Burundi, 2001 — military coup attempt

Event Summary

On 18 April 2001 a coup was attempted in Burundi against President Pierre Buyoya, the Tutsi military ruler who had returned to power in a 1996 coup and was then steering the country through fraught negotiations to end its long civil war between the Tutsi dominated army and Hutu rebel movements. While Buyoya was out of the country attending peace talks, a group of junior army officers, reportedly Tutsi hardliners opposed to the power sharing concessions being made to the Hutu majority, seized the national radio station in Bujumbura and announced that they had taken power, denouncing the peace process. But the putsch was poorly supported and quickly collapsed: the army high command and loyal units did not back the mutineers, and within hours the rebellion fizzled and the plotters surrendered or were arrested.

Buyoya survived the challenge and pressed ahead with the peace process, which led later in 2001 to a transitional power sharing government under the Arusha Accords. Burundi's fragile transition, repeatedly threatened by hardliners on both sides, ultimately held, culminating in the arrangements that would eventually bring the Hutu majority to power and formally end the civil war.