Burundi has the sad distinction of having experienced the first genocide recorded in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. In the summer and spring of 1972 between 100,000 and 200,000 people were taken to their graves in the wake of a Hutu-led insurrection. Though largely overshadowed in public attention by the far more devastating bloodbath in Rwanda—a total genocide—the ghastly carnage in Burundi undoubtedly qualifies as genocide, or at least a selective genocide. The key difference is that in Burundi the Hutu, not the Tutsi, were targeted for extermination. In both cases, however, the killings were intentional and deliberately targeted a specific ethnic community.

The past and present histories of Burundi and Rwanda are inseparable from each other. Both were archaic kingdoms and shared roughly the same ethnic map, consisting of Hutu agriculturalists (85% of the total population), Tutsi pastoralists representing the...