Scarcity and SurfeitBurundi does not have significant amounts of such resources. Burundi's
main source of natural wealth is coffee. The process of extracting, processing
and selling coffee is not conducive to the same patterns of violent control and
smuggling as diamonds or timber. While the exploitation of the coffee industry
and agricultural production in general has indeed been central in funding the
state's capacity to carry out violence, the rebel groups have not financed them-
selves in this way. Finally, the control over Burundi's natural resources has not
suddenly become an end in itself (in theoretical contrast to a political aim)
through the dynamics of the conflict, but is rather an integral part of the polit-
ical constitution of the state, before, during and after outbreaks of violence.
The broader expression of the resource extraction hypothesis, that is the
debate around the political economy of violenceQoes apply to Burundi. This
approach to understanding conflicts postulates that while wars may start
with political aims, the motivation of the fighting groups may change during
the process of the war to be economically oriented, that is they get used to
looting and smuggling, or to having access to more state military spending.
There is a strong element of this in Burundi, which makes a peace process
very difficult. The Tutsi-dominated army is accustomed to great wealth and
political power, which they justify through the Hutu threat. The rebel groups
were long funded by external actors with an interest in continued violence,
such as the DRC, and have strong smuggling networks in the whole region.
This is an important dynamic, but not directly connected to the environment.
Collier and Hoeffler's7 recent statistical work on the determining factors of
civil war shows that dependency on the export of primary commodities, that
is environmental products, is the "most powerful risk factor" for the outbreak
of conflict, compared to all the other factors they tested. This dependency is
certainly strong in Burundi. However, Collier8 places this statistical finding
within a theoretical context that is not applicable to Burundi. He argues that
what matters is not why rebel groups start a violent rebellion, but rather how
they manage to finance themselves, and then postulates that a high level of
primary commodity exports is likely to lead to conflict because primary com-
modities are easy loot. As noted above, however, the rebel movements in
Burundi are not largely financed through looting coffee or other products of
Burundian production - they are financed by external interests and the dias-
pora. Where the perspective of this report coincides with Collier is in noting
the predatory behaviour of the state in financing its own capacities for vio-
lence through primary commodity expl~itation.~ However, Collier only men-
tions the state actor very briefly, focusing otherwise only on the rebel groups.
In the case of Burundi, such a one-sided actor analysis is fatal.
As a closing note on the "greed versus grievance" debate,1° of
which Collier is an extreme supporter of the thesis that greed is the only
relevant factor in civil war, this chapter argues that it is false to make a
categorical distinction between the economic and the political. Greed is a