South Africa’s 768 United Nations peacekeeping troops in Burundi were transferred under the authority of the African Union in a ceremony in Mpanda this week.
Deployed in Burundi since 2004, all UN peacekeepers are slated to withdraw from the troubled Central African country, which is emerging from 13 years of civil war, by December 31.
The official handover took place on Thursday at a ceremony on an air force base at Mpanda 10km north of the capital Bujumbura, where the UN flag was lowered and replaced with that of the African Union.
The pan-African body with 53 member states is now charged with facilitating the integration of Burundi’s last active rebel movement, the Forces of National Liberation (FNL), into a broader peace process.
The FNL and the Burundi government signed a ceasefire accord in early September, but the agreement has yet to be fully implemented even if fighting has stopped.
Under the terms of the accord, the UN’s force in Burundi (Onub) was to have overseen the cantonment and demobilisation of the country’s various fighting forces.
Because of its imminent withdrawal, however, ”Onub can no longer fulfill its responsibility, and we thank the African Union which has agreed to take over the role originally set for Onub,” Burundi’s Interior Minister Evariste Ndayishimiye said on Thursday.
”It is the 768 South African soldiers that will move under the AU banner, and eventually this special force will be increased to 1 700 troops,” said Colonel Muhamed Ahmed, an AU military advisor.
”We are expecting support from other African countries soon.”
In the ceremony at a former air force base used by UN Pakistani troops, the soldiers replaced the blue helmets of the UN with green ones used by AU forces.
The civil conflict in the small nation pitted the army, dominated until recently by the Tutsi minority, against various Hutu rebel movements. ‒ Sapa-AFP