Burundian Civil War: A Visual History

The Burundian Civil War (1993-2005) began when Tutsi army officers assassinated the newly elected Hutu president Melchior Ndadaye on 21 October 1993, four months into his term. Hutu reprisals and army massacres killed perhaps 50,000 within weeks; Hutu rebel groups, the CNDD-FDD and Palipehutu-FNL, fought the Tutsi-dominated army for a decade while the country lurched through coups, a regional embargo and the return of Pierre Buyoya. Nelson Mandela's mediation produced the Arusha Accords of 2000; the CNDD-FDD signed a ceasefire in 2003 and won elections in 2005 under Pierre Nkurunziza. About 300,000 died and over a million fled.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Burundian Civil War. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Deaths in Burundi's ethnic violence

Timeline of the Burundian Civil War

1. 1993
   Ndadaye elected, then assassinated; massacres
2. 1994
   President Ntaryamira killed with Habyarimana
3. 1996
   Buyoya's coup; regional embargo
4. 2000
   Arusha Accords
5. 2003
   CNDD-FDD ceasefire
6. 2004
   Gatumba massacre
7. 2005
   Nkurunziza elected
8. 2008
   FNL ceasefire

1993

Burundi, like Rwanda, had a Hutu majority ruled since independence by a Tutsi military elite; the army had killed some 100,000 educated Hutu in 1972. Buyoya allowed elections in June 1993 and Ndadaye's FRODEBU won; on 21 October paratroopers stormed the palace and killed him. Hutu peasants massacred Tutsi neighbours; the army massacred Hutu; the coup collapsed but the killing spread. Ndadaye's successor Ntaryamira died with Rwanda's president in the plane shot down over Kigali in April 1994 that triggered the Rwandan genocide.

War and embargo

Hutu militias formed the CNDD's armed wing, the FDD, and Palipehutu's FNL, operating from Zaire and Tanzania and from Bujumbura's hills; the army 'regrouped' Hutu peasants into camps. Buyoya retook power in a coup in July 1996; regional states imposed sanctions until 1999. Julius Nyerere and then Mandela mediated at Arusha; the political parties signed in August 2000, but the armed groups fought on and the FDD split. Massacres continued at Itaba (2002) and Gatumba refugee camp (2004, 160 Congolese Tutsi killed by the FNL).

Peace and its erosion

Nkurunziza's CNDD-FDD signed the Pretoria Protocol in October 2003 and joined the transitional government; a new constitution guaranteed ethnic quotas (60:40 Hutu-Tutsi in government, 50:50 in the army). The CNDD-FDD swept the 2005 elections and Nkurunziza became president; the FNL signed in 2006 and disarmed in 2009. Nkurunziza's bid for a third term in 2015 provoked a failed coup, killings and 400,000 refugees, and Burundi remains one of the poorest and most repressive states in Africa.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Belgian colonial empire (1885 to 1962)
• German colonial empire (1884 to 1919)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• Italian Empire (1882 to 1947)

Wars of the same era and region

• First Congo War (1996 to 1997)
• Second Congo War (1998 to 2003)
• Uganda-Tanzania War and Ugandan Bush War (1978 to 1986)
• Somali Civil War (1991 to present)
• Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 to 2005)
• Angolan Civil War (1975 to 2002)

8 surprising things about the Burundian Civil War

1. Burundi and Rwanda share the same Hutu-Tutsi make-up but Burundi's Tutsi minority kept power by force through the 1990s.
2. Ndadaye had been president for 102 days when he was killed.
3. Two Burundian presidents died within six months of each other in 1993-1994, one shot, one in the plane over Kigali.
4. The Arusha Accords, signed with Bill Clinton present, imposed the most detailed ethnic power-sharing formula in Africa.
5. Pierre Nkurunziza, the rebel leader turned president, was a former physical education teacher and evangelical who ruled until his death in 2020.
6. The Gatumba massacre of 2004 was claimed by the FNL, whose leader Agathon Rwasa later became opposition leader.
7. Some 300,000 Burundian Hutu refugees lived in Tanzania for decades; a 1972 group was granted Tanzanian citizenship en masse in 2010.
8. The 1972 killings, targeting every Hutu with a secondary education, are often called Africa's forgotten genocide.

Sources

• Burundian Civil War Wikipedia
• Burundi: Civil war Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Burundi profile – Timeline BBC News
• Rene Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (1994) Cambridge University Press

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