Burundi crisis: Nkurunziza's intransigence

The news is not good: Pierre Nkurunziza is intransigent. The man has stonewalled anyone who has tried to talk some sense into him so that the bloodshed may stop, so that some sanity may return to his country. He has ignored everyone at every level be it national, regional, continental or even globally. This has perplexed casual and seasoned political observers alike. That he continues to act as if he has completely gone cuckoo has led some to think that the ‘man of God’ has been possessed by the demons (amashitani yaramuteye!). And so, everyone has caved. One by one they descended on Bujumbura only to leave with their tails between their legs. President Museveni and his team made the first attempt. However, this was only half-hearted as Museveni had more pressing matters to sort back home. This was followed by a visit by members of the Security Council to “push to end months of political tension,” according to the United Nations. Exactly one month later on 22 February, the Secretary General himself, Ban Ki-Moon, jetted onto Bujumbura to support “UN efforts to resolve the political crisis” in Burundi. As hope began to fade, the African Union sent its “high level delegation.” As they are wont to do, they killed this hope immediately. This could be discerned from the statement they released after this charade; it read as if it were in reference to a post-Nkurunziza Burundi. It said, “We urge the international community to restore the provision of assistance to Burundi as requested by the people of Burundi so that they can continue with building their country.” This is tone-deaf. Why? Because when Nkurunziza eventually goes – and he will – this is the kind of statement that will be released by the international community in support of the replacement government. Which is why it is not only strange that they would release a statement that, at best, discredits the entire mission, let alone undermining the personal profiles of the members of the delegation on whose behalf it speaks. At best the AU mission signals that it is as toothless as those delegations that came before it. They are all saying one thing: that they can do nothing to cause a change of mind in the leadership of Burundi. That their hands are tied. Which is to say that Burundians are on their own. Fair enough. If only they had said so from the get-go, prior to the chest-thumping that preceded their capitulation, and before the false hope they gave to Burundians whose expectation was that they would “do something.” Why Burundians still place hope in this amorphous international community is itself beyond comprehension because they ought to have learnt a thing or two from what transpired in Rwanda in 1994. However, they can be forgiven for thinking so. I suspect they saw what happened in Libya, and in Ivory Coast before, and thought that things had changed in the attitude of the international community. It distorted our view of reality and blinded us from the cold hard truths of realpolitik that were camouflaged in humanitarian intervention. Nothing has changed. What happened in those two countries has more to do with settling historical scores, about super powers exploiting an opening to settle grudges, to remove those they long-considered a pain in their neck, all the while advancing their strategic interests. This analytical distinction is where Nkurunziza bests his adversaries. They hope and pray for a miracle from the international community. He knows that this ain’t happening. What they need to do is hope, pray, and strategize in line with the demands of realpolitik in order to have a chance against him. On his part, Nkurunziza says he’s praying. I’m not sure about that. Going by his actions, it is also difficult to know to which god he is praying. However, I can tell you with certainty that the man has a strategy in place that is unmitigated by blind faith. It is predicated on the cynical view of the international system, on his knowledge of how it works, and most importantly on how it fails. Let me elaborate just a bit. The UN system was set-up to protect states – not people. Moreover, its primary objective was to respond to Europe’s security challenges – to help set up Europe’s security architecture – that at the time were characterised by interstate conflict and, to prevent the rise of another expansionist lunatic akin to Adolph Hitler and his Lebensraum. Anyone else’s security concerns become important only in reference to this primary objective. In other words, they are secondary concerns. This explains the dithering that often takes place in arguments whether people deserve to be saved or not. Said differently, the system is so designed that individuals are to perish and states preserved. There is a silver-lining, however. In those states where there is as strong state-citizen relationship, the preservation of the state and that of the people become intertwined. This is how the people there find themselves protected by the system they built. However, in places with weak state-society intercourse – as is the case with most of Africa – the international system, as moderated by the UN system, is incapable of protecting both the states and the people. Indeed, it often finds itself torn between the two, and often sides with the former because that is what its founding principles require it to do. Similarly, the AU is impotent in the face of crises because it was modelled on the principles of the UN, with everything rotating around the preservation of territorial integrity and the inviolability of state sovereignty. Mimicry will be our undoing. That the security challenges facing Africa were largely intra-state civil strife, internal in character, didn’t stop the AU from modelling itself on the UN. In other words, the AU is designed to solve Europe’s security threats. If you haven’t yet, this is as good a time as any to cry for Burundi.

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Burundi crisis: Nkurunziza's intransigence