Understanding the Cameroon Anglophne Crisis

This analy­sis was part­ly com­piled using infor­ma­tion from Africa Agenda’s pre­sen­ta­tion “Under­stand­ing the Cri­sis in Cameroon” which was held at the Pos­ner Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2018. 

Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, Cameroon­ian jour­nal­ist Franklin Sone Bayen, through a con­fer­ence call from the region­al cap­i­tal of Buea, shared his pre-elec­tion expe­ri­ences with jour­nal­ists and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment peo­ple in Denver. 

In the dis­cus­sion which last­ed for almost an hour, Bayen com­ment­ed on the rel­a­tive press free­dom jour­nal­ists in Cameroon still enjoy, the spread­ing of “fake news” from insur­gents and gov­ern­ment sources, and the bur­geon­ing vio­lence with­in the Anglo­phone regions of the country.

The back­drop of this is the “near-civ­il war” sit­u­a­tion that Cameroon faces which prompt­ed the Africa Agen­da orga­ni­za­tion to con­tact him. After our call, I took some time to dig into the sit­u­a­tion more and the news it was creating.

In 1961, after the inde­pen­dence of Nige­ria and French Camer­oun, the UN Man­date of British Cameroons was offered one of two choic­es: to join Nige­ria or French Cameroun.

From that sim­plis­tic colo­nial deci­sion to ignore the wide­spread desire for full inde­pen­dence and dis­tinct cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty amongst Anglo­phone Cameroo­ni­ans, the roots of the cur­rent polit­i­cal cri­sis took hold.

While the north­ern part of British Cameroon opt­ed to join Nige­ria, the south­ern area vot­ed to join the new­ly chris­tened Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Cameroon.

Fast for­ward to 2017, and the latent inde­pen­dence move­ment explod­ed to life again after teach­ers, lawyers, and gov­ern­ment work­ers in the Anglo­phone North­west and South­west provinces began protest­ing what they saw as polit­i­cal mar­gin­al­iza­tion from the Fran­coph­o­ne major­i­ty, and espe­cial­ly Pres­i­dent Biya.

Dur­ing those protests, var­i­ous sep­a­ratist mili­tias formed and began a gueril­la con­flict that con­tin­ues to spread. Unex­pect­ed­ly, West­ern media cov­er­age of this cri­sis is sparse. In March, the UNHCR report­ed that over 20,000 Cameroo­ni­ans fled to Nige­ria. More up-to-date num­bers are dif­fi­cult to find, with Al Jazeera offer­ing the most reg­u­lar stories.

On Sep­tem­ber 18, Cable News Net­work (CNN), using Amnesty International’s infor­ma­tion, report­ed that around 400 Cameroo­ni­ans have died, as well as expand­ing kid­nap­ping and assault inci­dents from both secu­ri­ty forces and separatists.

Voice of Amer­i­ca (VOA) report­ed wide­spread school attacks the same day, with the sep­a­ratist groups warn­ing par­ents to keep their chil­dren from school “stat­ing they could not assure safe­ty” for the students.

Despite the swift­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion, the response from glob­al pow­ers has been almost nonex­is­tent aside from care­ful­ly word­ed statements.

The Euro­pean Union (EU) demurred to send observers to a strong­ly con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and dur­ing the Forum of Chi­na-African Coop­er­a­tion, Bei­jing (The Chi­nese admin­is­tra­tion) avoid­ed any com­ment regard­ing the actions of Pres­i­dent Biya.

In June, the Sub­com­mit­tee on Africa at the Unit­ed States Sen­ate received tes­ti­monies regard­ing the vio­lent hos­til­i­ties, but the offi­cial com­ment is still lim­it­ed to the U.S. Embassy in Yaoundé which has advised Amer­i­cans to avoid trav­el to the North­west and South­west provinces of Cameroon. All of this despite Cameroon divert­ing Amer­i­can trained and equipped counter-ter­ror­ism troops to anti-insur­gency actions.

That said, the Cameroon admin­is­tra­tion must ulti­mate­ly choose how it will move for­ward: Full-scale civ­il war, or dia­logue. Ignor­ing the slim chance of regime change in Cameroon, in the cur­rent author­i­tar­i­an sys­tem of gov­ern­ment head­ed by Pres­i­dent Paul Biya, the ball lies in his court to acknowl­edge the actu­al polit­i­cal repres­sion he has made part of his gov­er­nance, and accept the equal stand­ing of Anglo­phone Cameroon.

Biya’s alter­na­tive may be to indef­i­nite­ly con­tin­ue vio­lent mil­i­tary action against a gueril­la move­ment that is increas­ing­ly gain­ing pop­u­lar sup­port. Yet, even so, the Anglo­phone mili­tias may be exac­er­bat­ing the vio­lence with reprisals against accused “col­lab­o­ra­tors” and unarmed civilians.

The Cameroon polit­i­cal cri­sis is decades in the mak­ing, and should not be viewed sim­plis­ti­cal­ly. Even so, the African con­ti­nent should look to the exam­ple of Ethiopia and Eritrea, two pre­vi­ous­ly embit­tered ene­mies who have found a way to avoid con­flict through painful, yet nec­es­sary dialogue.