Burundi

Burundi faces a roughly even-to-somewhat-lower-than-even chance of direct involvement in significant armed conflict within three years, driven mainly by eastern DRC spillover and Burundi’s own troop deployments, but constrained by limited capacity and strong incentives to avoid interstate escalation.

Most likely: continued low-level insecurity concentrated near the DRC border and around refugee management, with periodic incidents but no sustained nationwide fighting. Key near-term risks are a serious border clash, a high-casualty attack attributed to cross-border armed groups, or a sharp deterioration in camp conditions that triggers wider unrest. De-escalatory diplomacy with Rwanda remains a critical buffer.

Over five years, risk tracks the trajectory of the eastern DRC conflict and Burundi-Rwanda proxy dynamics. If DRC fighting persists and Burundi maintains deployments, the chance of a larger cross-border episode rises. If regional mediation reduces M23-related escalation and Burundi improves economic governance and service delivery, conflict risk declines toward a chronic-low but nonzero baseline driven by repression, militia coercion, and localized armed-group activity.

Risk definition and base rate “Significant armed conflict” here means sustained, organized violence involving state forces (interstate or internal) at a level beyond episodic border incidents or localized riots. Burundi’s base rate is moderated by strong regime control since 2015–2020, but raised by its location in the Great Lakes conflict system.

Threat drivers The dominant external driver is the eastern DRC war. Large refugee inflows create humanitarian stress, disease risk, and local tensions, while also increasing the chance of armed infiltration and camp militarization. A second driver is Burundi’s reported military involvement alongside Congolese forces in South Kivu, which increases exposure to retaliation, miscalculation, and escalation dynamics. A third driver is tense Burundi-Rwanda relations and porous border terrain that enables armed group movement; even small incidents can spiral if framed as proxy warfare.

Internal political-security fragility Political space remains restricted and the ruling-party youth league is repeatedly alleged to be coercive and increasingly militarized. This raises the risk of localized violence around repression, forced contributions, or factional disputes. However, repression more often suppresses open rebellion than triggers it; the more plausible internal pathway to major conflict is a security-force fracture under stress (deployment grievances, economic hardship), not mass insurgent mobilization.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks Burundi’s material capacity for sustained interstate war is limited (small economy, constrained procurement and readiness). That limitation is a stabilizer: it incentivizes calibrated, deniable involvement rather than overt escalation. Regional and international monitoring, humanitarian coordination around refugees, and the government’s interest in donor re-engagement also discourage a deliberate widening of conflict.

Net assessment The three-year risk is best characterized as elevated but not high: the most credible trigger is cross-border escalation linked to DRC operations and Burundi-Rwanda tensions, with refugee pressures acting as an accelerant rather than a primary cause.