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IV. The Peace Process

In August 2000 the government and seventeen political parties signed the Arusha Accords after long negotiations. But the FDD and the FNL did not participate in the negotiations or sign the accords and the war continued. A transitional government, agreed to in the accords, was installed in November 2001. It included seventeen political parties and a careful balance of Hutu and Tutsi. The two most important parties were President Buyoya’s Union pour le Progrès National (Union for National Progress, Uprona), which was predominantly Tutsi, and Vice-President Ndayizeye’s Front pour la démocratie au Burundi (Front for Democracy in Burundi, Frodebu), which was largely Hutu. Buyoya was to serve as president for eighteen months, then cede the presidency to Ndayizeye.

In October 2002 the two offshoots of the main rebel movements, the FDD under Ndayikengurukiye and the FNL under Mugabarabona, signed accords with the government. But it was only on December 3, 2002 that the larger part of the FDD, led by Nkurunziza, agreed to a ceasefire and to consigning its forces to cantonment zones. Even then, the agreement left many major political and military issues unresolved. The December ceasefire agreement, reaffirmed by both the government and the FDD on January 27, 2003, was frequently violated, with each side accusing the other of responsibility for these violations. The FNL under Rwasa made no agreement with the government.

In early July the FNL launched a heavy attack on Bujumbura during which more than 300 persons were killed. The attack sent hopes for peace plummeting and provoked new diplomatic pressures that led to finally to the Pretoria Protocols ofOctober and November 2003. Meant to end combat between the government and the FDD, the agreements were bought at the cost of delaying—or perhaps even avoiding—accountability for serious violations of international humanitarian law² and once again failed to engage the FNL.

Many Actors, Little Leadership

There were many actors in the peace process, some of them with overlapping roles. Their very number—as well as rivalries among them—created confusion, leaving the terrain open to those most determined to shape the process, the belligerents themselves.

In addition to the government and rebel movements, the main actors included:

• South African Vice-President Zuma, who took over the role of mediator and facilitator of the peace process from Nelson Mandela

• The regional initiative for Burundi, including the heads of state of Uganda, Rwanda, DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa under the chairmanshipof PresidentMuseveni of Uganda, which was also supposed to facilitate agreement between the government and the rebel movements

• Implementation Monitoring Commission (IMC),³ a group established by Article 3 of the Arusha Accords to help implement the Accords. It included two representatives of the signatory political parties, one representative of the Burundian government, “six Burundians of high moral integrity,” and representatives of the United Nations, the African Union and the Regional Initiative. It is headed by Ambassador Bernahu Dinka, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General.

• Joint Ceasefire Commission (JCC)⁴established to help implement the ceasefires signed after the Arusha Accords and headed by General El Hadji Alioune Samba, named by the U.N. Secretary-General

• African Mission in Burundi (AMIB), headed by Ambassador Mamadou Bah,theAfrican Union representative in Burundi

• The AMIB military force commanded by General Sipho Binda, a South African. Until September 2003, South Africa was the only state to have provided a significant number of troops for peacekeeping duties.

The Joint Ceasefire Commission (JCC)

This commission, established on January 27, 2003, was widely seen as meant to lead in implementing the peace process, but in fact it barely functioned. It included, among others, representatives of the Burundian government, the two smaller branches of FDD and FNL, the United Nations, the African Union, and the regional initiative. As signatory to the ceasefire and the January 27 agreement, Nkurunziza’s FDD also belonged to the commission but as of November 1 it had not participated in its work. In the wake of the Pretoria Protocol of November 2, the FDD was scheduled to take its place on the commission within a week.

The JCC was charged with a host of specific tasks: determining the location of belligerents at the time of the ceasefire, facilitating contacts necessary for a ceasefire, inquiring into any violations of the ceasefire, verifying disengagement of opposing forces, monitoring stocks of arms, ammunition, and equipment, monitoring the cantonment of soldiers and police, disarming civilians who are illegally armed, and to removing land mines throughout the country.⁵ The JCC was to reach decisions by consensus, a necessarily cumbersome process given its large and diverse membership.

