Cameroon

Herman J. Cohen is the former assistant secretary of state for African affairs (1989–1993), the former U.S. ambassador to the Gambia and Senegal (1977–80), and was a member of the U.S. Foreign Service for thirty-eight years. The violent conflict in Cameroon, still rarely discussed in Washington, is becoming increasingly dire. Both President Paul Biya’s Francophone regime in Yaounde and the Anglophone separatists in the southwest region are accused of brutal human rights abuses, including the burning of villages, attacks on schools, and the killing of men, women, and children. Despite mediation attempts by the Swiss government and sanctions by the Trump administration, there are no signs of any progress towards a negotiated settlement.  In 1991, I mediated an end to a different African conflict with some striking similarities: the Eritrean war of independence, which raged for nearly three decades. Lessons from that precedent offer clues to a potential endgame in Cameroon. Colonial-style takeovers Both Eritrea and Cameroon’s Anglophone regions were engaged in governing federations with more powerful nations, then lost autonomy when their counterpart took over after deciding the relationship no longer suited them. The Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea was inaugurated in 1952, with two separate governments having their own legislatures, internal controls, and flags, while sharing foreign policy, defense, and currency. Ten years later, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I unilaterally dissolved that arrangement and annexed Eritrea, sparking the long and bloody war.  In 1961, Cameroon’s Anglophone region voted in a UN-sponsored referendum to join Francophone Cameroon in a very similar federal arrangement. Eleven years later, then-President Ahmadou Ahidjo defied the UN to hold his own referendum on whether to effectively annex the Anglophone areas by unifying the two regions, while conveniently providing Ahidjo with expanded powers. Officially, the vote tally was 99.99 percent to dissolve the federation, with 98.2 percent turnout.   A crackdown by the Francophone authorities immediately ensued. Widespread discrimination against Anglophones was compounded by a takeover of the education and judicial systems to abolish the English language. Like the Eritreans subjected to sudden Ethiopian subjugation, this move to consolidate power understandably upset Cameroon’s minority Anglophone population.  What do these parallels tell us about the crisis in Cameroon? Paul Biya cannot expect to win through war Unlike in Eritrea, tensions grew slowly in Cameroon over decades, before boiling over into the open violent conflict of the last several years. But the twenty-nine-year length of the Eritrean war indicates that bloodshed is likely to persist as long as Anglophone Cameroonians feel their culture and autonomy is being stolen by the Yaounde regime (and as long as they have friendly neighbors on their side of the border.) Prolonging this conflict will not lead to a resolution. A mediated negotiation is the only realistic solution, and the United States can lead it The Ethiopia-Eritrea war ended rapidly after the U.S. became the official mediator. In Cameroon, the lack of progress in Swiss mediation does not simply mean the conflict is unsolvable for now. The responsibility to engage in serious negotiations must be made clear to both sides. They will feel comfortable in offering concessions to an influential mediator like the United States that they would not offer each other.  Despite the Trump administration's supposed neglect of Africa, it has in fact been heavily invested in conflict resolution there: currently it is working to end saber-rattling between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter's move to dam the Nile river. President Trump has appointed a highly capable U.S.-Africa diplomat, Tibor Nagy, to the assistant secretary position I once held. Ambassador Nagy is an excellent choice to oversee this process. There are additional incentives for President Trump to pursue peace in Cameroon. The administration’s efforts to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict are likely to be met with failure. By contrast, ending the Cameroon conflict, while difficult, is within this administration's grasp, and it would do far more to improve U.S. standing in Africa than John Bolton's aggressive anti-China, anti-Russia campaign there. The longer the conflict lasts, the less likely that Cameroon will remain a single nation Eritreans refused to accept any federation with Ethiopia after three decades of war. There was simply too much bitterness. Even after the independence accords, a two-year border war in 1998 killed hundreds of thousands; it did not officially end until Ethiopia’s new premier Abiy Ahmed made an unexpected, unilateral peace overture last year.  