What’s the story?

Fierce fighting broke out in the capital, Bujumbura, after a former intelligence chief fired three months ago announced that the president, Pierre Nkurunziza, had been overthrown. Efforts to overthrow Nkurunziza were apparently popular with the public but met with heavy armed opposition from military loyal to the president. Loyal forces arrested the coup leader, and the president, who was out of the country when the coup attempt was announced, returned.

Amid fears of a bloody and protracted power struggle, the violence leaves Burundi facing its gravest crisis since the 12-year ethnically charged civil war that left an estimated 300,000 dead by 2005. It also threatens to unravel the power-sharing accords between minority Tutsis and majority Hutus.



How did this happen?

Tension has risen dramatically since Nkurunziza, head of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, decided in April to run for a third term, with presidential elections scheduled for 26 June. Opposition and rights groups insist it is unconstitutional, but Nkurunziza argues his first term did not count as he was elected by parliament, not the people. This was supported by the constitutional court, although one of the judges fled the country, claiming its members received death threats.

Nkurunziza is a former rebel leader from the Hutu majority and born-again Christian. His decision to seek re-election has been widely criticised by the Catholic church, civil society, some of his own party and international partners, including the US. In pressing his luck on a third term, Nkurunziza ignored the precedent set by the fall of Burkina Faso’s president when he wanted to hang on to power.



Pierre Nkurunziza speaks to the media after he registered to run for a third five-year term in office. Photograph: JEAN PIERRE HARERIMANA/REUTERS

The issues

Deep divisions

The prospects of local, parliamentary and presidential elections have polarised an already tense situation, with Nkurunziza’s increasingly authoritarian behaviour cited as the key factor in inflaming tension. A report by the International Crisis Group said: “The partisan use of state institutions, exactions committed by youth militia (the Imbonerakure), the lack of confidence in the Independent National Electoral Commission, strategies by the regime to reduce the inclusivity of the electoral process and the president’s will to run again exacerbate tensions … The prospect of a third term for President Nkurunziza calls into question the preservation of peace in Burundi.”

Nkurunziza has been in office since 2005. He won a second term in 2010, when the opposition boycotted the vote, accusing the government of intimidation. In the runup to the 2015 elections, the opposition has questioned the independence of electoral bodies, the registration of electors and redrawing of electoral boundaries, which, it says, favour the ruling party. There are fears that CNDD-FDD hardliners want to scrap the Arusha power-sharing arrangement and monopolise power for the majority Hutus.

Instability

Burundi has been plagued by outbreaks of extreme violence and mass killings since it won independence from Belgium in 1962. In 1993 Burundi held its first democratic elections, when Burundians chose their first Hutu head of state, Melchior Ndadaye, and a parliament dominated by the Hutu Front for Democracy in Burundi (Frodebu) party. But Ndadaye was assassinated within months, triggering years of Hutu-Tutsi violence in which hundreds of thousands of people, most of them civilians, were killed. Burundi’s population of 9.8 million is roughly 85% Hutu, 15% Tutsi.

The impact of the fighting



More than 22 people have been killed and scores wounded since late April, when the CNDD-FDD nominated Nkurunziza to stand for re-election. More than 50,000 Burundians have fled the violence to neighbouring nations in recent weeks, with the UN preparing for thousands more refugees. A return to civil war would mark a major setback for international diplomacy. As the International Crisis Group notes, the Arusha agreement involved Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton. “After the Central African Republic, Burundi could be the second country in the portfolio of the UN Commission for the Consolidation of Peace to revert to being a conflict country.”