Last week the Tanzania government made a surprise U-turn on its stance on the Burundi crisis when it finally supported the stationing of a 5,000-strong Africa Union peace-keeping force in the tiny central African country.

It was a surprise development because in December 2015, the Tanzania government had opposed the stationing of the African Union peace-keeping force in the country, arguing instead for the revival of dialogue between warring factions in the troubled country.

And now one rejoiced over the Tanzania government’s decision move that Bujumbura authority who had said they could consider such peace-keepers as nothing more than an invasion force.

And the implication of such a statement was not difficult to discern; it meant the Burundi army would take on the peace-keepers!

It’s also important to note that Tanzania’s call for dialogue rather than stationing of the AU peace-keeping force was the first diplomatic act of the fifth phase government of President Dr John Pombe Magufuli.

Immediately Tanzania made it known to the world of its support for dialogue, rather than AU troops, I opposed Tanzania’s stance in an article published in The Guardian on Sunday in mid December.

My argument was that given the seriousness of the present Burundi conflict, there was a need for pressure to be brought in to bear on Bujumbura if the authorities in that country were to be forced to the negotiating table.

The seriousness of the Burundi conflict is reflected in the number of people already killed and those who have fled to the neighbouring countries of Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Starting with the number of Burundians who have fled their country, close to 300,000 are reported to be living in squalid conditions in refugee camps in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC.

While Bujumbura admits the deaths of 400 people, most alleged to have been killed in extra-judicial killings, local and diplomatic sources in Nairobi talk about the killing of 1,000 people.

And if one takes into consideration the account of local sources on the number of between 10 and 20 bodies picked in the streets of Bujumbura everyday, then if the least number of 10 bodies collected every day is multiplied by nine months; that’s since the start of the conflict in April to December 2015, that would bring the total number of deaths to 900, which is close to that which has been pointed out by diplomatic sources.

Therefore, the closeness of the two figures mean that, contrary to the figure bundled around by Bujumbura and those who would like to reduce the seriousness of what is going on in Burundi, the Burundi conflict is actually more serious that what the world is being told.

One is forced to raise the foregoing question because Kenyan leaders were snapped up by the Hague-based International Criminal Court after the deaths of 1,300 Kenyans in the 2007/08 post-election violence.

And the fact that the number of those killed in the post-election violence in Kenya is close to those killed in the Burundi conflict in the last nine months, why is the ICC still silent over the Burundi killings?

Conversely, how many more people should be allowed to die in Burundi before the ICC takes action?

While we leave those who have the interest of Burundi’s peace at heart to pursue further how to bring to an end continued killings in the central African country, it’s still not yet known what forced the Tanzania government to make such a U-turn on its earlier stance on the Burundi conflict.

Barely three weeks after Tanzania had briefed the world about its effort to kick-start peace talks with all parties to the Burundi conflict, Bujumbura failed to send its delegation to Arusha.

However, instead of censuring Bujumbura on the incident, to the surprise of almost every keen observer of the Burundi conflict, Dar es Salaam defended Burundi over the incident!

However, it would be instructive to recall that during one of the first resuscitated peace meetings in Kampala, Uganda, Bujumbura refused to send its delegation to the Ugandan capital allegedly because some of the delegates were involved in the abortive coup on May 13, 2015.

Again, if people were surprised by Bujumbura’s queer conduct, political analysts were not because that was Bujumbura in its element.

And that explains why the African Union had from earlier on stressed the need to station its 5,000 peace-keeping force in Burundi as talks between warring factions continued.

The AU made the suggestion because it was strongly convinced that that was the only way of ensuring that killings in Burundi were brought to a halt.

The AU’s suggestion (which was also strongly supported by the United Nations to the point of setting an ultimatum on when Bujumbura was supposed to accept the condition) was made after it became apparent that President Pierre Nkurunziza’s administration had failed to protect civilian lives in the country.

Interestingly, immediately after Bujumbura had failed to send its delegation for peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania started to support the idea of sending a peace-keeping force in Burundi.

Incidentally, it was after the foregoing incident that a number of African countries outside the East African Community started to censure EAC leaders for their failure to tame Bujumbura on the growing political crisis in the central African state.

The Tanzanian government on its part did not only make a U-turn of the AU peace-keeping force, but offered 5,000 troops  instead of the AU force, a suggestion that appear to have been rejected.

For, talking to the IRN later, the Uganda Minister for Defence, Chrispus Kiyonga, was quoted as saying that the AU had suggested the need to send a Pan-Africanist peace-keeping force, which implied that the AU was opposed to troops being dispatched to Burundi by one country.

Therefore, with the huddle that had initially been placed by Tanzania over the stationing of the AU peace-keepers in Burundi now over, Dar es Salaam’s role in the Burundi peace process has now been relegated to the back seat.