This article makes clear, that nothing has been resolved in Rwanda/
Burundi. The European/ US governments have done nothing that is
likely to halt these genocidal conflicts, that are a legacy of
centuries of imperialism and war. Even a small return of money
looted from the African continent by Europeans, could provide the
incentive to brake these wars.
It is clear that the "right" to continue to loot the African continent
of it's natural resources, is more important to Clinton and his
European allies, than any concern for the African peoples.
What is not so clear, is why Leftists have spent such inordinate time
examining Kosovo and East Timor, but little effort to examine more, the
geopolitics behind the often genocidal conflicts of Africa.
..........................................Tony Abdo
..........................................................
Burundi's Hutus herded into camps. Tutsis move civilian Hutus into
camps, hunt for insurgents. By Karl Vick
WASHINGTON POST
RUZIBA, Burundi, Dec. 30 — The capital city of this tiny, verdant
country can be a lovely place. Bujumbura has fine restaurants, elegant
manners and sweeping views of shimmering Lake Tanganyika and the
mountains of Congo, wreathed in cotton candy clouds on the opposite
shore. But in a "Tutsi city" dominated by the minority ethnic group that
has clung violently to power in a country that is 85 percent Hutu, daily
life can match the fairy tale setting only as long as the civil war
remains in the countryside.
The idea is to empty the countryside of all but Hutu insurgents,
which the army could then hunt at will.
SO THIS SUMMER, when automatic weapons fire flared among
the hillside villas that are home to the ruling elite, government troops
swept through the hills and ravines of the surrounding province of
Bujumbura Rurale, herding Hutu farmers into makeshift camps that shortly
began producing epidemics of cholera, dysentery and malnutrition.
In Burundi, a country of 6 million that has been at war
with itself almost constantly since regaining independence in 1961, the
division has never been more visible than in the 58 "regroupment" camps
that form a grimy ring around the now calm capital. More than 300,000
people are confined in them, allowed out only with soldiers who warn
they are liable to be shot if they return to their homes.
"We were given about 30 minutes to collect a few things,"
said Sala Ndayisenga, 22, as she nursed 5-month-old Kevin on a path in
the Ruziba camp, where 18,000 people are crowded along the lakeshore
just north of Bujumbura. "There was complaining: 'Why are you telling us
to leave our homes?' "
The answer lay in the central tenet of any guerrilla
insurgency: A rebel's best cover is the civilian population he moves
among. "They told us, 'We are looking for rebels,' " Ndayisenga said. "
'So you people who are not rebels, come with us.' "
The idea is to empty the countryside of all but Hutu
insurgents, which the army could then hunt at will. Burundi used this
strategy in its remote rural north two years ago. Neighboring Rwanda,
which has a similar ethnic problem and which saw 500,000 massacred in
1994, employed it in its volatile northwest a year ago.
COMPASSIONATE STRATEGY?
Critics acknowledge that, in a backhanded way, the
strategy can be seen as compassionate. In Burundi, where almost all of
the perhaps 200,000 people killed during the 1990s were civilians, many
died in spasms of ethnic violence, neighbor butchering neighbor. But a
great number fell under the sights of a Tutsi-led army that human rights
groups and diplomats call notorious for its indifference to whether a
soldier's bullet finds a Hutu rebel or a Hutu civilian.
"Security-wise, I think it has proved to be very
successful," said Col. Longin Minani, an army spokesman. Dismissing
increasingly pointed criticism from the United States by invoking the
Japanese internment camps of World War II, Minani insisted that Hutu
peasants had asked for such "protection."
"We've done it before," he said. "It's proved to be very
efficient."
Few, however, would mistake the camps for a refuge.
Slapped together with virtually no consideration for
clean water or sanitation, the camps are typically shantytowns of leaky
banana-leaf shacks perched on the muddy faces of Burundi's signature
hills. The locations and sheer numbers pose a horrendous logistical
challenge to the international aid agencies the government insists must
provide food, medical care and other basics of survival.
The relief community feels it is on the spot. 'They don't
have enough food. They don't have any medical care. They can't farm
their land. It's very dangerous. If the situation goes on, they will all
die.'
— CYRILLE BARANCIRA
Tutsi politician The Paris-based Doctors Without
Borders, which won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for its human rights
work, pulled out of the camps in mid-November rather than serve as "the
army's logistician," as one aid worker put it. The group returned within
a few weeks as promised, however, after cholera broke out, killing 30 in
Ruziba camp alone.
Security is also a problem. After two U.N. workers were
killed in October while working in the countryside, the United Nations
has confined its staff to Bujumbura. Taking up the slack are private
agencies such as Catholic Relief Services, which on Monday ferried two
truckloads of jerrycans and blankets to the 8,000 people mired in a camp
dubbed Mukonko II.
"We are grateful for the blankets, because this is a cold
place," said Gerard Mizuro, who walked five miles from the hillside
camp, which is inaccessible to heavy trucks. On the paved highway where
he paused, soldiers were stationed at one-mile intervals. But farmers
said rebels now roam freely in the hills, joining soldiers in looting
the fields the peasants can tend only two or three times a week, under
military escort.
"It's infernal," said Cyrille Barancira, a veteran Tutsi
politician known as a hard-liner. "They don't have enough food. They
don't have any medical care. They can't farm their land. It's very
dangerous. If the situation goes on, they will all die."
And the danger is also political. Clearing the
countryside apparently has pushed the rebels away from the capital,
higher into the mountains that Hutu forces use as corridors. And even
the most severe critics of Burundi's military-led government acknowledge
the importance of keeping Bujumbura at peace. When the Hutu rebels last
infiltrated the capital, Tutsi militias battled back in an paroxysm of
violence that killed tens of thousands of civilians and led to political
chaos.
PEOPLE 'ARE VERY, VERY ANGRY'
But any short-term military gains won by the camps may be
overtaken by the resentment that builds with every day of forced
confinement. "The people in these camps are very, very angry," said
Louis-Marie Nindorera of the Burundian human rights group Iteka, which
finds the Bujumbura roundup more odious than the 1997 campaign in the
north. One aid worker reported: "People say, 'Give us guns and we will
kill the people who put us here.' "
It all adds fresh urgency to a stalled peace process that
got a jump-start in early December when Nelson Mandela agreed to serve
as mediator. The former South African president brought not only his
immense prestige, but also a more practical approach, inviting
representatives of the Hutu rebel groups that his predecessor, the late
Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, had refused to seat. However, the
largest rebel group this week refused the invitation.
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"If we Burundians cannot resolve our problems, he will
help us," said Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, the Hutu who was serving as
president when the current Tutsi president, Maj. Pierre Buyoya, seized
power in a 1996 coup. "But Burundians have to find a solution."
In a country where the major political parties are formed
on ethnic lines, Ntibantunganya saw hope in an alliance of prominent
Hutu and Tutsi politicians arrayed against Buyoya. But diplomats and
other observers dismissed the anti-Buyoya coalition (and a second
pro-Buyoya alliance) as expedient and fragile.
The real challenge facing Mandela, they said, will be
selling peace to power brokers who have manipulated ethnic fears—from
a "selective genocide" against educated Hutus in 1972, and several
rounds of ethnic killing since—to remain in their lush hillside
villas. Peace might threaten their fortunes, and justice their freedom.
"There's probably 6 million Burundians out there who
would really like to see truth and reconciliation, and there are
probably 60 guys who don't," one diplomat said. "Unfortunately, the 60
guys have a lot more power than the 6 million."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
http://www.msnbc.com/news/351811.asp
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