Tag Archives: Burundi

Burundi coup fails; mutineers surrender

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The attempted military coup in Burundi this week, which sought to halt the president’s unconstitutional bid for a third term and to end the violent police crackdowns on protesters, has failed decisively, after a day of heavy fighting in the capital. The putsch lasted about two days before fizzling.

Several coup leaders have been arrested and the ringleader (who may or may not have been among those arrested already) publicly admitted failure:

Gen Niyombare, who launched the coup attempt on Wednesday, told the AFP agency: “I hope they won’t kill us.”
[…]
“We have decided to surrender,” Gen Niyombare told AFP. He added that troops loyal to the president were approaching him.

 
A co-conspirator had admitted defeat earlier and acknowledged that the army is overwhelmingly standing by the president:

General Cyrille Ndayirukiye told the AFP news agency that most in the military wanted to keep the current government in power.
[…]
“Personally, I recognise that our movement has failed,” he said, according to AFP. “We were faced with an overpowering military determination to support the system in power,” he added.

 
The loyalist faction’s leadership was jubilant and explained how they had persuaded a majority of the army not to join the coup:

Army chief of staff Gen Prime Niyongabo [who remained loyal to the president] told the BBC’s Maud Jullien the number of soldiers backing the coup had fallen.

“On Wednesday evening we gave them the chance to rejoin the army to avoid a bloodbath. But they [likely a smaller faction] tried to attack the radio station today (Thursday) – the army repelled the attack.

“We are in control of all strategic points in the country. Burundi is a democratic nation. The army does not interfere in politics. We are obliged to follow the constitution.”

 
To their credit, the loyalists are using the words “democratic” and “constitution” a lot, while emphasizing non-interference, in explaining their opposition to the coup. But of course it’s worth remembering that the president isn’t following the constitution either.

Still, I suppose political neutrality is a better impulse than coup. But it might not be an enlightened decision so much as a result of careful planning since the end of the civil war that resulted in the restructuring of Burundi’s armed forces to make the army’s kaleidoscope of factions so internally jumbled that allegiances either lie with no one or with the political system, but not with specific leaders (whether military or civilian). If one person attempts to stage a mutiny or rebellion, it is difficult to rally significant forces quickly to the mutineers’ cause: Read more

The “Burkina Faso effect” is still unclear

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Six months later, we are still no closer to a definitive answer on the question: “Burkina Faso’s Printemps Noir: A Black Spring or a fizzle?”

In other words, has the surprise popular/military ouster of Burkina Faso’s authoritarian president over a term limits dispute had any ripple effects across the rest of sub-Saharan Africa’s countries with long-serving leaders — many of whom are also currently trying to change their constitutions to seek additional terms? Will people be inspired to challenge attempts to revise term limits and nip their potential future strongmen’s careers in the bud?

A partial map of the years that Sub-Saharan African strongmen took office, in relation to Blaise Compaoré's 1987 coup in Burkina Faso. (Map labels by Arsenal For Democracy.)

A partial map of the years that Sub-Saharan African strongmen took office, in relation to Blaise Compaoré’s 1987 coup in Burkina Faso. (Map labels by Arsenal For Democracy.)

In Burundi this week we got perhaps the clearest parallel so far as a major military coup attempt was made against the president after weeks of increasingly bloody protests over his planned third term. It’s currently still too early to tell what the outcome of that uprising will be, since the army was divided over the decision to intervene in the political sphere.

Fighting raged in the capital last night. Reuters:

“The coup attempt failed, loyal forces are still controlling all strategic points,” said Army Chief of Staff General Prime Niyongabo in a statement broadcast on state radio.

A Reuters witness reported a journalist at the state broadcaster had said there was still heavy gunfire being heard around the state television and radio station in the capital on Thursday morning. Another Reuters witness said loud blasts were heard in the capital.

 
The Guardian:

Witnesses said rival factions of the armed forces, divided between supporters of the coup attempt and the president’s loyalists, were exchanging heavy machine gun and rocket fire around the state television and radio complex, which is held by the president’s supporters.

According to a pro-coup military source, the RTNB complex was attacked in the early hours of the morning after Burundi’s armed forces chief used state radio to announce that the coup had failed.

A journalist inside the complex confirmed heavy fighting raged through the early hours of the morning and after dawn, with heavy weapons including cannons and rockets being used.

 
Regardless of the outcome in Burundi, however, there is a bigger picture also still unresolved. Even beyond the “super-dicator” types — those who have ruled for 30-40 years and show no signs of budging or don’t even bother with real elections — there are almost a dozen wannabe-strongmen who are similarly trying to change the rules to contest semi-competitive elections and plan to coast to re-election on popularity or intimidation and join the ranks of the super-dictators.

The trends on the latter front appear to be quite unclear, with some countries and organizations showing positive signs and others making the same unfortunate decisions as we have just seen the president of Burundi undertake. An op-ed in Al Jazeera English summarized the state of play in the various countries with similar situations:

The forced resignation of Burkinabe President Blaise Campaore in October last year, following similar protests in Ougadougou is a case in point.

