Sanctions on Burundi Show Mixed Results

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa â€”  As hundreds of nervous diplomats, aid workers and others fled Burundi on the last commercial flights this week, questions were growing as to whether a newly imposed blockade by neighboring African nations will help or worsen the vicious ethnic conflict there.

So far, the answer is mixed.

The embargo apparently has not slowed the daily bloodletting between Hutu militias and the Tutsi-led army that has killed an estimated 150,000 people, mostly civilians, since 1993. A rebel attack Thursday in Ngozi, for example, reportedly cut the road to the capital, Bujumbura.

Nor have the sanctions persuaded the military regime of former army Maj. Pierre Buyoya to restore the mixed-ethnic constitutional government it toppled July 25. The bloodless coup reinforced near-total power by the Tutsi minority over the majority Hutu population.

But in a radio address Wednesday, Buyoya said for the first time that he would be willing to negotiate with Leonard Nyangoma’s Hutu insurgents without demanding that they renounce violence first. It appeared to be a major concession.

“If the president really negotiates, we think maybe we will have peace,� Emmanuel Mpfayokurera, head of a now-banned Hutu political party, said in a telephone interview from Bujumbura.

East and Central African states imposed economic sanctions at the end of July in an effort to restore civilian rule. Leaders, including several who also took power in coups, said they feared that an explosion in Burundi would spill across its borders, creating millions of new refugees and destabilizing the region.

The only major refugee flow so far, however, has been good news. United Nations officials say 23,000 Rwandan refugees in Burundi have gone home this month, the largest voluntary repatriation of Hutus since Rwanda’s genocidal war two years ago.

But Buyoya’s aides repeatedly have warned that the embargo will backfire and could lead to a blood bath. They are not alone.

“Everyone here thinks it’s quite negative,� said a senior Western aid official in Nairobi, Kenya. “People are afraid it’s only going to put the country under further strain and could fuel the ethnic conflict. . . . The donors think it’s crazy.�

One by one, nearby nations--Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire and Rwanda--have cut air, road and rail links, as well as service by fuel barges and ferries on Lake Tanganyika.

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Rwanda’s support for the embargo came as a particular surprise because, as in Burundi, the military-installed government is dominated by Tutsis.

But diplomats say Rwanda’s moderate rulers came under heavy pressure from countries far more crucial to its prospects for economic recovery.

“Relations between countries are determined by national interest, not just ethnicity,� one envoy said.

Indeed, the sanctions against Burundi show a political unity not seen in Africa since the 1980s, when nearly every nation pledged opposition to the white-minority apartheid regime in South Africa.

Last year, by contrast, no other African country publicly backed the call by South Africa’s post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela, for sanctions against Nigeria’s military junta after it hanged nine political dissidents. Mandela later backed down.

“They could afford to do this because Burundi is so small and it’s not an international or even a regional player,� said Greg Mills, director of South Africa’s Institute of International Affairs. “Nigeria has a quarter of Africa’s population. It’s got oil. It’s not a country you mess with.�

In any case, sanctions have barely begun to bite. Coffee and tea exports, chief sources of foreign exchange, have halted. And gasoline is now rationed.

But the price of salt, which initially soared in panic buying, has since fallen. Food markets remain open, and electric power and telephone service have not been disrupted.

“There’s a lot fewer cars on the street, but otherwise everything is quiet,� a Bujumbura resident said Thursday.

“No one is panicked,� agreed a journalist there. “No one is really suffering yet.�

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The blockade initially stopped humanitarian aid. But Tanzania relented this week, and the first U.N. World Food Program truck convoy, carrying 210 tons of beans, entered Burundi late Wednesday for distribution at camps for about 43,000 remaining Rwandan refugees and 250,000 displaced Burundian Hutus.

Other Burundians may be immune to the sanctions as well. An estimated 98% of the country’s 6 million people are subsistence farmers who grow their own corn, beans and cassava. The country recently completed a strong harvest, and aid workers say starvation is not likely.