Burundi decided to close its border with Rwanda and expel Rwandans on January 11, after the December 2023 allegations by President Évariste Ndayishimiye that Rwanda was backing RED-Tabara rebels.

The Burundian rebel group that first emerged in 2011 has been plotting and executing attacks on Burundian territory from its bases in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2015.

“I would like to clarify […] RED-Tabara …is a Burundian rebel movement whose elements fled and are [operating] on Congolese territory,” Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs Christophe Lutundula said during a press conference in Kinshasa on January 13.

Ndayishimiye’s accusations have one objective; to divert the nation’s public from the chaos the Burundian army is engaged in eastern DRC where it is fighting alongside the Congolese army coalition, against M23 rebels, and getting a bloody nose.

The Burundian president alleged that Rwanda is hosting RED-Tabara, despite the fact that since 2021 Burundi has been deploying thousands of troops in South Kivu, eastern DRC, to fight the rebel group.

The excuse by Ndayishimiye to close the border with Rwanda is only a pretext. He made the decision to appease his Congolese counterpart Felix Tshisekedi whom he is siding with in the current conflict in eastern DRC.

While Rwanda supports efforts by the East African Community in a bid to restore order in eastern DRC through peaceful approaches such as dialogue, Burundi sided with Kinshasa in employing military means to deal with the M23 rebellion.

Ndayishimiye supported Kinshasa’s narrative that Kigali is backing M23 rebels to cover up for Tshisekedi’s failure to halt hostilities in DRC as he pledged when he was running for president in 2018.

A January mid-term report by the UN Group of Experts on DRC confirmed that Burundian troops are supporting the Congolese army coalition in committing indiscriminate shelling, kidnappings, and targeted assassinations.

The border closure can be seen as the desire of Ndayishimiye to follow in the footsteps of Tshisekedi.

Nothing justifies this closure strategically or from a logistical point of view, as the attacks of the RED-Tabara rebels are carried out from DRC, the big neighbor never singled out by Burundi.

Sacrificing Burundians for personal plans

Ndayishimiye’s decision to close the border with Rwanda will affect Burundians in all sorts of ways. Without income, the shortages of basic necessities are increasing every day and the lack of gasoline has worsened the crisis.

Burundian farmers have been exporting their fruits and tomatoes to Rwanda’s markets.

Cross-border trading since the border reopened in 2022 allowed Burundians to get sugar, which is scarce in their country, from Rwanda. Burundian business people who invested in textile, transport, and hospitality sectors have been portraying Rwanda as a good gateway in the region for their businesses to survive.

Border closure marked another point of weakness in the decisions of Ndayishimiye, who is currently unpopular because of a range of mistakes he made since he assumed office.

Ndayishimiye’s first term in office was marked by numerous failures from economic crisis, shortage of gasoline,  and above all, a blunder in the troops deployment to eastern DRC to support the Congolese army coalition in fighting M23 rebels.

Ndayishimiye’s border closure is more incomprehensible since his friend  Tshisekedi has never closed his border, despite everything he says about relations between Kigali and Kinshasa.