Arusha accord is “non-agreement”, analyst says

Great Lakes analyst, Professor Filip Reyntjens of Belgium’s Antwerp University, has described the Arusha accord as a “non-agreement” signed by “reluctant” parties. In an interview with a Burundi website, he said there were many disagreements on crucial points. The accord had “institutionalised ethnicity as an important political variable through the introduction of quotas and the practice of alternation”. Reyntjens warned that this could create new conflicts. “In the Burundi demographic context no solution is possible as long as ethnicity remains the only factor of political structuring,” he said. “The Arusha peace process is a deal between fools - Burundi negotiators pretending to negotiate and the international community pretending to believe them,” he added.

Reyntjens also accused the Burundi peace mediator, Nelson Mandela, of “comparing Burundi too much to South Africa” and held the Burundi elites responsible for the ethnic woes facing the country in order to “preserve or acquire privileges”. “If the Burundi elites committed themselves honestly to the common good and public interest, Burundi could, by peacefully solving its conflict, become an example to some of its neighbours, particularly Rwanda and the DRC,” he pointed out.