The rebel group that’s been causing a ruckus in Burundi signed a peace deal with the government today.
File this away in your head under, “Things that are more significant than they sound.”
Burundi has had a tough go of history, with rounds of massacres that mirror, both metaphorically and (at least in part) causally, the violence in Rwanda. The last major massacre–I pause here to acknowledge the absurdity of writing “major massacre,” and of a language that leaves me no other way to distinguish such things–in 1993 hasn’t ever been recognized as a genocide, but many historians and political scientists and other highly-educated types say that it was.
Burundi has been trying to piece together peace since then. For years, the spoiler has been the FNL, a rebel group that refused to join in peace talks, for varying sets of reasons, and which no one could ever get to, or get to stay at, the table. Which meant the best case scenario was always that they’d just keep mostly to themselves–and the rather-troubling, if not worst-case, scenario was something like what’s been happening this last month, with sporadic fighting between the FNL and the government.
But that seems to be over. All the wires are reporting the FNL has signed a peace deal with the government. It declares “an immediate cessation of the hostilities.” But so far, I don’t know what else.
Many a time these words have been signed meaninglessly all over the world, and maybe this is no different. But it is the first time the FNL have signed anything. And that, whatever it turns out to be, is at least something.