It may not be too late to return to the UN-approved federation between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon that existed prior to 1972. That arrangement would provide Anglophones with the autonomy they deserve. But time is running out. Genuine democracy is a requirement for post-conflict stability For decades, Ethiopia’s domestic politics relied on a coalition of ethnic parties, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which originally fought the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. Consternation over the dominance of one small ethnic group, the Tigrayans, eventually led to deadly protests and the ouster of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn last year. In November, Prime Minister Abiy moved to merge the EPRDF parties into a single unit, but this was met with protests by the Tigray constituency, and may ultimately lead to further destabilization just as ethnic tensions in the country are especially inflamed. The weakness of Cameroon’s democratic institutions is aggravated by the monopoly of Paul Biya’s ethnic group, the Beti, over political and economic power. Many of the non-Beti French speakers feel just as marginalized as Anglophones. Ethnic domination within a putative democracy is inherently unsustainable. And after thirty-seven years of autocratic rule and fraudulent elections under Biya, Cameroon’s problems may not end with any resolution of the Anglophone crisis.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from November 30 to December 6, 2019. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents are included in the Nigeria Security Tracker, featured below.   var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1575919288322'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='750px';vizElement.style.height='790px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);   December 1: Sectarian violence led to one death in Abeokuta North, Ogun. December 1: Two were killed in a clash between IPOB and the police in Ekwusigo, Anambra.  December 2: Two policemen and ten IPOB members were killed during the ongoing clash in Ekwusigo, Anambra. December 2: Gunmen abducted three students in Ogbia, Bayelsa.  December 2: Sectarian violence led to three deaths in Atakumosa West, Ogun.  December 3: Cult violence led to three deaths in Apapa, Lagos. December 3: Pirates kidnapped nineteen crew members in Bonny, Rivers. December 4: Bandits killed thirteen and kidnapped six in Rafi, Niger. December 4: Boko Haram kidnapped twenty-one in Mbreche, Cameroon.  December 4: Boko Haram kidnapped fourteen in Maiduguri, Borno.  December 5: Boko Haram killed four in northern Cameroon (location estimated). December 6: Gunmen abducted two Catholic priests in Ose, Ondo.   var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1528827552157'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='900px';vizElement.style.height='1027px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1528476877380'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='900px';vizElement.style.height='1027px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);   var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1550185218651'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='900px';vizElement.style.height='1127px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);  

An article on the origins of the names of African countries was recently published in Quartz. It includes a map of the continent in 1885, at the time of the Berlin Conference. Portuguese and Arabic traders and explorers are the origins of some names, European mispronunciation of tribal names are the origins of others. For example, Cameroon owes its name to a Portuguese traveler that came across a river full of shrimp, which he named Rio dos Camaroes, which means “river of shrimp.” Kenya has its origin in the British mispronunciation of the Kikuyu word for what would become known as Mount Kenya, “Kirinyaga,” which means “where God dwells.” Lagos, one of the largest cities in the world, means “lakes” in Portuguese, a reference to the islands in lagoon upon which it is built. And Nigeria was named by Flora Shaw—a Times of London journalist and later the wife of Nigeria's colonial Governor-General Lord Frederick Lugard—for the river Niger. How African countries received their names is intrinsically interesting, but that Europeans named so many is also a salutary reminder of the origins of these countries. The boundaries of current African states usually have their origins in the Scramble for Africa, when the major European powers divided up the continent among themselves. Precolonial Africa was not organized into the nation-states we see today, with fixed boundaries and a nominal national identity. Rather there were kingdoms and empires with rulers and subjects, and numerous smaller political entities.  These defined blocks of territory, many of which emerged from the Berlin Conference, became the independent nation-states of Africa today. But, for some African thinkers, the nation-state is not a political entity that fits African realities. Hence, some of them prefer to identify with their ethnic or religious groups or as pan-Africans, rather than the nationals of a particular state of European creation. 

