In 1994 the Rwandan genocide set in motion a chain of events that culminated in a decade-long regional war that cost five million lives. Post-mortems of the conflict set out a list of warning signs that could be used to prevent similar catastrophes, once the international community took adequate notice and acted accordingly. Burundi is a test case of how difficult it has been to follow this idealistic solution to the problem of ethnic and nationalist violence.
Seven months ago the International Crisis Group warned that “all elements of an open conflict have fallen into place” in Burundi. Noting that “international pressure on the president continues to fall on deaf ears” it warned that tensions from a failed coup and a popular campaign against the constitutionally questionable re-election of President Pierre Nkurunziza had moved the country towards a “violent, and intractable, conflict.” Since then, with increasing severity, Nkurunziza’s rule has been characterised by violent reprisals against his suspected enemies and their alleged supporters in neighbouring Rwanda.
From a diplomatic perspective, the crisis is exasperating because it was clearly foreseen. Many observers warned that Nkurunziza’s determination to seek a third term would exacerbate tensions which have been barely contained by the 2005 Arusha Agreement which ended the country’s 12-year civil war. For several years both the media and human rights groups have noted signs of a deepening political crisis with growing concern, especially after the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy–Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) — a predominantly Hutu party — won 80 percent of the vote for the lower house in contentious and widely criticised local elections in May 2010. Most opposition parties boycotted the presidential and parliamentary elections that followed, in June and July, setting the stage for the unfolding crisis.
In November 2015, France circulated a draft UN resolution condemning the government’s actions after president Nkurunziza stated that opposition groups that failed to disarm would “be considered to be enemies of Burundi and will be treated as terrorists.” Around the same time the leader of the Senate darkly warned a gathering of neighbourhood chiefs: “You must not go into the bush because if you dare, we will not spare you … You must stay at home. You will die here, at home. We shall settle everything right here, at home.” Shortly afterwards the repression of opposition activists and civil society which is now reaching its boiling point began.
Many of the 250,000 Burundian refugees in squalid camps in Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo fled after masked men ransacked their homes to search for weapons. Others share stories of arbitrary detention, mistreatment and torture by thugs affiliated with the ruling party, particularly its youth wing, the Imbonerakure.
In February Human Rights Watch reported on an “alarming new pattern of abductions and possible disappearances” since Nkurunziza’s re-election.
And when Samantha Power, a historian of modern genocide and current US Ambassador to the UN, visited Bujumbura later that month she noted ominously that the crackdown on civil society and opposition groups had reached the stage at which US diplomacy was “trying to prevent a small fire from becoming a large one.” Power’s tact hides the depth of concern – evident in diplomatic circles for at least a year – that the crisis now resembles the runup to the 1994 Rwanda genocide far too closely for the international community to ignore.
So little is known about the crisis in Burundi that the UN has struggled to raise 10 percent of the money needed to provide food for the country’s refugees. Crucially this general lack of awareness has allowed the situation to languish for months without a concerted international effort to de-escalate the tension between radicalized opposition groups that are reportedly preparing for a full-fledged war and the CNDD-FDD government whose actions have made such a conflict increasingly likely.
As with Syria, the current situation has the potential to metastasize into a much wider and more sanguinary conflict. Whether it does so will depend almost entirely on how seriously the international community takes its own counsel in the wake of the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda, to diagnose potential genocides as early as possible, and to ensure that small fires are addressed before they become infernos.