For all its verdant, mountainous beauty, the tiny African nation of Burundi (pop. 4,000,000) has a bloodied and tragic history. Untold thousands have been killed in both Burundi and its neighboring sister-state of Rwanda during periodic tribal wars involving the Hutu majority and the tall, legendary Tutsi overlords. Last week Burundi was recovering from a brief but violent civil war that left an estimated 10,000 dead —including the country’s last Tutsi King—and at least 500,000 homeless.
The King was 25-year-old Ntare V, who had returned to Burundi in March after spending six years in exile. Ntare came home after receiving assurances from the man who deposed him, President Michel Micombero, who is also a Tutsi, that he would be free to live in Burundi “as an ordinary citizen.” But as soon as Ntare reached the Burundi capital of Bujumbura, he was whisked off by helicopter to the old royal capital of Kitega and placed under house arrest in his former palace. When thousands of Hutu tribesmen revolted a month later, they stormed the palace and killed the trapped Tutsi King.
At first Micombero insisted that the uprising was a plot by Tutsi royalists who were trying to free the King. Soon, though, it became clear that the rebels were Hutu revolutionaries whose real aim was to overthrow the Micombero government.
Savage fighting spread throughout the country. In the south, armed bands of Hutus seized control of the towns of Bururi and Rumonge and killed hundreds of Tutsi. On the shore of Lake Tanganyika, a force of 600 rebels occupied the town of Nyanza-Lac and drove off low-flying military planes with cascades of fire. “Everywhere,” reported one pilot, “you see dead bodies.”
At that point, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (formerly known as the Congo) decided to help Micombero by airlifting to Burundi a planeload of veterans from his own army. Among other things, Mobutu wanted to get rid of a handful of onetime Congolese rebels—the notorious Simbas—who had paddled across Lake Tanganyika and joined in the fighting on the Hutu side. Mobutu’s tough troops enabled the loyalist forces to put down the rebellion. Last week the Burundi radio announced that all leaders of the aborted coup had been captured—and appealed to the world for food and medical supplies.
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