Burundi, 2001 — dissident coup attempt

Event Summary

The dataset records an event coded as an attempted dissident coupi in Burundi on 22 July 2001, one of a series of destabilizing actions by Tutsi hardliners in the tense weeks before the establishment of the transitional power sharing government that was meant to move the country toward peace. President Pierre Buyoya, having survived an April 2001 coup attempt, was pressing ahead with implementing the Arusha peace accords, under which a transitional government would be inaugurated on 1 November 2001, with Buyoya to serve the first eighteen months before handing over to a Hutu vice president. This concession to the Hutu majority infuriated Tutsi extremists in the military, and in July 2001 dissident soldiers mounted another coup attempt or armed action against Buyoya's government, again seeking to derail the transition.

Like the April attempt, it failed to win broad military backing and was suppressed. Buyoya survived and the transition proceeded as scheduled that November, a crucial step in the long, halting process that would eventually end Burundi's civil war and bring the Hutu majority to power through the elections of 2005.