Chris McGreal in Bujumbura
THE United States paid Burundi’s new military dictator nearly $150 000 over the past three years to promote democracy and peace.
A significant proportion of the money given to Major Pierre Buyoya’s Foundation for Unity, Peace and Democracy was to organise an international conference in Burundi, to include such notable peace-makers as Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The meeting was scheduled to take place more than a year ago, but it has been repeatedly postponed, supposedly because of the spiralling violence between Hutus and Tutsis which claims about 2 000 lives every month.
Buyoya — a Tutsi who was in semi-retirement after an earlier bout as military ruler — overthrew Burundi’s deeply divided civilian government despite warnings from the international community that it would not accept military rule in the country.
Madeleine Albright, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, visited Bujumbura earlier this year in an attempt to forestall a coup by saying Washington would not recognise any government that came to power by force.
The US administration’s misplaced faith in Buyoya is proving especially awkward because the Hutu president he deposed, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, continues to take refuge in the house of the US ambassador to Burundi. Washington says it still recognises Ntibantunganya as Burundi’s legitimate president, but he is clearly an embarrassment as he refuses to leave US diplomatic soil while the Americans try to deal with the man who ousted him.
Although Buyoya promises to restore democracy, he has suspended all political parties and says his regime’s priority will be to prosecute Hutu rebels.
Buyoya’s grants were provided through the US Agency for International Development (USAid) from its “democracy and governance” budget. They total nearly $150 000 since 1994. They paid for Buyoya to travel to South Africa as an observer during Nelson Mandela’s election two years ago. The US also funded the major’s participation in a conference in Benin on “democratisation and the role of the military”.
More than $30 000 was given for his foundation to study assistance to Tutsi refugees, when the majority of people who have been forced to flee their homes are Hutus escaping attacks by the overwhelmingly Tutsi army or who have been “ethnically cleansed” from cities.
But the bulk of the money is two grants totalling nearly $110 000 for Buyoya’s foundation to study the democratisation of government structures and the judiciary, and to hold the conference. Buyoya’s foundation continued to receive grants after USAid director Brian Atwood announced in April that all but emergency humanitarian aid to Burundi was suspended because of the government’s failure to reform.
The European Union did likewise, cutting off budget support which had helped the Burundian government to pay its soldiers and civil servants.