Redraw Colonial Borders to Quell the Frenzy

The crisis in eastern Zaire and between Zaire and its neighbors poses the greatest challenge yet to the artificial borders that imperial European powers drew at the turn of the century to create the current so-called “nation-states” in Africa. It has taken a Tutsi-trigger to spark an agonizing reappraisal.

The longer-term scenario emerging from the crisis may be the gradual redefining of the boundaries between Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi. Because the European partition of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries made no attempt to make the country borders coincide with the borders of ethnic groups, each includes indigenous Hutu and Tutsi within its own borders. In the mid-1990s, after fluctuating fortunes, the Tutsi find themselves as having the upper hand in Burundi, Rwanda and now Zaire.

Is this the moment for making ethnic boundaries coincide with national boundaries? Are we seeing the tumultuous process of creating a Tutsi “Israel,” an independent homeland for the Tutsi? Is a Tutsi-stan being born?

Until the mid-1980s, the Tutsis seemed to be the Kurds of eastern Africa, a marginalized minority in Rwanda, Zaire and under a different name (the Hima) in Uganda. Temporarily they clung desperately and brutally to power in Burundi. But as a minority, they seemed to be up against history. It was thought that in time they would become marginalized in Burundi also.

It was not until 1986 that the tide turned when Yoweri Museveni, ethnically linked to the people of Rwanda, captured power in Uganda. After Museveni’s successful consolidation of his political base in Uganda, he turned to meet his obligation to the Rwandans by helping to train the Rwanda Patriotic Front.

In 1994, the RPF staged a successful “Bay of Pigs” operation from the Ugandan border. Like the Cuban exiles under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the Rwandan exiles had been trained by a neighboring country for a major military penetration of their own country. But unlike the Cuban effort of 1961, the Rwanda operation was completely successful. The Rwandan exiles from Uganda routed the Hutu and established an alternative government in Kigali.

This created a situation in which Hutu refugees in Zaire started plotting and training for a counteroffensive--with secret support from Zaire itself and possibly from Kenya and France. To make matters worse, the Zairean security forces started picking on Zairean Tutsi, who had been part of Zaire since before the 19th century partition of Africa.

When Zairean Tutsi were threatened with expulsion from their homeland by Zairean armed forces, they formed an army of resistance (secretly supported by Rwanda) and turned out to be more than a match for the Zairean security forces. In their resistance, they have in fact threatened the integrity of the entire Zairean state. If these rebels can get away with their resistance in one part of the country, what is to stop political emulation in other parts of Zaire?

But what are the Tutsi going to do with their Hutu neighbors? The exchange of populations to create a separate Hutu state may be a prescription for future interstate wars, as the Arabs and Israelis and the Indians and Pakistanis have found to their detriment.

A more viable, longer term solution would be the federation of Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. The armies of Rwanda and Burundi would be pensioned off. In this larger political community, the Hutu and the Tutsi would discover how much they have in common culturally and might learn to be on the same political side on many issues in the enlarged Tanzania (just as their ethnic cousins in Uganda, the Hima and the Iru, often have voted on the same side against other groups in the larger national context of Uganda).

Unless the Hutu and Tutsi are partitioned into separate countries or federated into a larger, stable and democratic political community, they are likely to turn against each other in a genocidal frenzy every few years. The international community should put together a large package of inducements and incentives to persuade Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania to create the United States of Central Africa. Parts of Zaire could one day break off and seek admission into the new federation. The redrawing of colonial boundaries need not mean smaller African states; it could simply mean more rational and viable political communities.