Scarcity and SurfeitBackground to the Conflict
Competition for the state, in the Burundian context, is synonymous with com-
petition for control over Burundi's natural resources. Burundi's ecological and
environmental resources impact on the conflict via the predatory state. This
occurs at three levels. First, as with any country whose economy is based over-
whelmingly on agriculture, the state derives its income largely from the pro-
cessing and sale of agricultural produce. It distributes the profits from these
resources to create a political client base, and it uses the revenue to protect and
perpetuate the predatory system, very often through violence. This is the insti-
tutional processing and sale level. The second level, closely connected to this
first level, is the local production level, at which the producers of Burundi's
resources, especially those mainly Hutu rural farmers who produce cash crops,
are exploited and repressed, creating a grievance which contributes to the
cycles of violence. Finally, the third level is the global market; it concerns the
volatile international market for Burundi's resources, mainly coffee, which
puts pressure on the resources of the political-military elite.
When speaking of competition for control over the state, we are speaking
of competition between urban elites. Rural populations, however, are most
directly affected by natural resource questions, especially, in the case of
Burundi, by the lack of sufficient land to sustain a growing peasant popula-
tion living off subsistence agriculture. The average amount of arable land per
peasant family is less than one hectare and this is rapidly decreasing owing
to population growth, inheritance rights splitting already commercially non-
viable farms into even smaller units, and land degradation. This element of
natural resource pressure does feed into the way in which violence is carried
out. People are known to have been killed so that their neighbours could take
over their property. However, we argue that the scarcity of land alone would
not lead to violence of neighbour against neighbour in Burundi were it not for
the exclusion of the majority from all political and alternative economic
opportunity and for the ideology of ethnic hatred and fear. Therefore we will
primarily look at how issues of control over natural resources, via the state,
affect how elites start violence.
The capture of the state by a small ethno-regional faction, and the con-
comitant exclusion of the majority of Burundians - most Hutu, but also most
'htsi - from political and economic opportunity has created the structural
basis for conflict in the country. Of course there is a complex web of factors
that have contributed to the outbreak of actual violence and to the shape that
it has taken. These include proximate historical factors such as triggering
events and regional and international influences, as well as factors endoge-
nous to a captured state: the lack of legitimate and effective domestic con-
flict resolution mechanisms, and the role which has accrued to ethnicity over
decades of colonialism and post-colonial conflict.