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Running Out of Options in Burundi

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Talks about ending Burundi’s crisis – sparked by the president’s decision to seek a third term – have fizzled out. With elections nearing in 2020, tensions could flare. Strong regional pressure is needed to begin opening up the country’s political space before the balloting.

What’s new? After almost three years, the Inter-Burundi Dialogue has ended in failure. Next steps are unclear as regional leaders reject handing over mediation to other institutions while not committing wholeheartedly themselves to resolving the crisis. Elections due in 2020 carry a real risk of violence unless political tensions ease.

Why did it happen? The East African Community (EAC) took the lead on mediation in Burundi though it lacks the requisite experience, expertise or resources. Absence of political will and divisions among member states, coupled with the Burundian government’s intransigence, made successful dialogue among the parties impossible.

Why does it matter? Without urgent intervention, the 2020 elections will take place in a climate of fear and intimidation. This would increase risks of electoral violence and people joining armed opposition groups and ensure that Burundi continues its descent into authoritarianism, raising prospects of another major crisis with regional repercussions.

What should be done? Regional leaders should use their influence, including threats of targeted sanctions, to persuade the government to allow exiled opponents to return and campaign without fear of reprisal. The EAC, African Union and UN should coordinate to prevent Bujumbura from forum-shopping and not allow Burundi to slip from the international agenda.

Executive Summary

After almost three years, the Inter-Burundi Dialogue has ended in failure. The talks, led by the East African Community (EAC), came in response to a political crisis sparked by President Pierre Nkurunziza’s April 2015 decision to stand for a third term. They were unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, notably EAC member states’ divisions and disinterest. Even now, regional leaders refuse to hand over the mediation to either the African Union (AU) or the UN, but are not prepared to commit wholeheartedly to resolving the crisis. The paralysis is worrying, as elections are due in 2020 and, unless political tensions ease, the risk of violence is high. No one expects the polls to be free or fair, but they could at least be peaceful with opposition politicians able to compete without fear of reprisal, thereby preserving a degree of pluralism that might help prevent a worse descent into conflict. Much, however, depends on Nkurunziza’s willingness to open up political space and the readiness of regional leaders, in particular the Tanzanian and Ugandan presidents, John Magufuli and Yoweri Museveni, to nudge him in that direction.

In July 2015, at the height of the crisis, the EAC established the Inter-Burundi Dialogue, appointing President Museveni as mediator and, later, former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa as facilitator to assist him. The regional body took the lead under the AU’s principle of subsidiarity, which holds that peace and security issues in Africa should be dealt with at the most local level. The EAC was not equipped for the task, however. It is first and foremost a forum for economic integration, and as such had no experience or expertise in complex political mediation. It also lacked sufficient financial resources and, with Nkurunziza loyalist Libérat Mfumukeko as secretary general, was open to accusations of bias.

Compounding these institutional shortcomings was a lack of political support for the dialogue from EAC heads of state. Historical political rifts among these countries, combined with economic rivalries and heightened personal animosities among their leaders, prevented the region from forming a consensus on how to resolve the crisis. Since the beginning of the crisis, regional leaders have increasingly seen Burundi as an ally or a tool in these disputes and thus have been reluctant to antagonise Nkurunziza by using their leverage to force him to negotiate. Without regional backing, Mkapa found it impossible to bring the parties together for face-to-face discussions.

Talks have taken place sporadically, with facilitators shuttling between the two camps. The opposition parties started out with their own preconditions and red lines, but eventually demonstrated their readiness to compromise, most significantly dropping the demand that the president step down. The government, however, has been intransigent throughout, consistently refusing to participate in the mediation in good faith. By pitting the EAC, AU and UN against one another, Nkurunziza successfully resisted the various forms of external pressure exerted on Burundi – intense public criticism, the threat of an AU military force, the withdrawal of vital financial aid and sanctions on prominent political figures. Instead of moderating its behaviour, the government has consolidated power and begun to dismantle protections for the Tutsi minority provided for by the 2000 Arusha peace agreement that ended Burundi’s long civil war.

As a result, and despite the EAC’s efforts, as well as those of other international actors, Burundi remains in crisis: its economy is on life support, more than 350,000 refugees reside in neighbouring states, most of the government’s political opponents are in exile and those who stayed are subject to severe repression. If elections take place under these circumstances, many Burundians will likely reject them, potentially resulting in street protests that could turn violent and increase support for armed opposition groups, as happened in 2015.

While the government is unlikely to fully open the political space ahead of the polls, it should be possible to push for conditions that allow the opposition to contest in safety, preserve a degree of political pluralism and prevent the escalation of violence. Four things are required to achieve this outcome:

  • The government should allow opponents in exile to return and campaign freely without intimidation, arrest or violence. It should also let external monitors observe preparations for the polls as well as the voting and counting.
     
  • Regional leaders should use their influence over President Nkurunziza to ensure that the government undertakes these steps. They should publicly state their willingness to freeze senior government and ruling-party figures’ assets and be ready to review Burundi’s membership in the EAC itself if the country does not make progress toward more credible elections.
     
  • The AU should revive its High-Level Delegation to Burundi, and if necessary reconstitute its membership. It should expand the delegation’s mandate to enable it to build consensus in the region and encourage EAC leaders to help advance talks. The AU should negotiate with the Burundian government an increase in the number of human rights observers and military experts it deploys in country. It should use this augmented contingent to monitor the security situation, including opposition politicians’ safety, and assess preparations for the forthcoming elections, including whether conditions for a more credible vote exist. The AU Peace and Security Council and the High Level Delegation should use reports from the AU team on the ground to inform their diplomacy on the crisis. The Assembly of Heads of State, meeting in extraordinary session in July 2019, should endorse these measures.
     
  • The EAC, the AU and the UN should closely align efforts to ensure that Nkurunziza does not forum-shop. Crucially, they must not allow the crisis to fall off the international agenda.
     

If no significant headway has been made before the end of 2019, the EAC, AU, UN and other external actors should call for the elections to be postponed for six months. This would give the government ample additional time to get its house in order and forestall potential complaints from Bujumbura and its allies that it has had insufficient time. The EAC, AU and UN should use the extra months to redouble efforts to press the government to improve conditions for credible and peaceful elections. If the vote proceeds without a change in conditions on the ground, either as scheduled or after a postponement, external actors should not support or observe the polls and should minimise diplomatic contact with any resulting government and the EAC should suspend Burundi and freeze its senior leaders’ assets.

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ICG: Making the Central African Republic’s Latest Peace Agreement Stick

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A deal to end six years of war in the Central African Republic could come unglued if not strengthened. The government should hold signatory armed groups accountable to criteria for improved behaviour and back local peace initiatives. Neighbours should push armed groups to cease provocations.

What’s new? In February, the Central African Republic’s government signed an agreement with armed groups that control large swathes of the country, committing to integrating some groups’ fighters into new army units and their leaders into government. The deal has galvanised international support, but violence continues in the provinces.

Why does it matter? The government, African Union and UN have invested heavily in this agreement, which has the buy-in of neighbours. With strong fol-low-up in-country there is a chance of starting to reverse six years of widespread violence.

What should be done? The government should set clear benchmarks for armed group behaviour; it should eject from government leaders of groups that fail to meet them. The government and international actors should support local peace initiatives. Chad and Sudan should use their influence over armed groups to end their abuses.

Executive Summary

Four months after the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) signed an African Union (AU)-sponsored peace agreement with fourteen armed groups, implementation remains patchy. The mixed units it envisages, which would comprise armed groups’ fighters alongside national armed forces, could help catalyse those group’s demobilisation, but setting them up is proving hard. A new government, which has awarded armed groups important national and local posts, has proven controversial with a population that wants above all a reduction in violence and predation. Some accommodation with powerful groups is likely necessary, but the government and its international allies should establish benchmarks that would condition armed group representatives’ tenure in government posts on changes in behaviour. They should also support local peace initiatives, which have had some success in forging truces, resolving disputes and reducing bloodshed in provinces where armed groups operate. International actors should maintain pressure on CAR’s neighbours to use their sway over those groups to end abuses.

The agreement, negotiated in Khartoum and signed in Bangui on 6 February, is at least the sixth deal with the fourteen armed groups since some of them seized the Central African capital in 2013, provoking a crisis that endures today. Brokered by the AU, with the involvement of CAR’s neighbours, it followed successful efforts by the regional body’s top diplomats to bring under AU auspices a parallel Russian and Sudanese initiative, which in mid-2018 threatened to fracture international mediation efforts. Like previous such agreements, the deal lays out the conflict’s main causes and commits the parties to resolving disputes peacefully and the armed groups to disarming. It also contains two more significant provisions. First, it creates Special Mixed Security Units, merging some combatants from armed groups with army formations. Secondly, CAR’s president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, committed to an “inclusive government”, understood by AU mediators and the armed groups themselves to mean giving those groups greater representation.