In addition to this extensive list of tasks, the JCC was responsible for directing the planning for two major operations essential to the peace process, the demobilization of soldiers and combatants and the reorganization of the national armed forces.

A draft demobilization plan was prepared with the assistance of the Multi-country Demobilization and Reintegration Program, which forms the larger framework of demobilization efforts in the Great Lakes region. There was also a draft national plan for reorganizing the Burundian armed forces. But these critically important documents had not been put in final form as of November 1 and, most important of all, the FDD had not accepted them.⁶

The JCC mandate overlaps that of AMIB in several areas (especially facilitating contact between the parties and monitoring the ceasefire) and the two were supposed to “work in close collaboration.”⁷ In general the JCC was considered to be the group to make decisions that would then be implemented by AMIB. But because the JCC was not yet fully operational, AMIB took the initiative on several matters, leaving the JCC apparently scrambling to catch up with the process that it was supposed to help direct.

The African Mission in Burundi

TheAfrican Union sent a peacekeeping force to Burundi after the United Nations, originally designated for this role in the Arusha Accords, decided that the necessary conditions for such an operation had not been met. The first peacekeeping force mounted by the African Union, it elicited much international enthusiasm as a possible model for the leaving the resolution of African conflicts primarily in African hands. At a July 9 meeting in Brussels, for example, the European Parliament reiterated its support for AMIB on the occasion of a visit by President Ndayizeye.⁸ The enthusiasm notwithstanding, real support for the force has been limited and slow in coming.

Ambassador Mamadou Bah, the representative of the African Union in Burundi, also heads AMIB. The core of the force are the 700 South African soldiers sent to Burundi in late 2001 to protect political leaders during the transition period. Forty-three observers from Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali, Togo, and Tunisiaarrived in late February 2003 and more South African soldiers came in April and July, followed by some 900 Ethiopians and several hundred Mozambicans for a total force of some 2,800 troops. The South African General Sipho Binda commands the entire force with the Ethiopian Brigadier General Geberat Ayele as his deputy.

The AMIB mandate is to supervise the ceasefire, facilitate contact between the belligerents, secure the cantonment zones and escort parties to those zones, assist in the process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, and facilitate the work of the commissions established to restructure the army and police forces. In addition, AMIB continues to be responsible for protecting political leaders during the transition period.⁹

According to its mandate, the force has no responsibility for protecting civilians or for monitoring or reporting on human rights abuses, and is asked only to “facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid,”¹⁰ including to refugees and displaced persons. But senior officers responsible for implementing the mandate have drawn up rules of engagement that specifically direct troops to provide protection to civilians in imminent danger of serious injury or death. After extensive debate the officers decided that particularly in the case of massive killings on an ethnic basis or in case of genocide, their soldiers would intervene to protect civilians. Troops would go into action, however, only after the top military and civilian officers of the African Mission decided that their intervention was necessary. Until November 2003 AMIB observers posted outside Bujumbura were effectively restricted to urban centers because of security concerns.

In their movements AMIB troops have been occasionally escorted by Burundian army soldiers, leading to the perception that AMIB was collaborating closely with the Burundian army. The FDD went so far as to accuse AMIB of complicity with the Burundian army and, in at least one case, described below, AMIB soldiers were fired upon.¹¹ An AMIB representative told a Human Rights Watch researcher that the force maintained strict neutrality and was deployed in accord with the December 3 ceasefire,¹² but some Burundians distrusted it and some even saw the AMIB presence as part of an international plot against them.¹³ After the July attack on Bujumbura, for example, a rumor circulated accusing AMIB of providing the helicopters used by the Burundian forces in driving the rebels from the city. In all likelihood false, the rumor nonetheless shows that some Burundians distrust the force that is supposedly there to foster peace.¹⁴ In an October 30 declaration, the FNL denounced AMIB as “an army of occupation,” and asserted that South Africa, provider of many AMIB troops, had clear economic and strategic designs on Burundi.¹⁵

Cantonment

Under the Arusha Accords and subsequent ceasefire agreements, government troops were to be restricted to barracks (in later agreements to “zones to be determined” and “zones determined by mutual agreement”) and rebel combatants were to be gathered in cantonment sites.¹⁶ These measures were meant to be the first steps towards implementing demobilization and reorganization of the government security forces. Under pressure to show progress towards peace, the government decided to designate five cantonment sites¹⁷ and to open one of them even though it had not finished plans for demobilization or restructuring the army—far less obtained the agreement of the rebel movements to these proposals. Leaving aside the JCC, supposedly the director of the whole process, the government secured the cooperation of AMIB in pushing forward the cantonment operation in June 2003.

