The return to Bujumbura this week of more than 20 senior Burundian rebels is being hailed as a highly positive development in ending that country’s conflict.
”The [Forces of the National Liberation] FNL members going back to Bujumbura is positive but complex,” says conflict analyst Jan van Eck, who a specialist on Burundi. ”This is by no means the end. And it won’t be until the FNL leadership is in the capital and [the joint verification and monitoring mechanism] can reach agreement on unresolved issues.”
Four weeks ago, FNL leader Agathon Rwasa disappeared from Dar es Salaam, where he had been negotiating with the state for several months, while the FNL’s spokesperson and military commander have chosen not to make the trip from Dar es Salaam to Bujumbura, sources close to the negotiations say.
It seems the rebels feel that despite signing two sets of ceasefire principles and agreements last year, they continue to be bullied by the international community to make repeated and — as they see it — unreciprocated concessions.
But some FNL representatives have decided to dip a toe into the water back home. Sources indicate they are likely to confront the government with a demand for the release of remaining rebel prisoners, a highly charged issue. Six prisoners were freed in an experimental move earlier this month, and no fewer than three are now presumed dead.
The FNL will also demand firm commitments on government positions for their leaders. Rwasa’s Hutu-dominated FNL also has an entirely different idea of what the reconciliation process should look like. They want a grand public gathering with a strong ethnic flavour that would concentrate on truth and forgiveness for the sins committed by the former governing Tutsi minority.
These and other claims are bound to upset Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza who, if he had his way, would never have brought the FNL into the government. Rwasa’s men traditionally claim to be the Hutu purists, guarding the soul of the Hutu majority, and they have barely missed an opportunity to dismiss the National Council for the Absence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) — also a Hutu-dominated party — as sell-outs.
Faced with ongoing difficulties with the peace process, Nkurunziza could do without problems in his own party, but he is unlikely to be spared this. The ousting earlier this month of Hussein Radjabu as CNDD-FDD chairperson will be challenged this weekend. Radjabu is depicted by foreign diplomats as the evil behind the human rights violations and other excesses of Nkurunziza’s young government, most notably the arrest last year of six alleged coup plotters, including former president Domitien Ndayizeye.
Nkurunziza came under intense international pressure to get rid of the despotic and unelected party leader and those closest to him. Sensing that this was about to happen, Radjabu spent an embarrassing night hiding out in the South African embassy in Bujumbura, believing that the changing of his bodyguard signaled an impending assassination attempt. Instead he has suffered a politically fatal wound.
It would be a mistake to believe that Radjabu’s departure has rid the Nkurunziza administration of its ills. The men share a ruthlessness — differing only in methodology. Nkurunziza has managed to come out of the bush and operate in a political milieu, while Radjabu still behaves like a guerrilla.