Implementation of those provisions has run into early challenges. The mixed security units could help kick-start the armed groups’ demobilisation, with some fighters integrating into the army and others returning to civilian life. But the parties’ divergent understandings of the units’ command structures and the armed groups’ reluctance to commit fighters to longer-term disarmament has hampered their formation. The inclusive government has proven especially controversial. On 3 March, President Touadéra’s new prime minister named a cabinet which gave the armed groups few positions, all at relatively junior levels. The groups rejected this and threatened to walk out on the agreement as a whole. After an emergency meeting with armed group leaders hosted by the AU at its Addis Ababa headquarters, the prime minister named another government at the end of March. This second effort gave the armed groups multiple cabinet posts as well as local government positions in areas they control. Many in Bangui reacted angrily to what they see as an unacceptable concession to armed groups.

Thus far, the deal has brought some dividends. It has renewed international attention to CAR and united diplomats behind a single mediation effort. Including neighbours, particularly Chad, in the talks and on a committee set up to monitor the agreement’s implementation could induce them to persuade armed groups that recruit and resupply in their countries to rein in abuses. Given that a few years ago those groups were demanding amnesties and threatening to march on Bangui, simply getting them to the table was an achievement.

Whether the deal has reduced violence is, however, unclear. A lull in major fighting for some months after the deal was signed may well have been due to the rainy season’s onset. The daily grind of violence in the provinces has scarcely abated. On 21 May, one of the Agreement’s signatories perpetrated attacks that killed dozens of civilians in the north west. Moreover, beyond calling for disarmament, the agreement is silent on how to curtail clashes among armed groups, which are more frequent than fighting between them and government soldiers or UN peacekeepers. Indeed, it left many details to be worked out later. In the eyes of many in Bangui, therefore, its main impact thus far has been to reward predatory militants with government slots, for little apparent return.

While some accommodation with the most powerful armed groups is necessary, the government and AU should at a minimum demand that they go some way toward meeting their side of the bargain in return for a share of government power. The risk cited by some AU officials that such an approach could lead armed groups to exit the deal altogether and escalate violence appears overblown. At least the larger armed groups are motivated less by retaining slots in government than by holding onto territory, which they would still do even if losing their government posts. Risks can also be mitigated though an approach that sees the government and its international partners complement national-level dialogue with local peace initiatives.

The following steps would help ensure that the Agreement leads to an improvement in conditions on the ground:

  • The government, in concert with the Agreement’s guarantors and the UN, and in agreement with the armed groups if possible, should seek to establish benchmarks that those groups must meet in order to retain their government positions. If reaching consensus proves impossible, the government and international actors should impose their own, based on the Agreement’s terms, but in more detail and with timelines attached. Benchmarks could start with armed groups reducing violence, allowing state officials to deploy to provinces and permitting humanitarian organisations to work unimpeded. Over time they should also include steps toward demobilisation, including participation in the mixed security units. Importantly, such benchmarks would also embed the principle of reciprocity in negotiations.
     
  • Where their uneven presence on the ground allows, the government and its international partners should support local peace committees that in some provinces have been able to arrange truces and resolve disputes among armed groups. The prefectural committees created by the Agreement to implement its provisions locally should build on these efforts.
     
  • The government should step up its public communications, not only concerning February’s agreement, but also its wider approach to negotiations. It should explain to a sceptical public that some concessions to armed groups are necessary, but that such concessions are contingent on those groups reducing violence and taking steps toward disarmament.
     
  • Building on recent joint working visits to Bangui, the AU, in concert with the country’s two other main partners, the EU and the UN, should maintain pressure on neighbours to take back foreign fighters following disarmament in CAR, and to use their influence over armed groups to persuade them to reduce violence, allow the state to return to areas they control and eventually demobilise. The AU and UN in particular should seek to reinvigorate bilateral diplomatic channels between CAR and each of its neighbours, particularly Chad and Sudan. Russia, which is increasingly involved in CAR, should lend its support to efforts to demobilise armed groups and maintain pressure on those of CAR’s neighbours with which it has close ties.

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