Scarcity and Surfeitdemocratic Burundi to many, triggered an extremist backlash, which led to
the fighting that continues today.
During the years following the 1972 massacres the underlying causes of
the conflict were strengthened rather than reduced. The military regimes of
Micombero and Bagaza continued to consolidate Tutsi political gains and
Hima-Tutsi power in particular, perpetuating the exclusion of Hutus from the
affairs of the country. During the repressive years of Bagaza's reign, the first
organised Hutu refugee rebel group began to be more visible, including Parti
pour la Liberation du Peuple Hutu (PALIPEHUTU), formed in the twilight
years of the 1970s. There would emerge later, in the 1980s, Front pour la
Liberation National (FROLINA).
There were, in addition, some significant economic changes, which affected
Bwndi's politics. On the one hand, the Bururi lobby in power not only consol-
idated its political position, but also its powers of patronage. There was a signif-
icant shift of state investment from sectors with little rent-seeking capacity, pri-
marily agriculture, to those with high predatory potential, that is state-owned
companies, and industry and services in generaL40 This process will be
described in more detail below. On the other hand, the early to mid-1980s saw
international sources of economic pressure affect the regime. Increased interna-
tional attention to the human rights violations of the Bagaza regime made inter-
national donors threaten to withhold development aid. Since in the 1980s this
aid paid for up to 50% of government expenditure in the context of extreme
indebtedness, this was a major threat to the income of the regime. In addition,
world coffee prices collapsed in the mid-1980s, undermining further the foreign
exchange revenue of the government. Finally, in 1986, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank imposed a structural adjustment pro-
gramme on the government, including the demand to reduce military spending.
The decreasing popularity of Bagaza's regime, not least because of the eco-
nomic pressures facing the urban Tutsi elite, led to a military coup in 1987 led
by Major Pierre Buyoya. Less than a year after the coup violence erupted
anew, this time in the northern communities of Ntega and Marangara
bordering Rwanda.
The violence took the established pattern: pre-emptive, limited Tutsi vio-
lence against Hutu "to keep them in their place", a widespread and intense
Hutu reaction to the provocation by the security forces, and a disproportion-
ately harsh "restoration of normalcy" by those security forces.41 The violence
may have been sparked, among other factors, by government action to curb
coffee smuggling on the Rwandan border. The level of fear and mistrust among
ethnic groups by this time is shown by the fact that any government action
could be interpreted by Hutus as the beginning of ethnic attacks. "Isolated
provocation by individual Tutsi immediately took on ominous proportions ...
Rumour became the immediate catalyst for violence," notes Lemarchand,
emphasising the importance of fear as a motivating factor for killing.42 The