The problem with the West’s response, argues Martin Woollacott in London, is not that it does not care, but that it cares in bursts
WHEN the killing re-sumes in some part of Africa, Western countries slip into a familiar oscillation. They swing between blaming themselves and blaming Africans, between urging and opposing military intervention.
The problem is the usual one. It is not that we do not care but that we care in bursts, so that policy becomes a series of last-minute rescue efforts. Thus it is with Burundi, where the coup has underlined the general neglect of a crisis affecting a large area of Central Africa. That crisis endangers not only Burundi but Rwanda and Zaire.
A partly international war is being waged in the region between extremist Hutu groups and mixed Tutsi and Hutu governments. Rwanda still has a relatively moderate government; Burundi has had a mixed government caught between a Tutsi army and Tutsi political forces trying to maintain Tutsi power and physical security by covert means, and armed Hutu extremists.
The new regime has endorsed the principle of ethnic peace, but is also calling up Tutsi youth for militia service. An intensified campaign against Hutu rebels is likely. The Tutsi-dominated security forces have failed to distinguish between Hutu forces and civilians in the past. It may be, therefore, that this coup is a disaster.
But caution is advisable, since there already was a disaster in Burundi, and in the region as a whole. The problem is less that the international community has failed to act, than that it has failed in the management of the broader conflict.
When the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s forces won in that country, the Hutu regime’s troops, most of the leadership and up to a million of its people fled into Zaire, with some going to Burundi and other countries. In Zaire, unopposed and not much noticed by the international community, the Hutu leaders turned the refugee camps into a social base for war, apparently with President Mobutu Sese Seko’s acquiescence.
They escaped the consequences of their well-deserved defeat in Rwanda. They ethnically cleansed that part of Zaire of Tutsis and of other ethnic groups. From there they have struck into Rwanda, killing government officials, and have offered training to the Hutus of Burundi.
Their influence on the Burundi rebels can only be of the most poisonous kind. The extremist Rwanda Hutus undoubtedly see this as a war that will end only with the overthrow of governments in Rwanda and Burundi, and their replacement by regimes that would solve the Tutsi “question” by a combination of killing, displacement and oppression.
For all the atrocities Tutsis have carried out in Rwanda and Burundi, they must in the long run be more disposed to compromise, as well as more concerned with security. As minorities, they cannot otherwise survive.
Tutsis in Rwanda understand this well, Tutsis in Burundi, whose dominant position has only been diluted, less well. Hutu leaders, by contrast, can think in terms of getting rid of Tutsis, or of displacing them from all positions of power, privilege or wealth. Some still do, and they are calling the shots, literally, in Zaire and parts of Burundi. They would do so again in Rwanda if they could. This war is not a senseless affair, or one in which outsiders should have no sympathies.
The international community would have done better to have prevented the creation of a Hutu extremist base in Zaire, to have pushed much harder for the return of refugees, and to have given far more funding to Rwandan government projects. There should have been more money and help for the war crimes tribunal, which has moved with terrible slowness.
Swifter justice would have signalled the end of a time when leaders, Hutu or Tutsi, could get away with murder. And a squaring of accounts would have helped relations between Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda. To help Rwanda become as much a model of Tutsi-Hutu normalisation as possible, and to root out Hutu extremists in Zaire — these should have been the aims. Had they been achieved, the situation in Burundi would have been less dangerous.
Many have urged a peace-keeping force for Burundi. United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros- Ghali first urged that one be prepared last year. He repeated his proposal to the Security Council in January, but the United States, whose logistical resources are vital to any operation, was negative then and has remained reluctant.
A force for Burundi has been on and off the agenda ever since African leaders, meeting at Arusha last month, secured agreement from the Burundi president and prime minister to the creation of such a force. Indeed, that agreement may have precipitated the coup.
Most Tutsi leaders have seen the introduction of an international force into Burundi as likely to lead to “their” army being disbanded or reorganised, and have therefore resisted it. It was a proposal to make the army ethnically balanced that led to the 1993 coup and the assassination of the first freely elected, and first Hutu, president of Burundi.
If there is to be military intervention, it should be the instrument of a coherent policy. The painful evolution of Burundi’s Tutsis has taken them to the point where they see that control of the armed forces cannot guarantee their security. The most significant fact about recent violence is that as many Tutsis as Hutus have died. The Tutsis are desperate, and desperation can sometimes open doors.