ADF STAFF
Just a few kilometers from one of the world’s most deadly hotspots for militant violence — the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — the people of Burundi are struggling with an insurgency of their own.
Increasing attacks by the RED-Tabara rebel group have revealed a pattern of killing civilians and claiming credit for the attacks on social media but denying civilians were involved. The offensive has elicited outrage from a broad spectrum of Burundians.
“The government of Burundi once again deplores the behavior of Rwanda which maintains, trains and arms the terrorist group RED-Tabara,” government spokesman Jérôme Niyonzima said in a February 26 statement.
The night before, gunmen crossed the border from the DRC and stormed the town of Buringa, just a couple of kilometers north of Burundi’s largest city, Bujumbura. They killed nine people, including six women and one Soldier, and injured five.
Rockets hit the local headquarters of the CNDD-FDD political party, leaving its brick walls, wooden A-frame roof and corrugated metal sheets shredded. The Soldier was inside the building, according to weekly newspaper Iwacu.
“Recently, a similar case took place in Gatumba now it is Buringa’s turn,” Sixte-Vigny Nimuraba, president of the Independent National Commission on Human Rights, told Iwacu. “I can only condemn such a despicable act which aims to assassinate the civilian population. Our law enforcement agencies must review their strategies for protecting the population.”
The rebel group said on social media that it had attacked two Burundian military positions, killing six Soldiers and seizing weapons and ammunition.
In late December, 12 children were among the 20 civilians killed by RED-Tabara fighters in Gatumba. The rebel group claimed on social media to have killed nine Soldiers and a police officer in the attack. It continues to deny that it targets civilians.
RED-Tabara, a French acronym for the Resistance for Rule of Law in Burundi (Résistance pour un État de Droit au Burundi), has been fighting to topple Burundi’s government from bases in the South Kivu region of eastern DRC since 2015.
The most active of a handful of rebel groups seeking to unseat the Burundi government, RED-Tabara is estimated to have 500 to 800 fighters.
University of Pretoria researcher Patrick Hajayandi connects the armed group to Burundi’s failed military coup in 2015. The putschists who were not arrested fled north to Rwanda.
“The presence of former coup leaders in Rwanda and their involvement in destabilizing actions against the Burundi government, as well as the seemingly renewed support for RED-Tabara fighters from the Rwandan government, are driving the renewed political tensions between Kigali and Gitega,” he wrote in an April 14 article for The Conversation Africa magazine.
Shortly after the Gatumba attack, Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye accused Rwanda of hosting and training RED-Tabara. Despite Rwanda’s denials, Burundi later closed its border with Rwanda, suspended diplomatic relations and deported several Rwandan citizens.
Hajayandi noted reports that Rwanda was recruiting and training Burundian rebels from the Mahama Refugee Camp in eastern Rwanda, which houses more than 60,000 refugees, a majority of whom are from Burundi.
United Nations experts who interviewed captured fighters in the DRC reported in 2016 that RED-Tabara members said they were recruited, trained and escorted by Rwandan military personnel into the DRC with fake IDs as Congolese citizens.
The recent spate of attacks by RED-Tabara increasingly look more like terrorism than political violence, according to Hajayandi. He believes the Burundian rebels are similar to the extremist Congolese M23 group in that they are both fighting proxy wars on behalf of Rwanda.
“[RED-Tabara] claims to fight for a return to the rule of law, which it claims the current government has abandoned,” he wrote. “However, its indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations are increasingly falling into the pattern of terror acts.
“Over the past 15 years, I have studied the conflict dynamics in the Great Lakes region. In my view, the RED-Tabara attacks are part of coordinated actions to use conflict to reshape the region’s geopolitics.”