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from June 8 to 14, 2019. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker.   var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1560776873920'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);   June 8: Bandits killed fifty in Rabah and Isa LGAs of Sokoto. June 9: Bandits killed seventy in Shiroro, Niger. Some reports indicate that the death toll may be cumulative over a few days following the Sunday attack. June 9: The Nigerian army reported that it killed nine Boko Haram social media personalities. No date or location were provided (estimated in Borno).  June 10: Nigerian soldiers killed one Boko Haram militant in Kukawa, Borno.  June 10: The Nigerian Air Force killed "several" (estimated at ten) Boko Haram militants in Gwoza, Borno.  June 11: During a Boko Haram attack in Darak, Cameroon, sixty-four Boko Haram militants, twenty-one soldiers, and sixteen civilians were killed.  June 11: Gunmen abducted four in Igabi, Kaduna. June 12: Herdsmen killed one in a highway attack in Irewole, Osun. June 12: Boko Haram killed twenty-one Nigerian soldiers in Mobbar, Borno.  June 13: Nigerian police killed one bandit in a gun duel in Kankara, Katsina. June 14: Bandits killed thirty-five in Shinkafi, Zamfara.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from April 13 to 19, 2019. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker.   var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1555946363426'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);   April 13: The Nigerian Air Force killed four bandits in Talata-Mafara, Zamfara. April 13: Nigerian and Cameroonian troops killed twenty-seven Boko Haram militants in Ngala, Borno. April 14: Herdsmen killed two in Bassa, Plateau. April 14: Soldiers killed "many" (estimated at ten) bandits in Zurmi, Zamfara. April 14: Gunmen killed seventeen in Akwanga, Nassarawa. April 15: Seven Chadian soldiers and sixty-three Boko Haram militants were killed during a clash in Kaiga Kindjiria, Chad. April 15: Kidnappers abducted five in Ijumu, Kogi.  April 15: Herdsmen killed two in Ikole, Ekiti.  April 15: Gunmen abducted eighteen in Lokoja, Kogi.  April 15: Herdsmen killed six in Anambra West, Anambra.  April 16: Nigerian troops killed three bandits in Gassol, Zamfara.  April 16: Troops repelled a Boko Haram attack, killing fifty-two militants; two Chadian soldiers were also killed in Kukawa, Borno.  April 17: A gunman killed one herdsman in Kaura, Kaduna.  April 17: Gunmen killed four in Demsa, Adamawa. April 18: Gunmen killed eleven in Numan, Adamawa. April 18: Nigerian troops killed seven bandits and lost one soldier in Aljumana and Ketere in Zamfara (LGA unknown).   April 18: Boko Haram killed eleven in Tchakamari, Cameroon.  April 18: Gunmen killed sixteen in Tsafe, Zamfara. April 11–18: The Islamic State claimed to have killed sixty-nine soldiers over the past week around Borno and in Tomer, Niger.  April 19: Sectarian violence resulted in twenty-two deaths in Wukari, Taraba.   

Cameroon is spiraling downward, with fighting between rebels in the Anglophone regions (the Northwest and Southwest regions) and President Paul Biya’s security forces intensifying. At a briefing before the UN Security Council (UNSC) on December 13, the U.S. deputy permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Jonathan Cohen, urged the Biya government and the Anglophone rebels to begin talks. In a separate speech before the UNSC, the British deputy representative to the UN, Ambassador Jonathan Allen, announced a $3.1 million contribution from his government to the UN’s appeal for humanitarian relief in the Anglophone regions, representing 20 percent of the total appeal. The director of UN humanitarian operations, Reena Ghelani, said that Cameroon is “one of the fastest growing displacement crises in Africa.” She noted that internally displaced Cameroonians, who number almost half a million, lack adequate food, shelter, and water, and that there are at least thirty thousand Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria. In addition to rebels, most of whom are separatists apparently seeking to establish an Anglophone republic called Ambazonia, Cameroon also faces murderous operations carried out by the radical, jihadist Boko Haram in its predominately Muslim north. Obviously, dialogue that might stop the killing in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions is devoutly to be hoped for. The rebels are splintered into many separate groups, some of which are mutually antagonistic in addition to being hostile to the government in Yaounde. Biya’s regime, notoriously repressive, has a record of many broken promises with respect to the Anglophone regions.  Biya, around eighty-five years of age, recently won deeply-flawed elections in October, but already there is speculation about how the country will transition when he can no longer serve as chief of state. Under all these circumstances it is hard to see how a dialogue between the Biya regime and the rebels can begin anytime soon. Similarly, Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria and in Cameroon shows little interest in dialogue with “secular” governments. In the short term, at least, the outlook for Cameroon is grim.  

