The Burundian Civil War was a civil war in Burundi lasting from 1993 to 2005. The civil war was the result of longstanding ethnic divisions between the Hutu and the Tutsi ethnic groups. The conflict began following the first multi-party elections in the country since its independence from Belgium in 1962, and is seen as formally ending with the swearing-in of President Pierre Nkurunziza in August 2005. Children were widely used by both sides in the war. The estimated death toll stands at 300,000.
Background
Before becoming subject to European colonial rule, Burundi was governed by an ethnic Tutsi monarchy, similar to that of its neighbor Rwanda. German, and subsequently Belgian, colonial rulers found it convenient to govern through the existing power structure, perpetuating the dominance of the Tutsi minority over the ethnic Hutu majority. The Belgians generally identified the ethnic distinctions in Burundi and Rwanda with the following observations: the Twa who were short, the Hutu who were of medium height and the Tutsi who were tallest among them. Those individuals who owned more than ten cows were normally described as Tutsi.
Burundi became independent in 1962, breaking from a colonial federation with Rwanda. The independent country initially preserved its monarchy. The country's first multi-party national elections were held in June 1993. These elections were immediately preceded by 25 years of Tutsi military regimes, beginning with Michel Micombero, who had led a successful coup in 1966 and replaced the monarchy with a presidential republic. Under the Micombero regime, the minority Tutsi generally dominated governance. In 1972, Hutu militants organized and carried out systematic attacks on ethnic Tutsi, with the declared intent of annihilating the whole group. The military regime responded with large-scale reprisals targeting Hutus. The total number of casualties was never established, but estimates for the Tutsi genocide and the reprisals on the Hutus together are said to exceed 100,000. As many refugees and asylum-seekers left the country for Tanzania and Rwanda.
The last of the coups was in 1987 and installed Tutsi officer Pierre Buyoya. Buyoya attempted to institute a number of reforms to ease state control over media and attempted to facilitate a national dialogue. Instead of helping the problem, these reforms instead served to inflame ethnic tensions as hope grew among the Hutu population that the Tutsi monopoly was at an end. Local revolts subsequently took place by Hutu peasants against several Tutsi leaders in northern Burundi; these Hutu militias killed hundreds of Tutsi families in the process. When the army came to quell the uprising, they in turn killed thousands of Hutu, leading to an estimated death toll of between 5,000 and 50,000. A low-level insurgency developed, and the first Hutu rebel groups were formed. Most notable among these were Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People – National Forces of Liberation (Parti pour la libération du peuple Hutu – Forces nationales de libération, PALIPEHUTU-FNL) and National Liberation Front (Front de libération nationale, FROLINA) which had been active from the 1980s. Of the two, PALIPEHUTU-FNL was much more powerful than FROLINA, but also suffered from more internal divisions. When a democratic transition began in Burundi in the early 1990s, the historical core leadership of PALIPEHUTU decided to cooperate with the Hutu-dominated Front for Democracy in Burundi (Front pour la démocratie au Burundi, FRODEBU) party and to peacefully participate in politics. Radical members of PALIPEHUTU-FNL disagreed with this decision. In contrast, FROLINA was firmly unified under the command of Joseph Karumba, but always remained a rather weak and marginal group.
War
1993 coup and start of the conflict
After decades of military dictatorships, the parliamentary and presidential elections of June and July 1993 were the first ones in Burundi to be free and fair. FRODEBU decisively defeated the largely Tutsi Union for National Progress (Union pour le progrès national, UPRONA) of President Buyoya. Thus, FRODEBU leader Melchior Ndadaye became Burundi's first democratically elected Hutu president. His tenure was wrought with problems from the beginning. Though PALIPEHUTU's leadership decided to cooperate with Ndadaye's new government, its military chief commander Kabora Kossan refused to end the insurgency. He and his followers split from PALIPEHUTU-FNL, and from then on simply called themselves "National Forces of Liberation" (FNL). For Kossan and his men the only option was to continue to fight until all Tutsi in Burundi were dead, removed or fully disempowered. Nevertheless, Ndadaye's government was more threatened by Tutsi extremists than by radical Hutu groups: The latter were still rather weak, whereas the former controlled much of Burundi's military. The political situation escalated when Tutsi extremist army officers launched a coup on 21 October. Supported by about half of the armed forces, the putschists murdered Ndadaye alongside other leading FRODEBU members, and declared a new regime. However, the military government was destabilized from the beginning, as it faced internal chaos and opposition by foreign powers.
