SUMMARY

Both ALiR and Palipehutu-FNL were Hutu-based rebel groups in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. ALiR were former remnants of the Rwandan Armed Forces and Interahamwe responsible for the genocide in Rwanda 1994. Palipehutu-FNL had been fighting a Tutsi government in Burundi. Both groups had been allied to the Mayi Mayi militia and the Kabila government of DR. Congo (Zaire). In February 2000 fierce clashes broke out between ALiR and Palipehutu-FNL at Gitenge and Kibuye to the east of Bujumbura. ALiR had been an integrated part of the FNL force but some Rwandan and Burundian fighters had started to leave the group, possibly because of the ongoing peace process in Burundi. In order to discourage more fighters to leave the group, FNL commanders disarmed a large number of ALiR and confined them to camp at Gitenga, in Kabezi commune. At the end of 1999 Palipehutu-FNL commanders started to kill ALiR fighters. ALiR then accused Palipehutu-FNL of betraying them and in the first days of February 2000, FNL combatants under the command of Agathon Rwasa both clashed with and systematically killed the Rwandan Hutu fighters that had been fighting with them against the Burundian army.

The non-state conflict between ALiR and Palipehutu-FNL was first included in UCDP data in 2000. In February that year Rwandan rebels accused their allies in Burundi of betraying them and fighting between the two around Tenga one of FNL’s largest strongholds, just north of the capital Bujumbura caused over one hundred battle-related deaths.