For several years, Burundi has been militarily involved in the crisis in eastern DR Congo. It operates alongside the Congolese armed forces (FARDC), FDLR – a Kinshasa-backed terrorist group formed by the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and hundreds of local militias known as Wazalendo. ALSO READ: How Burundian troops in South Kivu sparked a distinct humanitarian crisis amid DR Congo’s wider war The involvement of the Burundian army is based on a military cooperation agreement signed with Kinshasa in 2023 to fight M23 rebels. This is the official objective, but the Burundian army (FDNB) is also conducting other unofficial operations in South Kivu, with or without a bilateral agreement with Kinshasa. ALSO READ: 80-year-old Congolese reflects on lifetime of injustice, attacks in DR Congo Burundi’s intervention has cost a tremendous number of human lives, and the loss of hundreds of Burundian soldiers has become a source of domestic tension. The deployment of Burundian forces in areas inhabited by the Banyamulenge has resulted in a humanitarian blockade and the taking of innocent civilians as hostages. In effect, Bujumbura is projecting its own internal ethnic conflict into eastern DR Congo. The Banyamulenge increasingly accuse Burundi of committing war crimes and other human rights violations against them. ALSO READ: Deconstructing the so-called recycling of FDLR This article examines Burundi’s motives for this controversial intervention, highlighting the complexity of the region’s geopolitical dynamics and arguing that Burundi has become a major obstacle to any search for lasting solutions to the challenges facing DR Congo. Economic reasons Burundi is currently facing a deep economic crisis. The Burundian army deployed in Somalia was sent back due to what was described as a blatant lack of professionalism, leading to the suspension of United Nations financial allocations to the country. Having tasted the “honey,” or benefited from these revenues, Burundi quickly signed a subcontracting agreement with the Tshisekedi regime to participate in an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu Province. Although financially lucrative, the implementation of this agreement is widely associated with accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This arrangement between Burundi and DR Congo risks becoming a heavy political burden for the CNDD–FDD. ALSO READ: A young man's witness to Rwanda's resilience after the 1994 Genocide Burundi is also involved in the exploitation of gold and redwood in Fizi, a territory located in the southern part of South Kivu Province. President Évariste Ndayishimiye struck a deal with a Mai-Mai (Wazalendo) faction led by warlord Amuri Yakutumba to extract these valuable resources without authorization from Kinshasa. This dynamic explains why Yakutumba often behaves as though he were a head of state: he is capable of entering into agreements with a foreign government. He is a non-state actor who does not depend on Kinshasa. This situation has also fuelled tensions between the two main Wazalendo leaders in Fizi—Yakutumba and Ngomanzito. Within this context, Burundi is pursuing a covert strategy of balkanisation in the region. The political and military alignment involving Ndayishimiye, Ngomanzito, Yakutumba, and President Felix Tshisekedi is driven less by shared governance objectives than by a convergence of interests in targeting the Banyamulenge (Tutsi) community. Their astonishing shared desire is to wipe the Banyamulenge off the country’s map. Ideological and ethnocentric alliances Tragic events in Burundi and Rwanda have had a major impact on the Great Lakes region. In 1993, massacres occurred in Burundi along with the assassination of Melchior Ndadaye, the first democratically elected Hutu president. In Rwanda, in 1994, there was a genocide against the Tutsi in which more than one million people were killed. These two catastrophes led to a massive exodus of Rwandan and Burundian Hutu to eastern DR Congo. ALSO READ: Why genocide ideology doesn’t dissolve three decades after dispersion of genocidaires This reinforced the “Bantu–Nilotic” or “Bantu–Hamitic” myth exploited by certain populist political leaders to justify exclusionary or hostile policies. This myth, rooted in racist colonial theories, classifies non-Tutsi groups as “Bantu,” and Tutsi as “Nilotic.” In reality, “Bantu” is a generic linguistic term describing shared linguistic features in Central and Sub-Saharan Africa. Over time, the term was wrongly interpreted as defining a “race,” including Hutu or other non-Tutsi groups in DR Congo. Since then, anti-Tutsi hate speech in DR Congo has increasingly taken on genocidal and regional dimensions. Burundi’s intervention is motivated by this ethnocentric regional “Bantu–Nilotic” alliance, aimed at fighting what Bujumbura perceives as the potential expansion of Tutsi dominance in the region. In this