As a result of President Ndadaye's murder, violence and chaos broke out all over Burundi. Hutu attacked and killed many UPRONA supporters, most of them Tutsi but also some Hutu, while the putschists and allied Tutsi groups assaulted Hutu and FRODEBU sympathizers. Many civilians banded together in local militias to defend themselves, but these groups quickly became proactive as well, carrying out attacks and mass killings against each other. Urban street gangs, many of which had been biethnic before 1993, split along ethnic lines and began to work for extremist politicians. They received money and guns, and in return demonstrated, and murdered on the orders of the Tutsi and Hutu parties. An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people died within a year about as many Hutu as Tutsi. As result of this chaos and international pressure, the putschists' regime collapsed, and power was returned to a FRODEBU-dominated civilian government.
The mass killings consequently abated, and the country was somewhat restabilized by the end of 1993. The coup and subsequent ethnic violence had however deeply affected the country. The Tutsi extremists in the military were still present, and though they had given up outright power for the time being, they continued to undermine the civilian government in hopes of regaining full power in the future. The Hutu rebels believed that the coup had proven the impossibility of negotiations, and regarded the new Hutu-dominated civilian government as mere "stooges" of the old regime. They consequently fully resumed their insurgency. Furthermore, radicals among the Tutsi civil society regarded FRODEBU as génocidaires, believing that the party had initiated the anti-Tutsi mass killings following the 1993 coup. They thus organized demonstrations and strikes to bring down what they considered a criminal regime.
A succession of bi-ethnic governments attempted to stabilize the country from early 1994 to July 1996, but all failed. Tutsi extremists in the army continued to undermine any attempt of FRODEBU to consolidate power, and parts of FRODEBU decided in early 1994 that compromise was no longer possible. Minister of Interior Léonard Nyangoma led a FRODEBU faction into armed rebellion, creating the National Council for the Defense of Democracy–Forces for the Defense of Democracy (Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie – Forces pour la défense de la démocratie, CNDD-FDD). Nyangoma's group consequently became the most important Hutu rebel group, though PALIPEHUTU-FNL and FROLINA continued to be active. PALIPEHUTU-FNL was weakened by further rifts, and would fracture into numerous smaller factions over disagreements on negotiations and leadership during the civil war. With the exception of the notably moderate CNDD-FDD, all Hutu militias embraced the radical Hutu Power ideology that desired for the extermination of all Burundian Tutsi.
The Hutu insurgents received support by the neighboring countries of Zaire and Tanzania, both of which allowed the rebels to set up bases on their territories from where they could launch raids into Burundi. The reasons for which they supported the insurgents differed greatly: Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko believed that he could gain political leverage by harboring Rwandan and Burundian Hutu militants and refugees. They would suppress anti-Mobutu groups in Zaire, and give him something to bargain with the international community which sought to resolve the Great Lakes refugee crisis. In contrast, leading Tanzanian statesman Julius Nyerere wanted the region to be stabilized and pacified, and believed that the existence of Burundi and Rwanda as independent states posed a security problem by itself. Ultimately, he desired for these states to be annexed into Tanzania, therefore unifying all territory that had formerly comprised German East Africa. In the short term however, Nyerere believed that peace and order could only be achieved in Burundi through the inclusion of Hutus in the Burundian government and military.
While the country further descended into civil war, the political situation in Burundi deteriorated. Ndadaye's successor Cyprien Ntaryamira was assassinated in the same plane crash with Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994. This act marked the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, while in Burundi, the death of Ntaryamira exacerbated the violence and unrest, although there was no general massacre. Sylvestre Ntibantunganya was installed to a four-year presidency on April 8, but the security situation further declined. The influx of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees and the activities of armed Hutu and Tutsi groups further destabilized the government. A coalition government, formed by the peaceful FRODEBU faction and UPRONA in September 1994, proved to be too weak and fractured to actually govern the country. With the civil authorities factually defunct, the military effectively held control of "what little state power remained".
At the same time, the power of non-state actors increased. Though many self-defense groups had been disbanded after 1993, others transformed into larger ethnic militias. These groups included unofficial paramilitary wings of Hutu and Tutsi parties, independent extremist militias, and militant youth gangs. Notable Tutsi factions included the Party for National Recovery's (Parti pour le redressement national, PARENA) Imbogaraburundi ("those-who-will-bring-Burundi-back"), the People's Reconciliation Party's (Parti de la réconciliation des personnes, PRP) Sans Echecs ("the unfailing ones"), and urban youth gangs like Sans Défaite ("the undefeated"), Sans Pitié ("the pitiless ones"), Sans Capote ("those-who-do-not-wear-condoms") which acted as forces for hire for various extremist Tutsi parties. Hutu parties like FRODEBU and FDD also raised supportive militias, Inziraguhemuka ("those-who-did-not-betray") and Intagoheka ("those-who-never-sleep") respectively, while the Hutu street gang "Chicago Bulls" from Bujumbura managed to expand into a small army. These militias undermined attempts by the government to restore peace. The Tutsi militias were often trained and armed by extremist factions in the Burundian military. With aid by the army, they defeated a number of Hutu militias, but also terrorized as well as displaced many Hutu civilians at Bujumbura and other cities in 1995/96.