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from November 24 to 30, 2018. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker.     var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1543849701287'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);   November 25: A cult clash resulted in the deaths of thirteen cultists and one civilian in Ushongo, Benue.  November 25: The Nigerian Air Force killed "some" (estimated at five) Boko Haram militants in Kaga, Borno.  November 26: Nigerian troops killed a would-be suicide bomber before she could detonate in Madagali, Adamawa. Boko Haram was suspected. November 26: Boko Haram killed four farmers in Maiduguri, Borno.  November 26: Gunmen killed three in Obio/Akpor, Rivers. November 27: Boko Haram killed three soldiers in Kukawa, Borno.  November 28: A suicide bomber killed herself but no others, and Cameroonian soldiers killed another would-be suicide bomber before she could detonate in Amchide, Cameroon. Boko Haram was suspected.  November 28: Nigerian soldiers repelled a Boko Haram attack and killed "many" (estimated at twenty) militants in Abadam, Borno.  November 29: Police killed 104 bandits in Zurmi, Zamfara.  November 30: Boko Haram killed one soldier in Abadam, Borno. 

President Paul Biya’s regime seems intent on establishing itself as one of Africa’s worst. The eighty-five-year-old president, with an estimated personal wealth of some $250 million (though nobody is really sure) is spending more and more time at a luxury hotel in Geneva. What had once been a federation between francophone and anglophone regions has become a centralized, if inefficient, despotism dominated by Biya and his cronies, enforced by his presidential guard and the security services. He has just been reelected to his seventh term in elections widely regarded as rigged and with low voter turnout.  Boko Haram remains active in the north, and the anglophone part of the country is approaching a full-blown insurrection, with an estimated four hundred killed so far. The security services have responded in a particularly brutal way in both areas. Non-governmental organizations credibly report atrocities on all sides. An American Baptist missionary was killed at the end of October, though the killer is not known. In the anglophone region, separatists are attacking workers at state-run industries, and are seeking to close schools in protest against the regime.  On November 4, two days before Biya’s inauguration, seventy-eight students, the principal, and two staff members were kidnapped from a Presbyterian school near Bamenda, in the Anglophone part of the country. On November 7, officials reported that the seventy-eight students were freed the day before, as was a staff member. As of November 8, the principal, a teacher, and perhaps more children, were still in captivity. A Presbyterian minister asserts that anglophone militants conducted the kidnapping, and individuals in a video supposedly showing the kidnapped children claimed that they were “Amba Boys,” a common reference to separatist forces. The video stated that the children would be held until the Biya regime accepts their demands for an independent, anglophone country that they call Ambazonia. However, it is not clear that the kidnappers were actually Ambazonian separatists, and at least one Ambazonian organization, the Ambazonia International Policy Commission, has denied any link. Apparently, the speaker in the video spoke Pidgin English poorly—spoken widely across anglophone Cameroon—and one of them was heard speaking French.  Perhaps attempting to placate the militants, at his inauguration, Biya promised greater autonomy for the anglophone region, and called on them to lay down their arms. His promises are likely to have little credibility. With Boko Haram in the north, an anglophone insurrection in the west, and a sclerotic and despotic regime in power in Yaounde, Cameroon’s outlook is grim.

The Africa Center for Strategic Studies has published a report, “Africa’s Unresolved Conflicts Key Driver of Food Insecurity.” The report includes a graphic with a map showing the overlap between food insecurity and conflict in Africa. The graphic would be an excellent teaching device. Among other things, the report shows that the majority of Africans experiencing high levels of food insecurity, 107 out of 143 million, live in countries experiencing or affected by conflict. Eleven out of the twelve countries in conflict are experiencing the highest level of food insecurity. A bar graph breaks down the number of people by the different levels of food insecurity they face and in what country. Nigeria, Sudan, and Cameroon, respectively, top the list. Based on the percentage of the population facing food insecurity, however, South Sudan is ranked first, followed by Cameroon and Burundi. In fact, almost 80 percent of South Sudan’s population faces some kind of food insecurity, and over 65 percent of Cameroon’s does. That there is a link between conflict in Africa, which is virtually all internal, and food insecurity is intuitively obvious. But the link is sometimes overlooked by commentators and policy makers. The Africa Center has done a service by showing explicitly the link in a user-friendly way.  The Africa Center for Strategic Studies is an institution that is part of the U.S. Department of Defense and is located at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. Its focus is on African security issues. It provides a forum for American and other military and civilian personnel to exchange ideas, research, and training. It also sends out a daily and highly useful survey of top media stories related to African security. It can be accessed here.  

As Cameroon-watchers await the official results of this month’s elections amid court challenges, the outcome is highly predictable—victories for the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) and for the long-serving incumbent president, eighty-five-year-old Paul Biya. But the country’s future is utterly uncertain. It is as though Cameroon’s story is diverging in two radically different directions: one in which past is prologue and citizens and external partners find comfort in familiar faces and continuity; and another in which security is elusive, disintegration persists, and Cameroon becomes unrecognizable to those who knew it before.  The October 7 elections were held against a backdrop of increasing instability as the state battles both Boko Haram in the north and Anglophone separatists in the west. Alarmed by reports of horrific extrajudicial killings, and by the displacement of roughly a quarter of a million people, some of Cameroon’s external partners, including the United States, are grappling with tough questions about the wisdom of ongoing security assistance and cooperation. In some areas, voters were too worried about their immediate security to go to the polls. Others have lost faith in the legitimacy of the exercise, and some of the government’s choices, like its embrace of international observers of dubious credibility, suggest there is indeed reason to doubt the integrity of the process.  Those who value a stable partner in Cameroon over the long run should be interested in supporting a third possibility beyond an unsustainable status quo and a descent into chaos—one in which reforms create a more inclusive society, generational change refreshes the ranks of leadership, those responsible for abuse are held accountable for their crimes, and the connective tissue between government and citizens is strengthened by far more than pro forma electoral exercises. Right now, this third path is far more fantasy than reality. It will take a recognition that these election results settle none of Cameroon’s outstanding questions, and strong internal and external support for real political dialogue, to create space for a better future.

Adam Valavanis is a volunteer intern in the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. On October 7, Cameroonians voted in the presidential election. Despite the opposition’s claim of victory prior to the release of official results, incumbent President Paul Biya is expected to prevail. One group that was underrepresented at the ballot box this year was Cameroon’s English-speaking minority, which has been ravaged over the past year by violence between government forces and Anglophone separatist groups, particularly in the country’s North West and South West regions. Fighting has killed approximately four hundred civilians and displaced some 246,000 people in the South West region alone as of August 2018.  In addition to those internally displaced, Anglophone Cameroon has seen an exodus of more than forty thousand people into neighboring Nigeria. But travel has grown more difficult during election season, with security forces and separatist groups blocking roads in and out of the North West and South West regions. For those that manage to make it into Nigeria, many stay with relatives living in border towns, but resources are scarce; some refugees have no access to clean drinking water, food, or sources of income. Furthermore, amidst the chaos of fleeing Cameroon, families have been separated and have little hope of ever being reunited.  Furthermore, over the past year, there have been reports of security forces and separatist groups razing villages across the two Anglophone regions. Such actions have threatened the prospect of future repatriation, increasing the burden of Nigerian border communities. Such a crisis comes on the back of increasingly strained relations between the two countries. Early in 2018, armed groups from Cameroon were reportedly using Nigeria as a launching pad for attacks against the Cameroonian government. Cameroonian officials went so far as to accuse Nigeria of sheltering separatist groups, though Nigeria vehemently denies such allegations. Tensions peaked after the Cameroonian military crossed into Nigeria while pursuing rebels without permission from the Nigerian government in December 2017. What started as a local protest movement is now challenging Cameroon’s relationship with Nigeria and could erode cooperation in the fight against Boko Haram.