context, the Burundian president denied Congolese citizenship to the Banyamulenge and asserted that their problem began in 1996 due to Rwanda’s intervention in DR Congo. He added that the Banyamulenge are not an ethnic group because they do not have a customary chief. Ndayishimiye’s regime is using exactly the same discourse as Anzuluni Bembe (a fierce Banyamulenge detractor from 1980–1997), Butondo Nzangi, Julien Paluku (favored sons of “Tshisekedism”), Justin Bitakakwira, Ngomanzito, and John Kasimbira (Wazalendo). This racist, archaic, medieval policy has nothing to do with the resurgence of M23, which dates from 2022. Imbonerakure, the CNDD-FDD militia, were once facilitated by a Congolese named Rufora, surprisingly attacked the Banyamulenge village of Kahololo in Uvira highlands in 2019/2020, repeating the same slogans used in Gatumba in 2004. This is the same rhetoric used by the Burundian group Red Tabara between 2017 and 2021, systematically attacking Banyamulenge villages, their cattle, their fields, and their social structures. Burundi is allied with the same Mai-Mai and Wazalendo militias that publicly refused to work with a national army senior officer, Gen. Olivier Gasita, because he is Tutsi. Populism in Burundi As in eastern DR Congo, ethnic hatred in Burundi is often used as a tool to mobilise the masses, serving as a strategy to gain nationwide political support. This perverse dynamic transforms ethnic identity into both a dividing factor and a political weapon, paradoxically uniting various political actors around the same exclusive, discriminatory discourse. The CNDD–FDD has conveyed to its supporters that Burundi is conducting an anti-Tutsi campaign in DR Congo, a narrative that helps reinforce domestic political backing. Merely claiming to be fighting the Tutsi is presented as sufficient justification, demonstrating the dangerous potency of such identity-based mobilisation. Burundi has ambitions to change the leadership of the RPF in Rwanda. A few years ago, the Burundian president declared to youth in Kinshasa that they must do everything to liberate Rwandan youth from President Paul Kagame. In South and North Kivu, a significant segment of the population has never accepted the RPF’s victory in Rwanda. They supported, and still support, former Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana. Despite the clear economic opportunities that the current Rwandan government has offered to communities in eastern DR Congo, most political actors and civil society leaders in this region have never accepted Paul Kagame as a legitimate president. Many eastern Congolese, despite their proximity to Rwanda, do not fully acknowledge the reality or scale of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Within this context, the killing of a Tutsi in DR Congo is perceived as getting rid of an enemy, reflecting deeply entrenched narratives of hostility. In many ways, the sociopolitical dynamics of the conflicts in eastern DR Congo and Burundi echo elements of the racial ideology that fuelled the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. This explains why crowds observed the public lynching of two army officers, Col. Kaminzobe and Kabongo, along with a businessman, Ntayoberwa, without raising alarm. According to multiple accounts, the victims were mutilated in public, and bystanders appeared both fascinated and unalarmed. There was no condemnation from civil society organizations or religious institutions. Even the Congolese Nobel Peace Prize laureate, controversially, limited his response to asking citizens not to “film the crimes,” rather than denouncing the violence itself. Burundi believes that the CNDD-FDD regime cannot endure as long as Rwanda, under President Kagame, maintains influence in the region. Lasting peace in DR Congo will only be possible by ending the political exploitation of ethnic identity and working toward genuine national reconciliation. This is not just an ideal; it is a necessity for the region’s development and stability. Burundi is engaged in a war in eastern DR Congo to honour its economic contracts, preserve a tribal alliance, and mobilise internal support, at a time when the CNDD-FDD faces a legitimacy crisis. Burundi has allied itself with armed negative militia groups whose only objective is the extermination of the Banyamulenge people. Its participation in uprooting the Banyamulenge is a historic political mistake. These motivations constitute major obstacles to resolving conflicts in DR Congo. Burundi must understand that its intervention, driven by these objectives, will have direct and indirect repercussions on its own territory, while also making regional security dynamics more complex. These geostrategic approaches obscure the root causes of the crisis and the necessity of prioritising a political path and dialogue between the conflicting parties. Dr Alex Mvuka Ntung is an independent research consultant.
