29, May 2018
Southern Cameroons “hell on earth” has killed more than 2000, but the fighting won’t end soon 0
Again, again and again unfortunate Southern Cameroons civilians are trapped in the hell on earth that the Ambazonia liberation war has become. A latest report puts civilian deaths at 1600 and thousands wounded under the heavy assault launched by President Biya’s Rapid Intervention Battalion Forces.
Recently it was the turn of residents of Menka in the Santa Sub constituency some few km west of Bamenda the capital of the Northern Zone. From every indication, conditions in Southern Cameroons are getting worse, and there is no end to the Ambazonia conflict.
The end to any violent conflict comes when either the warring sides realise the devastation they cause and make peace; outside intervention sways the warring parties to end the conflict; or there are clear winners delivering a crushing defeat to their enemies.
The 85 year old French Cameroon dictator does not seem to care about the devastation of the two-year war. Almost 97 rural communities in Southern Cameroons is rubble — more than 1600 Ambazonians have died, there are 40,000 Ambazonian refugees in Nigeria and some 160,000 internally displaced. Unfortunately, the dialogue option seems highly unlikely with Biya still in power. There has not been any international intervention through peace initiatives and France’s unconditional and active support of the Biya regime is hampering any attempt at negotiating a truce.
Since the conflict began, many Southern Cameroons resistance groups have sporadically emerged. Although most of them later merged into the larger entity-the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, there are still some small groups. Their inclusion in the Interim Government has been problematic causing the West to think that it is unclear who actually represents Southern Cameroons.
All along, Mr Biya’s regime has been claiming it is fighting separatists and terrorists groups in Southern Cameroons. French President Emmanuel Macron is pushing Mr Biya and Nigeria’s Buhari to wipe out these groups, spurred by the deep fear they could mobilise radical Biafra groups within Nigeria’s borders.
The European Union doesn’t want Mr Biya, but they love his argument of protecting a one and indivisible Cameroon. So, the lack of an international intervention and the impossibility of Biya sitting down to negotiate with the Interim Government, leaves only the option of fighting it out until clear victors emerge. This leaves the Biya regime with a free run to assert itself by killing as many Southern Cameroonians as possible.
This is the strategic line the Biya regime has drawn thick on the ground and it explains why Biya and his political gang have ignored calls for a ceasefire. Biya and the French government had hope for a quick and absolute victory, even if it is a bloodbath. But the pattern of the war will eventually see the collapse of the Cameroon army.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
31, May 2018
French Cameroun tyrant nears day of reckoning 0
The French Cameroun despot sent army soldiers to burn down villages and towns in Southern Cameroons and to kill hundreds of Ambazonian civilians as his hated regime looked increasingly likely to fall. Biya is resorting to sorties by his still ill-equipped ground forces to resist what appears to be the final gambit of a senseless war he orchestrated against the people of Southern Cameroons.
After two years of fighting to crush the Southern Cameroons resistance and a death toll of nearly 2000, a combination of political errors, international isolation from the Trump administration and a well-organized Ambazonia Self-Defense Council Restoration Force, we of the Cameroon Concord News Group can now say Biya’s days look numbered. Only reticence in France about the prospect of an Anglophone taking over in Yaoundé appears to be holding back a CIA-French intervention as witnessed in places such as Libya and Zaire.
The genocide currently going on in Southern Cameroons has enabled the opponents of the Biya regime in Yaoundé to secure US support for regime change. Earlier last week, it was rumored that the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has recorded a major diplomatic breakthrough deep within the US Congress for the restoration of the state of Ambazonia.
There are fears in some capitals within the Sub Saharan and CEMAC region that without a regime change in Yaoundé thousands more will die. Yet the Biya Francophone Minister of Communication and so-called Cameroon government spokesman, Issa Tchiroma Bakary continues to blame the killings and sufferings of Southern Cameroonians on the Interim Government and the Southern Cameroons Diaspora.
Signs of a stranglehold being tightened on the Biya regime could be seen recently with the US ambassador Peter Barlerin stating that the two US warplanes handed over to the Francophone dominated army should be used only to counter Boko Haram insurgency.
A number of Nigerians have been killed on Southern Cameroons soil since the revolution started and Abuja is slowly but surely moving away from Biya, but Nigerian ailing President Buhari maintains the strategy is not a step towards intervention in Cameroon’s domestic affairs. Cameroon government forces have continued to kill innocent Southern Cameroonian citizens in both the Northern and Southern Zones. The army also fired bullets at several villagers in nearby Bamenda suburb of Santa.
As well as the growing Southern Cameroons challenge, Biya faces an alliance of young Western-backed militants of his ruling CPDM crime syndicate who have openly stated that he should step aside.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai