Ten days before the official celebrations to mark the change of president in Burundi the capital suffered an unprecedented bombardment by the rebel group supposedly committed to the transition process.
The mortars fired by the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) that rained down for three days on civilian targets killed about a dozen people. This hardly put a spike in the tally of 300 000 deaths in Burundian war that the process is designed to end.
The brazen attack demonstrated yet again that the deadlines imposed by mediators have no bearing on the reality on the ground. It also underlined that the first priority of Burundi’s new Hutu President Domitien Ndayizeye is to bring the FDD to heel.
This will probably mean going back to war with the movement that is seen as the most important component of the peace process.
”If Ndayizeye doesn’t do this, he will be politically dead,” said Jan van Eck, a specialist on Burundi who was in the capital for both the bombardment and the celebrations.
”If he does take on the FDD, he will face serious opposition from within the army.
The truth is, Ndayizeye has been set up to fail. He replaced Tutsi Jean-Pierre Buyoya not because circumstances called for a change of president, but because the timetable dictated it.”
The FDD, which is the largest rebel group, was left out of negotiations leading up to the Arusha agreement in August 2000. Like the National Liberation Front (FNL) it was dismissed as a breakaway group from parties invited to participate in the process.
While the FDD was finally persuaded to come aboard, the FNL has shunned the process, maintaining that it has to be renegotiated.
Since signing the peace accord last December, however, the FDD has actually intensified its military activity.
This led to urgent calls for the deployment of an African peacekeeping force to contain the rebels. The force leader, South African Major General Sipho Binda, and his headquarter staff arrived in Bujumbura last weekend.
However, considerable logistical and financial difficulties stand in the way of deploying the envisaged 3 500 troops from South Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique.
Military sources in South Africa and Burundi say that the Hutu FDD is creating a corridor between Tanzania in the south-east and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the north-west.
This is making the Tutsis jumpy because it would cut off escape routes into Tanzania and Rwanda. The FDD’s larger goal, however, remains the defeat of the Burundi army. In terms of Abuja agreement, the Burundi army is half Tutsi and half Hutu.
Thus the Hutus in government uniform were recruited before the FDD joined the process. The FDD wants to replace them with its own men.