Tens of thousands of Burundian refugees are returning home following the end of civil war. AlertNet's Tim Large talked to some about the challenges they face.

MUGANO, Burundi (AlertNet) - Truck after truck rumbles over the border at the dusty frontier town of Mugano, each crammed with Burundian refugees returning from Tanzania. Children lean out, some waving, some singing.

For the 464 people in this latest repatriation convoy organised by the United Nations, it's a bitter-sweet homecoming. Joy at leaving the crowded refugee camps in eastern Tanzania is tempered by trepidation over starting anew in their former communities - communities they fled to escape rape and massacre.

"I didn't want to come back until there had been a change of government," said Buchumi Cezarie, 30, a mother-of-four who fled ethnic violence in the northern Giteranyi region in 1996.

She was speaking at a U.N.-run transit camp in Mugano in Burundi's northeastern Muyinga province, after registering for an identity card that will guarantee her family a three-month "starter kit" containing food, pots and pans, plastic sheeting and other supplies to help them resettle.

"I hope we'll be able to grow something to eat," Cezarie said. "I don't know if my old house will still be there or not."

The legacy of Burundi's years of conflict is a country of people on the move.

The tiny central African nation has been torn by sporadic bloodshed between the politically dominant Tutsi minority and the Hutu majority virtually since independence in 1962. In 1993, it plunged into civil war that killed 300,000 people and displaced more than a million.

The United Nations estimates 430,000 Burundians are still in exile, mostly in Tanzania. But with the return of relative peace, many are keen to return.

Only one rebel group remains outside the peace process, and a smooth election in August of a Hutu president at the head of an ethnically mixed government has convinced many it's at long last safe to come home.

LAND CRUNCH

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates it will organise the voluntary repatriation of about 150,000 Burundians this year, mostly from Tanzania.

The challenges for returnees are enormous. They face the same problems as other Burundians, including grinding poverty, lack of clean water, malnutrition and disease. But many also come home to discover their land has been occupied by former neighbours or the government.

The land problem may be the most combustible issue facing the new government headed by former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza.

Association des Femmes Juristes (AFJ), a local NGO that provides legal advice to returnees, says about 65 percent of cases it handles in Muyinga involve land disputes. It documented almost 80 disagreements in September alone.

In other parts of the country, especially in areas where thousands of Hutus fled Tutsi massacres in 1972 and returned 30-odd years later, the figures are far higher.

AFJ mediator Jean-Pierre Havyarimana said it was up to the government to parcel out new land to returnees whose properties had been given to others by local authorities. In cases where neighbours had simply seen an opportunity and moved in, he said the law should be on the side of returnees.

"If the government doesn't deal with this soon, it could be explosive," he said. "Measures are not yet in place. As repatriation accelerates, they're going to have to get to grips with this problem."

FESTERING TENSIONS

In Burundi land is everything. The nation of 7.1 million is slightly smaller than the Netherlands and has one of the world's highest birth rates. Ninety percent of Burundians are farmers, subsisting on bananas, beans and rice.

"The conflict was over power, and power means access to resources, which are extremely limited in Burundi," said Catherine-Lune Grayson, UNHCR's Burundi spokeswoman.

Evidence of tension over resources was not hard to find on the outskirts of Muyinga town, where aid agencies like UNHCR and World Vision have been helping returnees build mud-brick houses with corrugated iron roofs. The structures are far more solid than the mud-daub huts with thatched roofs belonging to many Burundians.

Idi Bihagangwa, a 60-year-old returnee, was describing how he fled massacres in the region in 1996 when a neighbour appeared at the doorway of his UNHCR-funded house, shouting angrily and making cut-throat gestures with his finger across his neck.

"He's upset at me because he doesn't have a house," Bihagangwa said. "If you could give everyone a house, there'd be no jealousy."

Adama Besse, head of UNHCR's field operations in Muyinga, warned that without more help from the international community, the property issue could be the breaking of Burundi.

"If the land problem is not resolved, the whole process will collapse," she said. "The country doesn't have the resources to do what needs to be done... Burundi's fate depends on more aid. Everything will collapse - peace-building, development - the day the international community stops."

'FORGOTTEN CRISIS'

Burundi, the second-poorest country after Ethiopia according to the World Bank, was dependent on foreign aid before the civil war. Since then, its roads have been washed away by rains and its schools and hospitals have fallen into disrepair.

The World Food Programme says 2.75 million need food aid, but it only has enough for 1.8 million. A U.N. appeal for $121 million is only about 45 percent funded.

"It's not easy to raise funds for Burundi, partly because people don't know Burundi exists," UNHCR's Grayson said. "Burundi is a completely forgotten crisis."

Besse contrasted Burundi's situation with the level of international attention given to neighbouring Rwanda to the north after the slaughter of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.

"The difference between Burundi and Rwanda is that in Rwanda it took place at one time, from April to July '94," she said. "In Burundi, it took place from 1972 to 2000-something. So it was slow and long."

COMING BACK TO NOTHING

Many of the children returning from Tanzania are unaccompanied. Some are rejoining parents who had gone on ahead to prepare for resettling their families. But others are among Burundi's 623,000 war orphans.

"Children are especially vulnerable," said Onesphore Bangenza, a field co-ordinator with International Rescue Committee, a U.S.-based NGO that helps refugees.

"They can't work and don't have the means to pay for medical care. They can't pay for school. They may not have land or anywhere to live. Sometimes their families had sold the land and they come back to nothing."

Many adults find themselves in similar situations. At the Mugano transit camp, Ngomirakisa Leopold, 33, sat alone with the torn sack that held his sole possessions - a blanket, some clothes and a jerry can. As other refugees loaded up on buckets and sleeping mats, he told his story.

Leopold fled bloodshed in Kwichukiro village in northern Kayanza province with his mother in 1994. They re-settled in a village in Tanzania, where his mother remarried. He said his mother and step-father subsequently died, leaving him to fend for himself.

"Two days ago, the hill chief organised a meeting and told all Burundian people they had to leave by October 30 so they wouldn't vote in elections," he said. "I decided to leave the same day because I heard a Burundian had been murdered.

"I had a pair of trousers that I sold for 400 Tanzanian shillings to get some food. I left and walked for two days to the border where I met the U.N. convoy and asked to be taken on board."

Because Leopold was not formally repatriated, he is not eligible for the three-month starter kit, but Burundian authorities at the transit camp said they would take him to Kwichukiro.

"I'm going to try to find my grandfather in Kayanza," he said. "I don't know where he is but I think he's alive."

Photo captions, from second-to-top:

Sinzotuma Sifa, 20, stands with her two sons in front of her mud-brick house on the outskirts of Muyinga town. The house was built under a UNHCR-sponsored programme to help resettle Burundian refugees who have returned from Tanzania. REUTERS/Tim Large

Idi Bihagangwa sits with his children in his house on the outskirts of Muyinga town. The family fled ethnic violence in 1996 and returned from a refugee camp in Tanzania IN 2004. ALERTNET/Tim Large

Ngomirakisa Leopold, 33, sits in the Mugano transit camp for Burundian refugees returning from Tanzania. ALERTNET/Tim Large