Mandela’s Presence at Talks Raises Hopes of End to Civil War in Burundi

Hopes of an end to Burundi’s intractable war inched forward Monday as warring factions relaunched peace negotiations under the mediation of former South African President Nelson Mandela.

The presence of Mandela and the backing of an array of world leaders have helped propel Burundi into the international spotlight. Mandela urged Burundians to make good use of their moment on the world stage.

“I would like the leaders of Burundi to seize this opportunity and not to allow it to slip,” Mandela told a crowded conference hall in this northern Tanzanian town.

At least six African heads of state, including Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, and Burundian President Pierre Buyoya, were present. President Clinton and his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, were expected to address the delegates today via a live video link-up.

While analysts agreed that raising the profile of the peace talks could help, they cautioned that reconciliation depends on Burundians themselves.

“If we are going to have peace in Burundi, the main burden is on the Burundi leaders,” said Joseph Wanioba, a trustee at the Nyerere Foundation, which was formed to help shepherd the negotiations. It was named for late Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who died last year. “Unless the Burundi leaders want peace, we will not have peace.”

The push to highlight Burundi comes on the heels of the National Summit on Africa held in Washington last week and aimed at unifying and strengthening the lobby for Africa in the United States. It also coincides with recent efforts by the U.N. Security Council to focus more attention on conflicts in Africa.

“The fact that there is now more visibility, [the Burundians] will feel more exposed,” said Fabienne Hara, project coordinator for the Central African Program of the International Crisis Group think tank. “It gives hope that the concerns of everyone will be listened to.”

“There’s a lot of pressure on [Mandela] to reach an agreement,” said Hanlie de Beer, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa. “They expect a lot of his magic to work there. But it’s a very difficult situation. There’s so much hatred there, and it’s so deep-seated.”

Mandela, 81, was appointed mediator in December to succeed Nyerere. Burundi has been embroiled in civil war since 1993, when its first democratically elected president, an ethnic Hutu, was assassinated by Tutsi paratroopers.

Burundi has the same ethnic mix as neighboring Rwanda: a large Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority that dominates most institutions. In Rwanda, hatreds exploded in 1994 into the massacre of more than 800,000 people, primarily Tutsis. In Burundi, more than 200,000 people have been killed and 1.1 million displaced as Hutu rebels fight an insurgency against the government.

7 Nations Once a Part of Conflict in Congo

But Burundi’s war has gone largely unnoticed outside Africa, which in the last decade has seen larger and more violent conflicts, such as the one in Rwanda and more recently in Congo, where at one stage at least seven nations were involved.

Delegates meeting in Arusha said they welcomed the moral, political and diplomatic support of the international community as a sign that the West is finally “doing the right thing.”

“I think the international community is conscious that the situation that took place in Rwanda may happen in Burundi and other places if they don’t play their role,” said Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, a former president of Burundi, who was toppled by Buyoya.

Gayle Smith, special assistant to Clinton and senior director of African affairs at the National Security Council, said the focus on Burundi is part of a long-standing U.S. commitment to help bring peace to Africa’s Great Lakes region.

Mandela wants to get all warring factions, including the most radical rebels, to sit at the negotiating table. Such groups previously had been barred from the talks. But Monday’s negotiations kicked off without them. It was not clear why the rebel groups did not attend, but they have in the past favored bilateral talks with the government.

Experts say failure to include such rebel groups could spell disaster for the talks.

“The longer they exclude the rebels, the more likely they will continue with the violence,” said Hara of the International Crisis Group. “The cost of exclusion from the process is getting higher.”

Outside analysts said compromises are needed on all sides: The government will have to allow the Hutu rebels to be part of the armed forces. The rebels will have to abandon their genocidal ideology and halt attempts to overthrow the government. Those responsible for past massacres will have to be found and punished, and the warring sides must agree to share power during a transition period leading to democratic elections.

Compromise by Hutus, Tutsis Will Be Hard

Mandela called the current situation, in which minority Tutsis dominate ‘politics, the economy and the military, intolerable.

But compromise will be difficult. Both Tutsis and Hutus in Burundi and Rwanda have been victims of massacres, and now the cycle of ethnic violence is being played out again in neighboring Congo. Fear and distrust increase as each killing is avenged.

“If we allow the Hutu majority access to power, there is a risk of having a genocide of the Rwandan kind,” said Remy Nkengurutse, delegation leader for Parena, an extremist Tutsi party.

Ambroise Niyonsaba, Burundi’s minister for the peace process, said those guilty of crimes should be punished.

“There has been a lot of impunity in the past,” said Niyonsaba. “We cannot just go on in the same way.”

Fighting has intensified in recent months, with both rebels and the military terrorizing civilians. International relief workers say people cannot stay in one place long enough to harvest their crops. A drought has made matters worse.

About 800,000 people are internally displaced, while an additional 300,000 languish in refugee camps outside the country. At least 280,000 people, mostly Hutus, have been shoved into relocation camps.

“The humanitarian situation is probably the most serious it has ever been,” said David Rhody, Burundi director for CARE, the international nongovernmental group.