Perhaps that influenced President Thomas Yayi to accept the Benin constitutional court’s refusal to amend the constitution for a third term, and he has publicly stated that he will not seek re-election next year.
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Meanwhile in the DRC there has already been strong opposition to President Joseph Kabila’s attempts to amend both the constitution and the electoral law, including from within his own party.
[…]
In other parts of the continent, the signals are mixed. In stark contrast to Burundi and DRC, in neighbouring Rwanda, two million people have petitioned parliament to amend the constitution in order to allow Paul Kagame to extend his rule for a third seven-year term in 2017.
[…]
Last month, Togo’s Faure Gnassingbe and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir were both re-elected as their countries’ leaders, despite high questionable track records and notwithstanding protests against Faure’s third-term bid and an opposition boycott of the poll in Sudan, where Bashir has been in power since 1989.
[…]
However, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) looks set to change such apathy this week, when it will table a new clause that would prohibit presidents of member countries from ruling for more than two terms. It is also said to be considering adopting a new legal regime that will make all ECOWAS decisions immediately applicable and binding on member states.

 

Burundi: Major military coup attempt in progress

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Update May 15, 2015: The coup has failed.

A military coup attempt is in progress after weeks of demonstrations against the president’s unconstitutional re-election bid for a third term and against his violent security forces or youth paramilitaries. BBC Africa covered the blow-by-blow events of the day on its live feed.

President Pierre Nkurunziza was in Tanzania for a regional leaders meeting when General Godefroid Niyombare — a former intelligence chief fired in February for advising the president against seeking a third term — took to the airwaves to announce he was closing the airport and borders to keep the president from returning and would be taking power. Protesters began leaving the streets, after initial celebrations alongside the supportive troops, on the orders of pro-coup forces who began arriving in tanks and armored vehicles. Police fell back.

President Nkurunziza’s team said its loyal security forces remained in control of key government and broadcast functions as well as the presidential palace. They dubbed the coup attempt a failure:

“It is with regret that we have learned that a group of soldiers rebelled this morning and made a fake declaration about a coup. The Presidency of the Republic wants the public opinion both in Burundi and abroad to know that this coup attempt has been stopped and that the people who read that statement on private local radio are being sought by the defence and security forces so that they are brought to justice. The Presidency of the Republic is asking the people of Burundi as well as foreigners to keep calm. Everything is being done to maintain security across the national territory.”

 
However, I fear we might be looking at a South Sudan situation in Burundi. The coup attempt may only partially succeed but it will likely not completely fail either (given the large presence of participating tanks and troops already). The military is multi-ethnic and comprises multiple factions from the country’s civil war. Some of them will back the president, some will back the coup, and some will back neither. It will also likely be a more violent split than in Lesotho last summer. And it will certainly not be as clean a break as the Burkina Faso military coup last October, which also involved an unconstitutional re-election bid.

As another complication, Nkurunziza had indeed been elected democratically but was now attempting to violate the constitution and has been widely accused of deploying death squads against his political enemies. Thus the coup is (if successful) removing a democratic leader but one who had become about as undemocratic as possible over the course of his tenure.

Flag of Burundi

Flag of Burundi

Violent clashes in Burundi as the president clings to power

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After Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his long-anticipated plans to seek a third term as president in violation of the post-civil war constitution’s term limits, deadly protests erupted this weekend. They have escalated rapidly after initial fatalities:

Gunfire was heard and streets were barricaded in parts of the capital, Bujumbura, in the third day of protests, witnesses told the BBC. Police are blocking about students in the second city, Gitega, from joining the demonstrations, residents said.

The protests are the biggest in Burundi since the civil war ended in 2005. The army and police have been deployed to quell the protests, which have been described by government officials as an insurrection.
[…]
BBC Burundi analyst Prime Ndikumagenge says the phone lines of private radio stations have been cut, a decision apparently taken by the authorities to prevent news of protests from spreading.

 
This may be the contagion some observers speculated might unfold after the uprising in Burkina Faso last October, when President Blaise Compaoré tried to extend his presidency in a similar fashion.

Flag of Burundi

Flag of Burundi

Burundi’s Army has been accused repeatedly of conducting extrajudicial mass executions of “rebels” and political opponents. Already, thousands of people have fled political persecution to neighboring countries in just a matter of months. Burundi also has a very low median age — half the population is younger than 17, according to the CIA World Factbook — and the President has essentially created child death squads by arming teenage members of his political party’s “youth wing.”

Burundi, which has the same colonially-fostered Hutu/Tutsi split as neighboring Rwanda, experienced a 12-year civil war beginning shortly before the Rwandan Genocide and continuing until 2005, despite repeated attempts to share power. The presidents of both countries were killed in a surface-to-air missile strike on their plane in 1994, in the incident which was widely seen as the trigger signal to initiate the genocide in Rwanda. However, the war in Burundi was already in progress at that point. Hundreds of thousands died before the 2005 peace deal.

It is interesting, however, to note that so far the armed forces have continued to respond to orders from President Nkurunziza. He is Hutu, and the armed forces are a mix of ex-rebel Hutus and the Tutsi regular troops from before the peace deal. In South Sudan, a merger of various ex-rebels from competing ethnic groups, which had been secured around the same time as the Burundi deal, basically broke down completely in December 2013 as certain factions obeyed the president and others the former vice-president, who had been sacked.