originally published in The East African, Kenya
It took a really long time — nearly 16 years — but this week, the tiny capital city of Bujumbura that has become the Beirut of Africa, is finally seeing peace.
Late Tuesday, ahead of an African Union deadline placed on both rebels and President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government, a deal was hatched to integrate 3,500 rebels into the national security forces and to turn a widely popular, ethnically tinged armed insurgency into a legitimate political party.
United Nations Secretary -General Ban Ki-moon, in a statement, noted “with appreciation” the negotiations between rebels and government and looked forward to “enhanced co-operation.”
“We have put down the guns,” says National Liberation Front (FNL) spokesperson Pasteur Habimana. “We are looking forward to engaging our political party throughout the world; in Africa, Europe and the Americas.”
Now, instead of kidnapping children and gunning down government officials, the FNL, a Hutu-centric rebellion that was born in 1980 in refugee camps after Hutu persecution by a then-Tutsi-led government, will run for office in elections in 2010.
“Burundians need not worry,” said Front leader Agathon Rwasa in a recent interview. “We will not return to war.”
A major worry though will be how to accommodate a nearly 21,000-strong FNL membership.
“We will need to keep people busy,” said Mr Habimana.
Political-party status has been a long time coming for the popular insurgency in a country where Hutus make up the vast majority of the population, but have often been fiscally subservient.
Final acceptance of the National Liberation Front as a political party came with the circumcision of their alias, Palipehutu, an ethnically charged name that means Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People (Parti pour la liberation du people Hutu).
Tensions between Hutu and Tutsi have spread throughout the Great Lakes region since the independence movements of the mid-20th century.
Civil war broke out in 1993, when Tutsi generals kidnapped and beheaded the first democratically elected president of the country, a Hutu engineer named Melchior Ndadaye.
A year later, similar tensions in northern neighbour Rwanda unleashed a genocide that killed nearly a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu.
In Congo, residuals of both Burundi and Rwanda’s conflicts spilled over, instigating a 15-year struggle that at times engulfed much of the continent and killed 5.4 million people.
Things seem, to some extent, to be winding down.
In Congo, Kigali and Kinshasa came together earlier this year to clean up a hodge-podge of militias — both serious and juvenile — specifically the Hutu extremists who sparked the Rwanda genocide.
In Burundi, the two-year peace process that at times looked like it would never be completed, is a done deal.
Thirty-three senior-government positions are slotted for FNL members and Rwasa and President Nkurunziza have met in person for face-to-face talks. As of mid-April, for the first time in the country, the Chief of the Army is a Hutu.
Now that peace, finally, seems real in the country, other matters can be turned to: albino killings, homosexuality and tourism.
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