BY MEGAN ARNEY
On July 25 the army seized power in the central African country of Burundi, ousting the elected government and president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya. The military appointed major Pierre Buyoya as president after the coup d'etat, outlawing political parties, disbanding parliament, imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and closing the airport and borders.

The United Nations Security Council voted July 29 to condemn the coup. At the same time it voted to withhold from publication a report on the 1993 assassination of the country's first elected president. The big-business press claims the document may implicate the current officers in power. On July 31 the Organization of African Unity decided to impose sanctions on Burundi.

The New York Times had reported July 24 that the UN Security Council was preparing to send troops into Burundi. But Kofi Annan, UN Undersecretary General for "peacekeeping" missions, said that country after country has stalled in committing troops. U.S. representative to the United Nations Madeleine Albright declared July 24, "Under no circumstances would we tolerate a government installed by force or intimidation." But she added, "There will not be United States ground forces in such a peace-keeping operation."

"I think on a practical basis we will have to work with these people," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said two days later, referring to the new military junta in Burundi.

Buyoya has had ties to the Clinton administration for some time. On July 29, Democratic Party officials said that prior to the coup Buyoya had been invited to attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. The New York Times described Buyoya as an "authoritarian democrat." Between 1994 and 1996, Buyoya received $145,000 from the United States Agency for International Development (AID) for his Foundation for Peace, Unity and Democracy.

The July 27 Washington Post quoted a U.S. diplomat saying, "Considering the cast of characters who could have taken over, there could have been worse scenarios. If there was going to be a coup, and you had to pick someone to take over, he would probably be the one."

A government official in Washington reminded the world that Buyoya is "no stranger to the United States, and he may represent the last chance at stability and the resolution of Hutu and Tutsi problems."

Meanwhile, the ousted president Ntibantunganya who fled to the U.S. embassy in the capital city of Bujumbura on July 24 remains there.

The coup is the latest stage of years-long fighting between rival groups vying for power in the interests of competing layers of privileged professionals, wealthy merchants, and other capitalists.

The big-business press has consistently described the carnage in Burundi and neighboring Rwanda as the result of centuries-old tribal warfare between the Hutus and Tutsis. "The slaughter in Burundi, as in Rwanda, stems from hostility between two tribes, the Hutus and the Tutsis," said an editorial in the July 25 Washington Post.

In 1995 Washington sent 6,000 troops to Rwanda and the surrounding area under the guise of humanitarian aid to stop the "ethnic killing." With that move, U.S. imperialism displaced Paris and Brussels -Rwanda's former colonial master - as the dominant power in that country.

David Gakunzi, a native of Burundi and editor of Coumbite, a French-language magazine on politics in Africa and the Caribbean that was published in Paris, has put forward a different view. In an interview in 1988 with the Militant, he explained that the conflict between rival groups in the region was "political and social," not tribal.

"You do not have a situation where all the Tutsi are in power and all the Hutu are poor," he said. "You have Tutsis and Hutus who are bourgeois, Tutsis and Hutus who are peasants and suffering."

Both groups speak the same language, share the same territory and traditional political institutions, and - in spite of caricatures to the contrary - it is often impossible to tell which group an individual belongs to on the basis of physical appearance.

As a result of colonial rule and imperialist domination, Rwanda and Burundi are two of the poorest countries in the world. Life expectancy is 48 years in Burundi and 46 in Rwanda. At least half the population is illiterate. Some 85 percent of the population of Burundi lives in rural areas. Since 1993, per capita annual income in the country of 7 million has dropped from $180 to $165.

The area that makes up Rwanda and Burundi was part of German East Africa from 1899 until the end of World War I, when the League of Nations declared it Belgian territory under the name of Ruanda-Urundi. The Belgian imperialists took advantage of tribal divisions to maintain their rule. They built a power base among the feudal aristocracy that was drawn primarily from the Tutsis. Some 85 percent of the population of Burundi is Hutu, while Tutsis make up 14 percent. The composition in Rwanda is similar.

In the decade and a half following World War II, toilers in countries throughout Africa and other parts of the world led successful anticolonial uprisings winning political independence from the imperialist powers. In Rwanda, for example, a 1959 revolt - involving people from both tribes - wrested control of most government functions from the Belgian supported government, which was still dominated by people of Tutsi origin.

But working people did not take power in their own hands. The regimes that assumed the reigns of government in most cases remained subservient to the former colonial masters or new imperialist powers that continued to dominate and exploit these nations.

In Burundi, where no similar uprising took place as in Rwanda, government power after the 1962 declaration of independence remained in the hands of the Tutsi-dominated monarchy. A 1965 rebellion forced the dissolution of the monarchy. But a succession of military regimes, backed by the Belgian and other imperialist powers, ruled the country for the next two decades. Power continued to be exercised by the section of the local bourgeoisie that came primarily among the members of the Tutsi tribe.

Buyoya, a Tutsi, was president in Burundi from 1987 until 1993, as the army's choice. In 1993 Cyprien Ntaryamira was elected in a nationwide ballot, the first ever Hutu president of Burundi. Ntaryamira and Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana were killed when their plane was hit by gunfire in 1995.

Since 1993, over 150,000 people have died in the fighting and 200,000 have been displaced from their homes. The rival groups, representing different sections of the local bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy, have mostly targeted civilians as revenge against their opponents

Although Buyoya seized power under the guise of restoring peace, tranquillity is not likely in Burundi. The Washington Post reported that the military killed at least 50 people during the last weekend of July.  
 
 
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