Burundian tyrant Évariste Ndayishimiye keeps bragging about the “stabilizing role” of his troops in South Kivu, but on the ground his army is cracking.
Commanders are furious, rank-and-file soldiers are demoralized, and the silence from Gitega is pushing the entire front toward collapse. If things continue this way, the AFC/M23 could sweep through Uvira faster than anyone in Kinshasa or Gitega is prepared to admit.
The first disaster (for the hapless Burundians) is logistical. An army cannot fight without supplies, and Burundi’s forces in Uvira are starving for both food and ammunition in vast, hostile, and mountainous terrain. Conditions are so dire that some soldiers have turned to looting civilians just to eat.
This has backfired spectacularly. The civilian populations now see them as predators, and AFC/M23 liberators, and as the only force capable of restoring order.
Then comes the political poison.
Attacks targeting Banyamulenge civilians in Minembwe and open collaboration with genocidal, anti-Tutsi militias like the Wazalendo and the FDLR have ignited fury inside the Burundian ranks. Tutsi officers are refusing flat-out to fight alongside groups they know are responsible for ethnic massacres, while their Hutu colleagues point to the “indiscipline” of these militias to avoid joint operations.
In short, many Burundian soldiers refuse to dirty their hands.
So far, Gitega’s only response has been panic. According to highly placed sources, instead of fixing the mess, Ndayishimiye has created a shadow chain of command, bypassing field commanders whenever their orders don’t match political wishes in Gitega or Kinshasa. The result is chaos.
In multiple battles, official orders to retreat and regroup were overridden by reckless decisions to attack blindly. The outcome has been predictable: horrific casualties.
The army’s cohesion is now hanging by a thread. Intelligence reports landing on Ndayishimiye’s desk suggest that some “defeats” are not defeats at all. Soldiers listed as KIA or MIA may in fact have surrendered to the AFC/M23; a scenario that terrifies the regime, because those same soldiers could one day turn their weapons against it.
But Ndayishimiye’s nightmare doesn’t end there. His troops’ looting, their alliance with genocidal militias, and the medieval siege they helped impose on Minembwe have shredded what little credibility he had left. If he dares fly to Washington for Trump’s peace deal, he risks the humiliation of being ordered—possibly live on TV—to pull out of eastern Congo with no negotiation and no leverage. A classic Trump “You have no cards to play” moment waiting to happen.
And all this assumes the Burundian army doesn’t implode first. With morale collapsing and commanders openly resisting orders, someone inside the military might decide to “fix” Burundi’s future themselves.
Stay tuned.