With a number of issues still unresolved in its negotiations with the government, FDD troops did not participate when cantonment began, thus depriving the process of its central actor. Even with the smaller rebel forces, cantonment proved a major disappointment. Ndayikengurukiye’s FDD and Mugabarabona’s FNL presented just over two hundred combatants to be quartered in the site that was opened at Muyange, Bubanza province, far fewer than the more than 5,000 troops that they claimed to have ready for cantonment in their combined forces.¹⁸ The cantonment zone was located in an area claimed by the FDD and its establishment spurred further combat in the area, bringing more fear than hope to the surrounding population.

In the haste to move forward on cantonment, Burundian and AMIB officials left several important questions unanswered, such as how to define a combatant (did a person have to be armed to be considered a combatant? If so, with what kind of weapon?), how to verify the identity of the combatants, how to provide for children who were combatants, and how to deal with families of combatants.¹⁹

It is in the interest of each movement to claim the largest possible number of members, both to maximize the amount of money delivered to their real or supposed troops—of which they may intend to take a share—and to increase their weight in coming political skirmishes over posts and power. Given the confusion and lack of clear plans for demobilization, combatants also have formed unrealistic expectations and hope to profit substantially from the money that is said to be coming to combatants.

Both of the small movements scheduled for cantonment have reportedly tried to swell their ranks with recent recruits. According to a young student from Ruziba, men from Ndayikengurukiye’s group tried to persuade him to join their movement and to present himself at the cantonment site.²⁰ On July 10 some sixty men under the leadership of Eugène Bitaryumunyu²¹ and said to be members of Mugabarabona’s branch of the FNL gathered at Rugunga, Bubanza province, waiting to be taken to the Muyange cantonment site. But when they found that the monetary allowance to be provided them was less than what Mugabarabona’s representative had promised, they left on July 12 and returned to the bush in Cibitoke province.²² In that region Bitaryumunyu is said to be the head of a group of bandits who have preyed upon the civilian population living in Cibitoke, in the border area between Burundi and the DRC, and even in the DRC itself, as described below. His supposed crimes in the past may have been motivated by simple desire for material gain rather than by political motives, raising the possibility that at least one band of common criminals has sought to masquerade as rebel combatants.

The confusion surrounding cantonment is highlighted by the case of some thirty young men forcibly recruited by Nkurunziza’s FDD who escaped from the Kibira base of their abductors and reported to military and administrative authorities in Bubanza, not far from Muyange. Authorities made no move to send them to the camp but kept them, unfed, at a prison until Iteka, the Burundian human rights league, provided them with food and arranged the laissez-passers necessary for them to return home.²³

The Muyange site was located not far from the Kibira forest, a well-established base of the FDD and the FDD protested against the installation of a camp for rival rebel groups so near their base. Even before the site was opened South African soldiers were fired upon and had to be evacuated by helicopter on the night of June 2 to 3. Confirming a report of the incident, an AMIB official told a Human Rights Watch researcher, “All we know for sure is that we weren’t the ones who fired on ourselves.”²⁴ On the same days, tracts attributed to the FDD were distributed to administrative officials in charge of zones near the camp, warning the population to have nothing to do with men who were to be cantoned in the camp.²⁵ On June 26, the camp opened when twenty-two combatants of Mugarabarabona’s FNL presented themselves at the site, ten of them armed, with their commander and vice-president of their wing of the FNL. The next day Nkurunziza’s wing of the FDD urged AMIB to move men of the rival groups elsewhere, claiming that the Muyange site was meant for their combatants.²⁶ Early in the morning of June 30 the site was attacked and South African troops fired back; skirmishes continued for some hours in the immediate vicinity of the camp. The FDD denied that its troops had attacked the site.²⁷

