African Union Refuses to Invade Burundi
February 4, 2016
African Union Refuses to Invade Burundi
by Ann Garrison
If Western press alone could overthrow a government, Burundi’s would be long gone. Anyone searching the Web for “Burundi” and “News” in the past year would have seen long lists of shrill press quoting shrill Western officials demanding that Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza step down, amidst street protest and armed insurgency, and make way for a “transitional government.” Nkurunziza’’s crime? Winning a third term in office, after Burundi’s constitutional court ruled that he was constitutionally entitled to run for election by universal suffrage a second time. Nkurunziza is hugely popular with Burundi’s rural agricultural majority.
U.S. UN Ambassador Samantha Power, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon, the US State Department, the EU and Belgium, Burundi’s former colonial master, have fiercely advocated for the deployment of 5000 African Union (AU) troops in Burundi, whether Burundi agrees or not. They say the deployment is needed to protect civilians and prevent genocide. In her book Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power argues that Americans are obliged to protect civilians and prevent genocide with – what else? – our unprecedented military force. AU “peacekeeping” missions rely on the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) for weapons, training, intelligence, logistics, organization and command.
Nevertheless, on Sunday, 01.31.2016, the African Union’s Annual Summit of member nations dismissed the West’s proposal to deploy AU troops to Burundi without Burundi’s consent. The Burundian government has said that the fighting is taking place only in some neighborhoods in the capital, Bujumbura, that their own security forces are capable, and that they will respond to any AU deployment without their consent as an invasion. They also said that Burundi’s government, army and police all include members of both the Hutu and Tutsi groups and that there is therefore no imminent danger of genocide. In 1993, Burundi’s predominantly Tutsi army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Burundian Hutus after assassinating the country’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, who was also its first democratically elected president.
Rwanda’s Role in the Conflict
Over two hundred thousand refugees have fled Burundi since the violence began in the capital in the last week of April. In November, Jeff Drumtra, a former UN official at Rwanda’s Mahama Refugee Camp, told Pacifica’s Flashpoints Radio that he had documented the Rwandan government’s conscription of Burundian refugees into a new rebel army to fight in Burundi. Drumtra said he had submitted his documentation to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, so neither the UN nor the major powers will be able to say, at a later date, that they were unaware of the recruitment. Rwanda denied Drumtra’s allegations, but Refugees International confirmed them in its December report, Asylum Betrayed: Recruitment of Burundian Refugees in Rwanda.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/04/african-union-refuses-to-invade-burundi/
