burundi’s new de facto ruler is under fire from all sides. Some Tutsi hardliners oppose him and Hutu extremists have vowed to get rid of his junta, which faces international isolation and a possible U.N.-backed military intervention.

The coup which brought former army major and ex-president Pierre Buyoya to power on Thursday has been condemned by the United Nations, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the United States and other Western nations.

At least one Tutsi extremist group has come out against the overthrow, while Burundi’s main rebel group, the predominantly Hutu National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), has pledged to step up its armed struggle.

“He is a man we don’t trust at all,” CNDD spokesman Leonce Ndarubagiye told IPS on Friday in the Kenyan capital. “As far as the CNDD is concerned, we are not going to give up. We shall fight until we topple the regime in Bujumbura. The CNDD is stepping up its military campaign all over the country.”

Tutsi hardliner Col. Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, head of the banned Parena party, predicted that Thursday’s coup d’etat against President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya would lead to disaster. “It will have violent consequences for the country,” Bagaza, who was one of a string of military rulers in Burundi and was deposed by Buyoya in 1987, said on Thursday.

On the other hand, former Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo has backed the coup. “I am not surprised by the reactions of the CNDD and Bagaza,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Friday. “Both are known for their extremist views.”

He said that, in Buyoya, moderates in Burundi now had a leader to rally round and fight the extremists.

Buyoya himself called a press conference in Bujumbura on Friday “for foreign journalists to pass on a message to the international community that this was not a classical coup, but an action to rescue the country from distress”.

He promised to ensure that the killings in the countryside were stopped, hold talks with all groups as long as they laid down their arms, form a transitional government and later return Burundi to democratic rule.

However, he faces not only internal opposition but also the displeasure of the African and international community.

OAU spokesman Ibrahim Dagash said Friday that his organisation, which has refused to recognise the regime in Bujumbura, “will isolate them and impose sanctions.” He added that, “as far as the OAU is concerned, the only framework for peace that is going to work is the Arusha decision.”

East and Central African leaders agreed in late June in the Tanzanian town of Arusha to send a regional peacekeeping force to Burundi to prevent the conflict there from escalating. According to Dagash, they will meet again soon in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, “to seek solutions for the problem created in Burundi lately.”

The United Nations, for its part, has been seeking support for an “international” force which is likely to be mainly regional, given the reluctance of Western nations to commit troops to such a body. Three African countries — Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia — had agreed to send troops to Burundi under the Arusha plan.

Kofi Annan, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, intimated Wednesday that the force could be sent in even if the country’s rulers opposed it.

Buyoya (46) was one of the rare military leaders in Africa who gave up power voluntarily. He prepared and lost Burundi’s first democratic polls, held in June 1993, in which Burundians elected Melchior Ndadaye, the first president to have come from the country’s Hutu majority.

Ndadaye’s reign lasted only three months — he was killed in an attempted overthrow by Tutsi hardliners in the military in October 1993.

According to reports from Bujumbura, it was business as usual in the Burundian capital on Friday. People went to work, the main market was open, cars circulated on the roads and there was no heavy army presence except outside the national radio station.

Nor were there any reports of unrest in other parts of the country.

However, the calm is unlikely to last, especially since the CNDD feels that now, more than ever, armed struggle is the only way out. On Thursday, a top CNDD official, Jerome Ndiho, called on Burundi’s six million people to rise up against the junta “until the putschists capitulate.”

“Once the putschists go,” he said, “we shall then put in place the democratic process which they derailed in October 1993.”

The unrest that followed the October 1993 coup attempt along with pressure from Burundi’s mainly Tutsi opposition had forced Ntibantunganya to form a coalition with 11 opposition parties in September 1994. The CNDD has consistently maintained that this was anti-democratic and contrary to the results of the 1993 election.

Experts on the region, such as Ben Parker of the Nairobi-based Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), feel there is little hope of compromise. “I think it is unlikely that the hardliners will give Buyoya time to prove himself as a moderate leader,” he said.

Parker, whose network is a branch of the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs and monitors the political situation in the Great Lakes Region (Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire), expects both the army and the rebels to step up their military activity.

“The city will remain calm, but increased humanitarian aid will be needed in the countryside because of increased fighting,” said Parker.

More than 150,000 Burundians have been killed in what most observers have described as ethnic violence since Ndadaye’s assassination. However, Ndarubagiye, one of the few Tutsis in the CNDD, refused to categorise the conflict in his country as being between Hutus and Tutsis or moderates and extremists.

“The war in Burundi … is between democrats and anti- democrats like Buyoya,” he said. “The CNDD will fight them until multi-party democracy is restored in Burundi.”