President Paul Biya, the authoritarian leader of Cameroon, has kept in office for thirty-six years through rigged elections and repression of actual or potential opposition, including the country’s English-speaking regions. (Cameroon is primarily Francophone and has a long and close relationship with France.) His government is largely unaccountable to its people—though his power is likely checked by the security services—and he has amassed a personal fortune of $200 million.  Biya now faces two major security threats. In the southwest, where the Anglophone minority predominates, there is an insurrection in response to decades of repression and marginalization by Biya’s government. His security forces are responding with exceptional brutality, which has at times been matched by separatist rebels. The Far North Region of Cameroon, predominately Muslim, is also disaffected from Biya’s ostensibly Christian regime. Boko Haram is active there, especially after being driven from much of the territory they once held in Nigeria. Operatives of the Islamist militant group move easily throughout the Lake Chad Basin, crossing the artificial borders of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger, which were drawn by the British, French, and Germans. (Cameroon was the German colony of Kamerun; after World War I, it was then divided between Britain and France.) In the fight against Boko Haram in the north, Biya’s security forces are credibly accused of extensive human rights violations. Specifically, there are two horrific videos that have circulated on social media apparently showing Cameroonian forces executing civilians, one of two women and two small children, the other of twelve civilians. The Cameroonian government has since arrested seven Cameroonian soldiers and claims that an investigation is underway.  According to the Voice of America, the U.S. Department of Defense has three hundred personnel in Cameroon providing military training and teaching on human rights and the laws governing armed conflict. The United States also funds a program to train forty military legal advisers to promote human rights and accountability in the security services. A U.S. Department of Defense spokeswoman recently said that they are working with the Department of State to “ensure the government of Cameroon holds accountable any individuals found to be responsible” for human rights violations. Given the human rights track record of the Biya regime, it is unlikely that the Cameroonian investigation will actually result in significant change in the behavior of the security forces. The regime and the Cameroonian security services are actively involved in the struggle against Boko Haram. The Departments of Defense and State apparently judge that it is in the interests of the United States that Cameroonian involvement continue and be strengthened. So, while the Department of Defense has issued a statement calling on Cameroon to conduct a full investigation into the human rights violations captured on the videos, it has not taken steps to terminate its military relationship.  America’s dilemma is how to balance U.S. security interests with human rights concerns. This is an old song. After all, the United States partnered with Stalin’s Soviet Union against Nazi Germany during World War II. On the other hand, the increased use of videos and the rise of social media means that human rights abuses are harder to ignore now than then. They are more visceral and reach more people than the dry accounts of Stalin’s atrocities circulating at the time. And governments respond to aroused voters. General Thomas Waldhauser of the U.S. Africa Command has said, “We want to have a strong military relationship with Cameroon, but their actions will go a long way toward how that will play out in the future with regards to the transparency on some of these allegations.” It is to be hoped that the Departments of State and Defense are more forthright with their Cameroonian partners behind closed doors.