Witness to renewed combat in their area, already heavily damaged by military activities by both sides, and fearful of their unwelcome neighbors, people near Muyange have no sense of security in their own homes. “We are afraid,” said one man. “Most of us have decided to no longer sleep at home,” meaning they preferred to spend the night in the bush where they believed risk of harm to be less.²⁸

The failure of cantonment at Muyange underlines the importance of careful planning and of resolving basic issues of demobilization and disarmament before proceeding further: cantonment is meant to implement the larger plans of demobilization and disarmament, not to precede them.

With the signing of the Pretoria Protocol, the government and the FDD apparently foresaw creating some cantonment sites in Bujumbura Rural, a province that the FNL has dominated in the past. In a declaration issued during the Pretoria negotiations, the FNL warned that it would bitterly resist any attempt to install FDD cantonment sites in Bujumbura Rural and would renew its attacks on the city of Bujumbura if such sites were established.²⁹

Demobilization and Recruitment

In their December 2002 accord, the government and the FDD agreed to the general outlines of a ceasefire, cantonment, disarmament, demobilization, and the creation of a new national army incorporating elements of governmental and rebel forces. But the parties left the details of implementation for later. The October protocol assured the FDD forty percent of the fifty percent of the command posts that, according to the Arusha Accords, are to be allocated to Hutu but the agreement stated merely that the composition of the rank and file of the armed forces would be determined by the general staff after the FDD officers had joined that group. The composition is to be based on the number of troops of each force and on the “agreed balance,” meaning the fifty-fifty ethnic division.³⁰ Tutsi form between ten and fifteen percent of the population of Burundi, with Hutu constituting all but one percent of the rest. The one percent are Twa but they are not specifically provided for in the balance set for the armed forces.

Although the parties were supposed to provide the JCC with the numbers of their forces at the time of the December 2002 agreement, neither had done so by early November 2003. So long as the question of the relative composition of the rank and file remains open, it is in the interest of both parties to increase their numbers. In September, even when he was engaged in negotiating the October 8 protocol, President Ndayizeye said that more funds would be made available to the army and that it should recruit more Hutu.³¹ The more Hutu enrolled in the new army as part of the government forces, the fewer places available to Hutu from the rebel groups.

The recent agreements make no provision for the future of a government-sponsored paramilitary force called the Guardians of Peace.³² Nominally under the supervision of local civilian administrators, the Guardians are trained and armed by soldiers and usually operate under their orders. Many were under the age of eighteen when recruited and some were considerably younger. They receive no salary and live at home, supposedly at the charge of their own families. In at least two places, Rumonge and Kayanza, government soldiers have sought new recruits among Guardians of the Peace.

According to Guardians from several zones, including Gatete and the town of Rumonge, Rumonge commune, the commander of the Rumonge brigade urged them to join the army after a “secret meeting” on September 22. According to one Guardian, “He told us that this was an order from the president, that we could sign up immediately, and that we would be assigned to a company immediately, without having to do any military training.”³³ Several of the Guardians did sign up. As one explained, “If I stay a Guardian of the Peace, I run the same risks as I would as a soldier and I am notpaid. If I die in combat [as a Guardian], my family gets nothing. I also thought that I could get something when demobilization happens.”³⁴ Others were suspicious and refused. “The meeting was secret,” said one young man. “Usually they recruit by announcements on the radio. They didn’t give us time to think about it.”³⁵ Another who had reflected on the question asked, “Once in the army will we be seen as Hutu or Tutsi? And if we are Hutu, are we the Hutu of Nkurunziza or of the government?”³⁶

Leonard Nyangoma, a Frodebu political leader who was a founder of the CNDD-FDD, operated within the political arena and without an armed force until June 2003 when he reportedly began recruiting combatants in the northern province of Muyinga. By the end of October he claimed to have some 6,000 combatants ready to demobilize. He also asserted that his force would resort to combat if his party—whether a splinter of the CNDD-FDD or a new organization is unclear--were not recognized.³⁷

