Rebecca Feeley is a research consultant based in Goma, DR Congo. She has lived in the Great Lakes region for nearly four years, previously working for African Rights, the Clinton Foundation, Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research International, and the Enough Project.

This post is the first in a series about the current situation in Burundi.  Visit us again in the coming weeks for more posts from Rebecca’s trip.

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As we were dodging potholes my taxi driver, Roger, was shaking his head.  “Is this your first time in Bujumbura?” he asked me.  I nodded.  “I wish you could have seen this city before the war.  It was beautiful,” he sighed. 

I looked out the window.  It was 2006 and the post-war transitional period had officially ended a year earlier with the election of Pierre Nkurunziza as President.  Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, did indeed bear the marks of a difficult and war-torn past but we were driving along Lake Tanganika and able to see the striking mountainous terrain that frames the city. “Still looks beautiful to me,” I remarked. Roger shook his head again. “No no, you don’t get it.  I mean no potholes, nice buildings, infrastructure….things used to work. We’ll see now if Nkurunziza can make it all work again.”

Three years later it appears that Nkurunziza has started to make Burundi work again, or is at least giving it a major facelift.  While traffic remains bad in Bujumbura, it is most often due to the major road repairs that have been taking place throughout Burundi.  Many older buildings have been rehabilitated and more health care centers and hospitals have opened in recent years. But perhaps the most significant recent development is the agreement reached in April of this year between the armed opposition group, the Forces Nationales de Libération or FNL, and the Burundian government. The government finally agreed to the registration of the FNL as a political party. The FNL—the last of 19 armed groups that once operated in Burundi-- agreed to disarm and demobilize their combatants. Burundi appears to be on the track towards peace after years of negotiations and multiple agreements.

While most know about the genocide in Rwanda that took place during the spring of 1994, Burundi’s struggle during that period is less well known .  For years, the Burundian government, and more importantly the army, was dominated by the Tutsi minority.  In the summer of 1993 Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was democratically elected as President. The army, however, still dominated by Tutsis, feared losing their control within the state and, in an act of overthrowing the Hutu government, assassinated Ndadaye, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly on October 21, 1993. Anti-Tutsi violence by Hutus ensued just hours after Ndadaye’s death, which then triggered anti-Hutu violence by the army.  Ethnic extremism snowballed and armed groups proliferated, enabling conflict in Burundi to continue for over a decade, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

Most Burundians would agree that ethnic relations have improved in their country and that it would be difficult for ethnic violence to occur again in Burundi. Augustin, a young Burundian who works at a youth center in Bujumbura, recently told me “We realized after years of war that the politicians had manipulated ethnicity for their own political gains. We didn’t really care much about ethnicity before the war, and we don’t really care about it now. We are tired of war and just want peace.”

But don’t check Burundi off the list of post-conflict countries to watch just yet.  Human rights groups and regional analysts have been seeing a steady increase in politically-motivated violence in the past year as Burundi approaches its 2010 presidential and parliamentary elections.  In Burundi—not unlike other countries in the region—to capture state power is to capture the money, and thus the political party in control will do just about anything to stay there.  The ruling party—Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie-Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie, or CNDD-FDD, has been accused of killings, beatings and arrests in an attempt to intimidate and weaken their opposition, which is mainly the FNL.

President Nkurunziza had long refused to recognize the non-military wing of the FNL as a political party because of fears that such a party could split the Hutu vote—a vote his CNDD-FDD party heavily relies upon. Thus, the majority of reported politically-motivated violence in recent months has been between the CNDD-FDD and the FNL.  The CNDD-FDD has targeted FNL supporters and combatants and the FNL has responded in-kind and have been accused of burning down several CNDD-FDD meeting places. Many fear that the violence will only increase as elections near.

I asked Christophe, a young Burundian working for an NGO in Bujumbura who he thought would win the elections next year.  “The CNDD-FDD for sure,” he replied.  I nodded, waiting for him to elaborate.  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure….but you never know. This country is still learning how to ride a bicycle.  You get on and you fall off a lot in the beginning.  But eventually, if you are determined, you can learn to ride smoothly.” “So you think Burundi is determined?” I asked.  He shrugged, looking away. “Yeah, I think so. I hope so.”

Posted By: Michael Graham | August 04, 2009 | Comments (0)