Nolan Quinn is the Africa program intern at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He is a master of public policy student at the University of Maryland, where he is studying international development policy and international security and economic policy. The anglophone crisis in southwestern Cameroon is getting worse, and outside observers are beginning to notice. According to Amnesty International, “alarm bells are ringing” in Congress over Cameroon, and on July 31, Karen Pierce, the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, tweeted that there is “lots of interest” in the crisis among UN representatives in New York. Such interest will likely result in greater foreign involvement. External actors should recognize the current crisis was not inevitable, but rather the result of decades of concerted efforts by the regime in Yaoundé to marginalize the anglophone regions. After allied forces captured “Kamerun” from Germany in World War I, the League of Nations divided the territory between the British and the French. Most of the territory became French Cameroun, while a strip bordering Nigeria became the British Cameroons. The British Cameroons, governed from—but not considered part of—Nigeria, were split into northern and southern administrative units. In 1960, francophone Cameroon and Nigeria became independent, prompting the UN to organize a plebiscite allowing anglophone Cameroonians to decide whether to integrate with Nigeria or Cameroon. Independence, the most favored outcome, was not an option. Northern Cameroons joined Nigeria, while Southern Cameroons opted for reunification with Cameroon. The constitution of the newly-established Federal Republic of Cameroon guaranteed respect for the cultural identity of the anglophone regions. But, in 1966, President Ahmadou Ahidjo banned all political parties other than the ruling Cameroonian National Union (the ban has since been lifted). In May 1972, a national referendum approved a new constitution that replaced the government’s federal structure with a unitary system. The referendum, which government records claim 99.9 percent of voters supported with 98.2 percent turnout, went against a 1961 agreement that “proposals for revision [of the constitution] shall be adopted by simple majority vote of the members of the Federal Assembly, provided that such majority includes a majority of the representatives…of each of the Federated States.” In 1984, President Paul Biya renamed the country the Republic of Cameroon—the name it held prior to reunification in 1961—and changed the national flag from a two-star design, which had signified the union of the anglophone and francophone regions, to that of a single star. Biya’s affront to the anglophone region proved the breaking point in relations with the central government. On March 20, 1985, Fon Gorji Dinka, an anglophone lawyer and the first president of the Cameroon Bar Association, denounced the government’s actions as unconstitutional and called for an independent anglophone entity known as the Republic of Ambazonia; Dinka was arrested and imprisoned for nearly a year without trial. Today, little has changed. Biya remains in power, the government represses the anglophone minority’s identity, and separatists long for an independent Ambazonia. However, after nearly a year of protests over the use of French in anglophone schools and courts, the “anglophone problem” erupted. In September 2017, the Ambazonia Defense Council declared war on the Cameroon government. Both sides have been accused of war crimes and refuse to talk to each other. Separatists do not trust the government after it violated previous agreements, while Biya said that his “government is open to dialogue only as far as the unity and diversity of our country are not questioned.” This seems particularly tone deaf given the Yaoundé regime’s history of undermining the country’s “unity and diversity.” The United States has a number of tools at its disposal to encourage talks, such as making aid conditional upon prosecution of human rights abusers, as the Senate report [PDF] on the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2019 suggests. But if and when talks begin, outside mediators and negotiators should place today’s crisis in the context of Yaoundé’s historical approach to the anglophone minority.

