www.burunditribune.com/news.cfm?LANG=E -
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Published on: 11/10/2008
Last Visited: 11/18/2008
"The whole thing is almost Darwinian: too many people, too little land, an antiquated economy, a runaway demography and no prospects for economic growth," Gerard Prunier, a historian on eastern and central African affairs, told IRIN via e-mail.
Prunier, author of a respected book on Rwanda's 1994 genocide, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (C Hurst, 1998), also derided the "narrow-mindedness, selfishness and self-centredness of the political class".
"In such a situation, massacres have played a role of economic, if not demographic, regulation.
The same is true of Rwanda."
Burundi's Hutu majority and Tutsi minority spent most of the 1990s on opposite sides of a devastating civil war when large numbers of civilians were massacred.
Although the conflict is now officially over, the process of bringing in Burundi's last rebel group, Palipehutu-Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) is deadlocked.
"The Tutsi-Hutu conundrum is only the surface of the deeper economic limitations," Prunier told IRIN.
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"The Tutsi-Hutu conundrum is only the surface of the deeper economic limitations," Prunier told IRIN.