Ethnic Tensions Fuel Flames of War as Bitter Burundi Conflict Widens

A bitter civil war is spreading here in the shadow of Rwanda, where a similar boil of ethnic hatred and extremist politics led to the genocidal slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people two years ago.

The question is: Will Burundi, where up to 100,000 people already have been killed, go the way of tortured Rwanda?

The fighting in this tiny Central African nation has escalated sharply in the last two weeks, with anti-government attacks erupting for the first time in the southern province that was considered an unassailable political and military stronghold.

Officials say hundreds of civilians, mostly ethnic Tutsis, have been killed in the unexpected surge of hit-and-run raids by Hutu extremist groups in Bururi province, home of the prime minister, defense minister, national police chief, and most army officers and soldiers.

“It is supposed to be invulnerable,” said a senior United Nations official here in the capital. “And all of a sudden, it is in flames.”

Fighting also has expanded since early March in three northwestern and central provinces. Diplomats say the Tutsi-dominated army has begun using Vietnam-style tactics, with soldiers forcing Tutsi civilians into protected hamlets and then hunting Hutus in a countryside turned free-fire zone.

Although reliable figures are not available, diplomats and aid workers say the recent death toll, devastation and renewed exodus of refugees appear the worst in a year. Many here expect the conflict to spread in coming weeks. Adding to the tension, Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo this week ruled out direct talks with the rebels despite pressure from aid donors for such a dialogue.

The question is whether the latest tragic plunge in Burundi’s cycle of violence is a prelude to the kind of organized genocidal campaigns that occurred in neighboring Rwanda.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright, among others, have issued dire warnings in recent months that Burundi has been teetering on the precipice of a Rwanda-style cataclysm.

But diplomats, relief workers and officials with humanitarian groups here say that Burundi’s bitter conflict and history are significantly different from Rwanda’s, and that while the daily carnage is unlikely to stop, neither is it likely to mutate into another genocidal war.

“I think the problem is totally different,” said Jean-Luc Siblot, who heads the U.N. World Food Program here and previously worked in Rwanda. “This is not a question of something organized, planned and just waiting for a signal to start.”

“It’s not like Rwanda,” agreed a senior Western aid official who, like many here, asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. “You’ve got a balance of forces here you didn’t have in Rwanda. Both sides here are armed. I would characterize it as a low-intensity conflict that risks building to a major civil conflict.”

A senior European aid official, with experience in both countries, agreed. “There’s no genocide here,” he said. “There’s a lot of people dying. But it’s not genocide. There are Hutus killing Hutus and Tutsis killing Tutsis. That’s very different.”

To be sure, the two tiny nations have disturbing similarities. Both former Belgian colonies are about 85% Hutu and 15% Tutsi. Both seethe with ethnic tension, fanned by vicious radio propaganda. Both face armed insurgencies. Both have pushed political moderates to the margins.

But in Rwanda, the Hutu majority controlled the army and government, and organized and armed civilian militias to systematically massacre unarmed Tutsis in hundreds of villages and towns. The four-month slaughter ended only after a Tutsi-led guerrilla army forced the government and army to flee to Zaire in July 1994.

Burundi has the same demographics but is politically a mirror image of prewar Rwanda. Here the minority Tutsis are in power, dominating the government, army and economy. Hutus, including President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, serve in the government but are vastly outnumbered in the military, civil service, judiciary and other key institutions.

Most important, perhaps, the government’s opponents here are well-armed. Three Hutu extremist groups, swollen with refugees living in Zaire and Tanzania as well as youths forced to flee Tutsi-controlled towns, now are believed to outnumber the 35,000-member Tutsi army.

“The balance of terror keeps both sides from moving too far,” one diplomat said. “Both sides know they can’t wipe out the other. It’s just going to grind on for a long time.”

Ethnic strife goes back generations here, but the current war began in October 1993, when renegade Tutsi soldiers murdered the country’s first freely elected president, a Hutu, after he threatened to end decades of Tutsi domination.

The putsch sparked an ethnic blood bath that left more than 50,000 people dead in Hutu reprisals and an army crackdown. Fighting has ebbed and flowed ever since, with atrocities by machete-wielding mobs on both sides. Human rights workers estimate that 15,000 civilians were killed last year.

Today, in a country of only 6 million people, about 470,000 Tutsis have taken refuge around army garrisons. An equal number of Hutus has been purged from Tutsi-held towns and cities and survive in small encampments in the lush hills.

“Almost every town in Burundi is now ‘ethnically cleansed,’ ” said the European aid official.

The army chased most Hutus out of Bujumbura last year after guerrillas cut the capital’s water and power supplies. The capital now has a siege-like atmosphere. Government troops enforce a nightly curfew as well as an 8-mile-wide cordon sanitaire in the steep hills that flank the lakeside city, and on Tuesday they closed all roads leading in and out of the city.

But violence continues here. Saturday night, someone tossed a grenade outside the door of Catholic Relief Services, a nongovernmental group. No one was injured, but 29 aid workers and missionaries have been killed in similar attacks or ambushes since last summer.

The international community stepped up its pressure this week with a joint visit by Brian Atwood, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Emma Bonino, the European Union’s commissioner of humanitarian affairs. The two groups provide 80% of Burundi’s foreign aid.

In unusually blunt language, Atwood and Bonino told the government that all development aid--which accounted for 23% of gross domestic product two years ago--has been frozen until progress toward peace is achieved. Humanitarian aid, including $32.6 million from the U.S. for food and refugee assistance, was not affected.

“We came to the conclusion that development aid was contributing to the problem,” Atwood said. He added: “The economic pressure on this government is very severe. If they continue paying the military, as I’m sure they will, they’ll have to decide who else is going to suffer.”

But government officials showed no sign of flexibility. In an interview, Prime Minister Nduwayo, the country’s most powerful figure, flatly ruled out negotiations with the extremist Hutu leaders.

“There is no room for dialogue with those who push genocide,” he said. “This isn’t a war against the government. It’s a war against the people.”

In a separate interview, President Ntibantunganya, who lost his wife in the ethnic upheavals of 1993, took nearly as hard a line. Talks will only be possible, he said, if the extremists surrender their weapons and renounce violence.

“Dialogue has to have conditions,” he said. “If they want to participate, they must accept the state of law, they must accept human rights. They must give a sign they are ready for peace.”

Former President Jimmy Carter and former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere have met leaders from both sides in recent weeks in hopes of finding common ground for talks and possible compromise.

But in the squalid camps for displaced civilians, few talk of peace.

About 5,000 former residents of Kamenge, a Bujumbura neighborhood the army cleared of Hutus in June, live in a former missionary camp on the city’s outskirts. As they lined up for delousing Monday, the Hutu men complained that they now sleep in the bush at night to avoid army raids on the camp.

“They take men who are strong,” said Venaand Ndinkumana. “And they do not come back.”

John Minani, showing a gunshot wound on his left arm, said he escaped when a soldier suddenly shot and killed nine of his friends as they walked along the road two weeks ago. The solution, he said, is more Hutu militias.

“The militias are to protect the people,” he said emotionally.

A 15-minute drive away in Musaga, about 700 Tutsis live in a former school. Desks now hold pots, pans and blankets, and sleeping mats cover every spare inch. They blamed the militias for killing women and children.

“I want peace,” said Monique Ntibanyiha, as her baby wailed on her back. She said her five other children were killed by Hutus. “The Hutus do not want peace.”

U.N. representative Marc Faguy says he remains hopeful that a bridge can be found across the gaping ethnic divide. “If you don’t have any hope, you won’t do anything,” he explained.