Nelson Mandela's efforts have brought some hope for Burundi, writes Declan Walsh, Africa Correspondent.
Archbishop Michael Courtney, who died in a hail of gunfire on Monday, was the latest victim of Burundi's civil war, one of Africa's most vile and intractable conflicts.
Fighting between government forces and rebels has spluttered along since 1993, propelled forward by ethnic rivalry, greed and powerlust. The victims are mostly civilians: over 300,000 at the last count. International visitors like Archbishop Courtney - who was Papal Nuncio to Burundi - have not been spared.
A Catholic bishop, senior UN officials and numerous aid workers have been gunned down in recent years. In most cases, their deaths remain unexplained.
Archbishop Courtney had his own close shave, only weeks after being appointed nuncio in November 2000. Rebels sprayed bullets into the Sabena airliner he was travelling in as it touched down. Nobody was killed but the Belgian airline immediately closed the route, compounding Burundi's international isolation.
Foreign figures like Archbishop Courtney stayed on despite the risks. But on Monday the bullets came too close. The Tipperary prelate died on the road leading south from Bujumbura, the picturesque capital poised between the shore of Lake Tanganyika and a line of green hills. The route is notoriously perilous.
Four years ago I drove part of it with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an American aid agency. The aid workers had never been attacked but our four-wheel drive was fitted with armoured plates. It was a "precautionary measure", they said.
A few weeks after I left, the CRS jeep was ambushed on the same stretch of road. They escaped alive thanks to a cool-headed driver, who slammed the jeep into reverse for several kilometres, and their bulletproof hide.
As papal nuncio, Archbishop Courtney played an influential role in a conflict wilfully ignored by the western world. Small and poor, Burundi has little strategic interest. Its politics seem hopelessly complicated, almost as difficult as pronouncing its surnames (one rebel leader was called Mr Ndayikengurukiye). And its war, like many others in Africa, has produced few dramatic images to seize outside imaginations. Sieges of urbanised areas - as in Bosnia - leave behind striking panoramas of devastation. A firefight in a banana grove leaves only the dead.
But this year Burundi's peace process has finally found a forward momentum.
With luck, the Irish prelate's death will mark one of the conflict's last tragedies. Three rebel groups have signed up to a power-sharing peace deal, sponsored by Africa's godfather of peace, Nelson Mandela. Only one group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), has rejected it. The FNL is accused of murdering Archbishop Courtney.
The fighting is rooted in tribe and identity but twisted by politics and money. Since independence the Tutsi, an ethnic minority unfairly privileged by Belgian colonists, have lorded over the army and government almost continuously. In contrast the Hutu, who make up 85 per cent of the population, have felt politically marginalised and poverty-stricken. Their grievances acquired a violent impetus in 1993, when six months after the election of the first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, Tutsi paratroopers assassinated him.
But power and greed have blurred the ethnic fault lines. For example, when the FNL rebels fire shells on Bujumbura, as they regularly do, the neighbourhoods most often hit are packed with Hutus, the people they purport to represent. And within the city, many Tutsis say they are tired of the excesses of the government and army, which has been accused of numerous human rights abuses.
Burundians have been failed by their own venal politicians and by the international community, which has turned a deaf ear to calls for intervention. Britain sent troops to Sierra Leone, the US helped in Liberia. Nobody in the west volunteered troops for Burundi. In the end, it was other African countries that came to the rescue.
Torturous negotiations in neighbouring Tanzania, led by the ever-patient Mr Mandela, have finally produced results. Last May the presidency passed from a Tutsi, Pierre Buyoya, to a Hutu, Domitien Ndayizeye, at the mid-point of a three-year transitional government. The process is underwritten by a force of about 3,000 African Union peacekeepers from South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia, whose task is to monitor the transition to democracy and protect politicians returning from exile.
The process received a major fillip this month when the largest rebel group, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), jumped onto the peace train.
FDD leader Pierre Nkurunziza, took up a position as Minister of Good Governance - no irony intended - and his troops have started integrating into the national army, where they will hold a generous 40 per cent of officer posts.
But the smaller FNL remains stubbornly in the cold. And although the smaller of the rebel groups, it retains a deadly stranglehold on Bujumbura. Its favoured fighting tactic is to shell from the hills, and its aim can be frighteningly good: recently a mortar exploded in President Ndayizeye's compound. Increased fighting has forced 60,000 people to flee their homes since September.
Vehement FNL denials it was responsible for Archbishop Courtney's death have been met with widespread scepticism. Certainly, it seems the prelate was worried about potential dangers. He donned apostolic clothing before making the journey, Bishop Bernard Bududira told a local radio station, saying "if they kill me the will not pretend that they did not recognise me".
His death will intensify regional and international pressure on the FNL to sign the peace agreement.
President Ndayizeye badly needs them on board too. His transitional government comes to an end next November. If the gunmen are still on the loose by then, the administration may collapse, and with it Burundi's hopes for a lasting peace.