Burundi National Defence Force
combined military forces of Burundi
The Burundi National Defence Force (French: Force de Défense Nationale du Burundi; FDNB; Kirundi: Urwego rw'ukwivuna abansi rw'Uburundi) is the military of Burundi. A general staff commands the armed forces, consisting of a joint staff; a training staff, and a logistics staff. Naval and aviation commands exist, as well as specialised units.
History
Independence and early history (1962–1993)
Under Belgian colonial rule, the mandatory status of Ruanda-Urundi established limits on the recruitment of Barundi for military service. Instead, Ruanda-Urundi was garrisoned by a small unit of the Force Publique recruited in the Belgian Congo which combined its military role with the role of gendarmerie. Its members were popularly known as Bamina in Burundi, after the large military base at Kamina in the Congo. Amid the Congo's independence, the Belgian colonial administration formed the Burundian National Guard (Garde Nationale Burundaise) in 1960. It consisted of 650 men, recruited equally from the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups (though the Tutsi mostly consisted of those from the Hima subgroup). When Burundi became independent in 1962 the force was renamed the Burundian National Army (Armée Nationale Burundaise) and assumed a purely military function. The gendarmarie function was allocated to a civilian authority called the National Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie nationale) after independence in 1962, though this became part of the army on 7 March 1967.
The public source identifies “Burundi National Defence Force” as combined military forces of Burundi. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Burundi, National and Defence.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q852225. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1962, 1993, 1960 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Burundi National Defence Force” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.