EAST AFRICA-POLITICS: Tying A Noose Around Burundi’s Neck

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Aug 1 1996 (IPS) - Burundi, a poor landlocked Central African country, relies exclusively on the ports of Mombasa (Kenya) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) for its trade.

Now however, by a strange twist of history, Burundi is poised to lose the two ports, if the East and Central African leaders go ahead with their threat to impose a “total economic blockade” on the country, following the Jul. 25 coup.

The decision to impose sanctions was taken in the Northern Tanzanian town of Arusha Wednesday by Presidents Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya, Pasteur Bizimungu of Rwanda, Zariean prime minister Kengo wa Dongo, Ethiopian premier Meles Zenawi and the secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Salim Ahmed Salim.

The regional leaders said they would impose the sanctions to force Burundi’s new military leaders to restore constitutional rule and lift the ban on political parties in the country.

Former Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere, now the mediator on Burundi, met regional officials after the Arusha decision to work out the details of the sanctions.

From the ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, Tanzanian goods — mostly petroleum and hardware — are loaded onto longhaul trucks and delivered through untarred roads, across to Burundi.

Burundi, which depends on coffee and tea for its exports, has been using the ports — its lifeline — long before the country attained independence from Belgium in 1962.

Tanzanian authorities said economic boycotts would target Burundi’s coffee and tea industry — already wrecked by a devastating civil war between the Tutsi-dominated government army and the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), a mainly Hutu rebel group.

Under the new measures, neighbouring countries are obliged not to handle imports and exports for Burundi, except those specifically approved by a committee that will report to the mediator’s secretariat and heads of state.

Oil imports for Burundi would be restricted to essential needs for humanitarian purposes and air links with neighbouring countries would be severed.

Burundi’s defence minister Firmin Sinzoyiheba has scoffed at the Arusha decision. “It is harsh, but it is not a catastrophic,” he told journalists in the capital Bujumbura.

Since the beginning of the year, Burundi has lost both the European Union and the United States aid which propped up its budget — some 40 percent of government income.

Also, the war and fluctuating coffee prices on the world market have hit coffee exports badly. There is little industrial activity in Burundi besides the process of agricultural products like coffee, tea, cotton, vegetable oil extraction and small-scale wood mills.

In 1992, coffee exports amounted to 51 million u.s. dollars due to a 35 percent decrease in coffee prices on the world market. In 1993, the continuing decline in world market prices and reduced volume due to the civil unrest, contributed to a further decline in coffee exports to 45 million u.s. dollars.

Coffee accounted for 81 percent of total exports by value in 1991 and has decreased sharply since.

“They have no other means of income. In fact, the main source of income now seems to be tax on beer which is about 40 percent,” said an aid worker here who has just returned from Bujumbura.

“The economy is in such rapid decline now that it will leave the government in a position where it will not be able to pay civil servants. Perhaps more importantly, it won’t be able to pay its rapidly expanding army,” he told IPS.

Of the six countries, Uganda and Rwanda are expected to turn a blind eye to the sanctions. “They are unlikely to allow fellow Tutsis to suffer,” says an observer familiar with the region.

“In fact in Kenya too, we expect individuals to jump into the fray to make some quick bucks in Burundi,” added the observer, who declined to be named.

For the sanctions to be effective, the regional leaders appealed to the OAU and the United Nations to help.

OAU chief Salim has already given his word. He said Africa would not allow an army to overthrow an elected government and get away with it.

In New York, John West, the British permanent representative to the United Nations reacted cautiously to the Arusha decision. “It raises some quite deep questions, and we will have to reflect carefully on that before we give a reply to this quest.

“I think one point which comes immediately to mind is what will be the effect in humanitarian terms on the people of a country which is already on its knees if sanctions were applied across the board without any exceptions,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) on Thursday.

Signals from the United States too indicate that Washington seems to be taking a cautious line following the newly-emerged Burundian leader Pierre Buyoya’s declaration that democracy will be re-established at some point in Burundi.

Before the June 1993 elections, Buyoya, then Burundi’s head of state, was the chosen man of the United States.