Just as the fluidity of the situation spurs enlargement of the forces, so does the hope of compensation. As the Guardian of the Peace indicated, one of his reasons for signing up was to qualify for demobilization and its expected benefits. The same motive may have influenced combatants who joined Nyangoma’s recently formed force. Information that the international community will fund demobilization has sparked hopes and, in some cases, unrealistic expectations of the benefits to be received. The World Bank is prepared to pay eighteen months of salary to demobilized soldiers, but only when they actually leave the force.³⁸ The current plans call for all combatants and soldiers to be combined into one large force that will be progressively reduced in size over a period of five years. There is no international provision for paying their salaries and upkeep in the interim which raises the question of how the government of Burundi will find the necessary funds. While authorities are sorting out the details and putting the plans into operation, tens of thousands of combatants, most of whom know how to use firearms, will bewaiting, presumably with growing impatience. A certain number are already dissatisfied, afraid about their future and anxious about the lack of reliable information about what is planned for them. Continued recruitment of soldiers and combatants in such a context heightens the risk of future violence and of exactions on and abuses of the civilian population.

Ethnicity and Changing Political Configurations

Since the Frodebu leader Ndayizeye assumed the presidency on April 30 as agreed in the Arusha Accords, his predominantly Hutu party has operated increasingly closely with its former Tutsi-dominated rival Uprona. In the meantime Frodebu faced a growing challenge from the also largely Hutu CNDD-FDD which steadily won favor with former Frodebu supporters. The growth of CNDD-FDD as a political force transformed the political scene from one dominated by the former two leading parties, Frodebu and Uprona, into one where three leading contenders struggle for predominance, two of them predominantly Hutu, one of them largely Tutsi. Ndayizeye said several times that Frodebu was determined to move to elections as quickly as possible, apparently hoping to do so before the CNDD-FDD further increases its base of power.³⁹

As Frodebu intensified its cooperation with Upronathe FDD then narrowed its opposition to the government to focus particularly on Frodebu. In June, the FDD moved to violence and abducted four Frodebu members of parliament, charging that Frodebu wanted to discredit their movement with the population in order “to keep itself in power.”⁴⁰ Several days later Hussein Radjabu, secretary-general of CNDD-FDD, accused Frodebu also of trying to discredit his group with the international community by saying that the FDD opposed peace.⁴¹ Soon after FDD released one member of parliament and three other persons because “they have nothing to do with the conflict between our movement and the Frodebu party,” a statement that showed their focus on the struggle between political parties, both of which are predominantly Hutu.⁴² At the end of August Frodebu expelled five of its parlementarians from the party for having contacts with the CNDD-FDD.⁴³

After Frodebu joined Uprona in a multi-ethnic government, the FNL repeatedly stressed the ethnic nature of the war. ⁴⁴ They called for the dissolution of the government and for negotiations, as their spokesman Pasteur Habimana put it, with “our Tutsi brothers in the army who hold the real power in the government.”⁴⁵ Just after the start of the July attack on Bujumbura, Habimana reiterated, “It is time the Tutsi army and the Tutsi community came to discuss with us the real problems of Burundi.”⁴⁶ As the government and the FDD were putting the final touches on the November 2 protocol, the FNL National Secretary for Foreign Relations, Augustin Ntawogeza, denounced President Ndayizeye and other Hutu participants in government as pawns of the Tutsi, bought by money, gifts, and privileges. He accused the Uprona party of planning the genocide of Hutu and vowed to continue the war and to take it again into the heart of Bujumbura.⁴⁷

Many FNL combatants are animated by religious fervor in their struggle against the Tutsi. One young FNL combatant captured during the July attack in Bujumbura told reporters that “Our leaders said that God had revealed to them that we could not fail in this attack and that we would not turn back.”⁴⁸ During attacks, FNL members regularly sing religious songs.

