Rwanda Shadow Haunts Escalating Burundi War

BUJUMBURA, Burundi -- A bitter civil war is spreading here in the shadow of Rwanda, where a similar boil of ethnic hatred and extremist politics led to the genocidal slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people two years ago.


The question is: Will Burundi, where up to 100,000 people already have been killed, go the way of tortured Rwanda?


The fighting in this tiny Central African nation has escalated sharply in the last few weeks, with anti-government attacks erupting for the first time in the southern province, once considered a political and military stronghold.


Officials say hundreds of civilians, mostly ethnic Tutsis, have been killed in the surge of hit-and-run raids by Hutu extremist groups in Bururi province, home of the prime minister, defense minister, national police chief and most army officers and soldiers.


Fighting also has expanded since early March in three northwestern and central provinces. Diplomats say the Tutsi-dominated army has begun using Vietnam-style tactics, with soldiers forcing Tutsi civilians into protected hamlets and then hunting Hutus in a countryside turned free-fire zone.


Diplomats and aid workers say the recent death toll, devastation and renewed exodus of refugees appear to be the worst in a year. Many here expect the conflict to spread further in coming weeks. Adding to the tension, Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo last week ruled out direct talks with the rebels despite pressure from aid donors for such a dialogue.


The question is whether the latest tragic plunge in Burundi's cycle of violence is a prelude to the kind of organized genocidal campaigns that occurred in neighboring Rwanda.


UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright have issued dire warnings in recent months that Burundi has been teetering on the precipice of a Rwanda-style cataclysm.


But diplomats, relief workers and officials with humanitarian groups here say that Burundi's bitter conflict and history are significantly different from Rwanda's, and that, while the daily carnage is unlikely to stop, neither is it likely to mutate into another genocidal war.


"It's not like Rwanda,'' stated a senior Western aid official who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. "You've got a balance of forces here you didn't have in Rwanda. Both sides here are armed. I would characterize it as a low-intensity conflict that risks building to a major civil conflict.''


The two tiny nations have disturbing similarities. Both former Belgian colonies are about 85 percent Hutu and 15 percent Tutsi. Both seethe with ethnic tension. Both face armed insurgencies. Both have pushed political moderates to the margins.


But in Rwanda, the Hutu majority controlled the army and government, and it organized and armed civilian militias systematically to massacre unarmed Tutsis. The four-month slaughter ended only after a Tutsi-led guerrilla army forced the government and army to flee to Zaire in July 1994.


Burundi has the same demographics but is a mirror image of Rwanda politically. Here the minority Tutsis are in power, dominating the government, army and economy. Hutus serve in the government but are vastly outnumbered in the military, civil service and judiciary.


Most important, perhaps, is that the government's opponents here are well armed.


Ethnic strife goes back generations here, but the current war began in October 1993, when Tutsi soldiers murdered the country's first freely elected president, a Hutu, after he threatened to end decades of Tutsi domination.