Cameroon is a country in crisis. Longstanding tensions between the center and periphery have morphed into brutal conflicts, with government forces confronting Boko Haram in the north and Anglophone separatists in the west. Over one hundred eighty thousand people have been displaced. The horrific evidence of extrajudicial killings by security forces that emerged in recent weeks has underscored the severity of the country’s troubles. But this fall’s election will likely produce more of the same.  Paul Biya, who has served as Cameroon’s president for thirty-six years, is the odds-on favorite to win yet another term of office in elections slated for this October. Typically a vote for an incumbent is a vote to stay the course. But do Cameroonians, over 60 percent of whom are under the age of twenty-five, believe that their country is headed in the right direction? By some indicators, Cameroon is faring well. Economic growth has generally been strong despite a slowdown in the past couple of years, and reported unemployment is admirably low, especially compared to neighboring states. But many still live in poverty, and the country ranks among the twenty-five worst in the world on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. The disconnect between narratives of stability and progress and those of desperation and disenfranchisement is profound. Unlike many long-serving leaders, Biya is not an omnipresent part of Cameroonians’ day-to-day realities. Criticized as an “absentee” president because of his frequent and long sojourns abroad, Biya operates at a figurative and often literal remove from his constituents. His cabinet rarely meets, and his stated reason for seeking yet another seven years in office is simply that the people’s “overwhelming calls” have demanded he do so. A bold new approach to address what ails the country seems unlikely to be forthcoming. Yet the country’s opposition is fractured and often feckless—some twenty-eight candidates have filed to contest the presidential election, and another twenty signed on to support Biya’s candidacy.  The very systems of democratic representation and accountability, of debate and coalition-building, that should be working to reconcile the country seem hopelessly broken. Perhaps it is no surprise that some are reaching for radical solutions like secession. Cameroon seems to be experiencing not just an absence of effective leadership, but a total failure of politics.   

Nolan Quinn is the Africa program intern at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He is a master of public policy student at the University of Maryland, where he is studying international development policy and international security and economic policy. On July 13, Cameroonian President Paul Biya officially announced he will run for reelection in October. Biya, at eighty-five years old, is seeking a seventh consecutive term that would extend his thirty-six-year rule to 2025. The octogenarian, who first assumed office in 1982, is already the oldest leader in sub-Saharan Africa and the second-longest serving president on the continent, behind only President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. The announcement comes on the back of certain allegations that the U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon, Peter Barlerin, attempted to influence the upcoming elections. According to the media, speaking to Biya last month, Barlerin advised the president to “be thinking about his legacy” when deciding whether to pursue reelection. Cameroonian Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary responded, saying that the Cameroonian people would not “accept any diktat from whatever power.” More recently, local newspapers accused Barlerin of contributing close to $5 million to opposition presidential candidates. While both the U.S. Embassy and the opposition have denied the accusations, Biya loyalists have nevertheless used the stories to help consolidate support for another term. Unless a united opposition emerges, Biya seems all but certain to win in October. Despite his relatively secure position, it seems Biya is taking no chances. The Journal du Cameroun reported that from January to June, 2018, only 3 percent of new voter registrations came from the Northwest and Southwest Regions, where around 20 percent of the population resides. Separatists from these mainly English-speaking regions—Cameroon is predominantly French-speaking—are fighting the government in a bid to establish an independent “Ambazonia” after decades of marginalization. Some accuse Biya and the electoral commission of disenfranchising citizens from the Anglophone regions under the guise of a crackdown on the “opaque use of financial resources and staffing.” Biya has also endorsed a bill passed by parliament delaying the next legislative elections by a year to October 2019, citing difficulties from “overlapping electoral operations.” Biya’s response to the Anglophone crisis could increase pressure on him to step down. In June, Amnesty International published a report on human rights violations by the Cameroon government against civilians in the Anglophone regions, and this week, Amnesty claimed it had “credible evidence” that a widely-circulated video showing Cameroonian forces summarily executing two women and two young children was authentic. Cameroon’s government has denounced such coverage as “crude lies” and “fake news.” Ironically, a video allegedly showing cannibalism in one of Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, which a Cameroonian government official referred to while comparing the separatists to Boko Haram, was later confirmed as fake, having come from a Nigerian movie set. Biya’s likely reelection will probably worsen the Anglophone crisis. The conflict’s parties have not participated in any meaningful dialogue and violence is escalating, causing many to flee into neighboring Nigeria. How this will affect U.S.-Cameroon relations, however, is unclear. According to a press release from the U.S. Department of State, the United States is “gravely concerned over the recent video,” but it has stopped short of blaming the government, instead calling for further investigation. Continued destabilization could warrant more robust U.S. involvement to contain spillover into Nigeria, itself dealing with major security issues in the lead-up to its own presidential elections.