Government Repression of Dissent and of the Media

With Ndayizeye as president, the Burundian government repressed dissent and censored the press, much as it did under his predecessor Buyoya. The new president began on a positive note ending the banning of the Parena party, suspended some six months before. In his final weeks, Buyoya had foreshadowed this move by releasing former president Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, head of Parena, who had been under house arrest since November 2002. Reportedly suspected of plotting to kill Buyoya, Bagaza was never formally charged or brought to trial. Another Parena member Christophe Hicintuka, was released in late June after eight months of detention.⁴⁹

As Uprona collaborated more closely with Frodebu, it was increasingly challenged by several smaller but more radical parties that were largely Tutsi. In May Burundian authorities took action against a group of Tutsi opposition parties united in a coalition known as l’Accord-cadre pour la Restauration d’un Etat de Droit au Burundi (Cadres for Restoring a State of Law in Burundi). They detained Diomède Rutamucero, head of the Tutsi group Puissance Auto-défense Amasekanya (PA-Amasekanya) and a member of the Accord-cadre, after he created a mock people’s court that tried leading Frodebu members of government and condemned them to death. Charged with an attack on state security, he was not tried and was released a month later. Authorities also detained three other leaders of the Accord-cadre who had written them asking that Rutamucero be freed.⁵⁰

While Bujumbura was being shelled by the FNL on July 9, a branch of the police known as the Special Research Brigade (Brigade Special de Recherches, BSR) arrested Alphonse Rugambarara, head of the small Tutsi party Inkizo, on the charge of treason after he told the press that the FNL was not killing people in their attack and that its combatants were only defending themselves from an army offensive. He also stated that the government was responsible for the hardening of positions and the increase in fighting that made it difficult for him to carry out a proposed dialogue with the FNL. He was released a week later without having been brought to trial.

On October 17 Charles Mukasi, president of a dissident wing of Uprona, was arrested for the third time this year. He was accused of subverting the state but was released after a week. He has not been brought to trial.⁵¹

Like the previous government, that of Ndayizeye sought to keep close control of the press. On July 9 Minister of Communication Albert Mbonerane forbade the public and private media to interview or even to indirectly quote representatives of the rebel movements. Authorities told representatives of radio stations that they would jam their broadcasts or take other unspecified measures if the stations continued such broadcasts. At the same time, he prohibited them from publishing the number of persons killed or wounded during the recent attack on Bujumbura.⁵² On July 15 he and the minister of defense prohibited the press from publishing any information on the extent of army losses.⁵³ In early July agents of the Documentation Nationale, a police intelligence service at the command of the president, detained Jean-Claude Kavumbagu, the director of Net Press, an independent Tutsi-run internet press service for six days. He was said to have failed to obey an order from Mbonerane to immediately cut the link between his website and that of another site that provided information critical of the government. Kavumbagu said he had complied with the order.⁵⁴

The authorities soon took more serious action. On September 13 Minister Mborane suspended broadcasts by Radio Isanganiro, a private radio, for a week after it had broadcast statements by Pasteur Habimana, spokesman for the Agathon-led branch of the FNL. According to the ministerial order, the radio had broadcast “observations denigrating the authority of the state and so tended to harm national unity and the honor of the highest authorities of the Republic.”⁵⁵ On September 16, authorities suspended Radio Publique Africaine for an indefinite period as sanction for having broadcast an interview with Habimana.⁵⁶ These measures, coming on the eve of a summit meeting of regional heads of state, elicited considerable national and international criticism. The National Communication Council on September 18 shortened the suspension of Radio Isanganiro to a period of five days. In announcing its decision, the council recommended that the government henceforth “make its decisions in a more formal way to avoid uncertainties and pretexts.”⁵⁷On September 20 Minister Mborane ended the suspension of Radio Publique Africaine without further comment.⁵⁸

By arresting opposition politicians and holding them without charge and without presentation before a judge, Burundian authorities violated both Burundian law and provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Burundi is a party.⁵⁹ By subjecting journalists to censorship and other forms of frequent pressure, authorities contravened guarantees of freedom of press and expression also found in Burundian law and the ICCPR.