22, August 2019
Can the Church help stop Cameroon’s slide into civil war? 0
Last week unidentified gunmen seized two Catholic priests in the village of Ibal in the restive Anglophone region of Cameroon. Church officials said they were “kidnapped late at night” and appealed to their abductors to release them unharmed. Local police claimed that the kidnappers were separatists seeking to break away from Francophone Cameroon and found an independent Anglophone state. But separatist leaders denied that they had taken the priests.
The abduction is just the latest in a series of troubling incidents involving churchmen in the West African country. In May 2017, the body of Bishop Jean-Marie Benoît Balla was discovered in the Sanaga River. The authorities ruled that it was suicide, but local Church officials insist he was murdered. In November 2018, a missionary priest from Kenya was shot dead outside a church in Kembong, in the Anglophone region. Reports suggested that he was killed in crossfire between the Cameroon army and separatists.
The recent surge in violence has undermined Cameroon’s reputation as one of Africa’s more stable nations. President Paul Biya has ruled the country since 1982. Last year the 86-year-old won a seventh term with a remarkable (some say suspicious) 71 per cent of the votes. But many Western observers blame his refusal to compromise for the worsening conflict in the Anglophone region.
The crisis is rooted in the country’s colonial history. During the First World War, Britain and France combined forces to take over German Kamerun. The Treaty of Versailles gave most of the territory to France. It awarded Britain two small regions next to Nigeria, known as Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons. In a 1961 referendum, Northern Cameroons opted to join Nigeria, while Southern Cameroons voted for union with Cameroon, with the assurance that it would have substantial autonomy, including its own prime minister. But in 1972, after another referendum, Cameroon adopted a new constitution which swept away the federal system, replacing it with a unitary state. Southern Cameroons lost its autonomous powers and was divided into two administrative areas, the Northwest Region and the Southwest Region.
President Biya has resisted all appeals to restore autonomy to the Anglophone region. Separatists, in turn, have become ever more vociferous. In September 2017, they declared independence, renaming the Anglophone territories Amazonia and clashing with government forces.
The Catholic Church has a unique role to play amid this conflict, which verges on civil war. The Church is one of the few institutions that truly integrates both French- and English-speakers. Catholics account for 38 per cent of Cameroon’s 20.4 million inhabitants, with Protestants comprising 26 per cent and Muslims 21 per cent, according to the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report.
The Church has called consistently for negotiations between the government and separatists. It has suggested that some decentralisation of powers could help to end the unrest. It has also denounced the violence in the Anglophone region. For that, it has paid a price.
In May 2018, shots were fired at the residence of Archbishop Samuel Kleda, president of Cameroon’s bishops’ conference. A local news agency described the incident as an “attempted assassination”. A month earlier, Archbishop Kleda had given a television interview in which he called on the government to make concessions and for both sides to stop the killing. “Since we’re all in the same country and all brothers, our message is to stop the violence immediately at all costs, without vengeance, and accept others who don’t think like us,” he said.
But the fear is that the separatists and the government have moved beyond the point where they can “accept others who don’t think like us” and are engaged in a fight to the death. If this is so, there is little the local Church can do. It will not be able to ensure the safety of clergy in the blood-soaked Anglophone region.
Perhaps it is therefore time for the Vatican to intervene. Biya evidently has a certain respect for the Church. His father was a catechist who hoped his son would become a priest. It was not to be: Biya attended a minor seminary but ultimately left Cameroon to study law in Paris. In 2013, his government signed an agreement with the Holy See outlining the Church’s legal status. If Pope Francis were to invite Biya to Rome perhaps he might be able to persuade him to budge. It seems that no one else can.
Source: Catholic Herald
23, August 2019
Cameroon’s civil war will continue 0
Since January last year, the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon have slid into a conflict that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. The Anglophone northwest and southwest have suffered the havoc of a war of secession that has displaced at least half a million people, leaving 1.3-million in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The conflict is largely based on historical grievances stemming from the fact that the Anglophone minority has been systematically marginalised since the abolishment of the federal system of government in 1972. Although periods, including in the 1990s and 2008, saw increased activism for Anglophone secession, the movements never became violent.
But this changed last year after the violent government crackdown on teachers, lawyers and civilians advocating for legal recognition for the English language.
In the 20 months since then, the government and the Anglophone secessionist have become entrenched in their positions.
The secessionists, which are mainly led by people now based in the United States and Europe, have rejected calls for “dialogue” and insisted on only entering into direct negotiations for independence. The government insists that the secessionists are terrorists and has denied that its military has committed atrocities such as targeted killings and burning down villages. Furthermore, the two sides have become embroiled in infighting that has made even the potential of conflict resolution immensely difficult.
The secessionists have divided into two groups. One is led by Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, who is imprisoned in Yaoundé and was convicted this week on terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison, and the other US-based Samuel Ikome Sako. The same can be said of the government with some Cabinet members more in-line with the hardline stance taken by President Paul Biya and others supporting the conciliatory tone expressed by Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute.
Amid all of this, the people residing in the two Anglophone regions continue to suffer at an unimaginable rate at the hands of both sides. Targeted and random killings of combatants and civilians alike at the hands of the government is commonplace. Instances of such have seen stray bullets taking the lives of women and children.
Further, the government has killed young men fearing that they may be secessionists. Similarly, the secessionist forces, who are called the Amba Boys, have prevented children from attending school in both Anglophone areas for nearly three years.
They also regularly kidnap civilians, including employees of humanitarian organisations. Further, they have been accused of barbaric actions such as decapitations, rape and drinking people’s blood.
In the past six months the international community has begun to pay more attention to the crisis that continues to deteriorate in what used to be one of Central Africa’s most stable countries. The US has cut some military assistance to the country and, during its presidency of the United Nations Security Council this past May, also co-organised a Security Council arria-formula (briefing) meeting on the country.
Canada and the European Union have expressed frustration and outrage at the situation. Even the government of Switzerland used its good offices to arrange dialogue sessions through a Geneva-based nongovernmental organisation that has yet to produce any tangible outcomes.
If anything, it has been a step back. It continues to deteriorate because of a variable that is relatively straightforward but near impossible to address, which is that the two sides are not willing to compromise on their hardline stances and have no motive to do so.
The leadership of the Anglophone secessionists is not directly suffering from the continuous war to the extent they would be if they lived in the midst of it. The government realises that it is much more sophisticated militarily than the secessionists and live in the relative stability of the capital Yaoundé. Further, the two sides are hinged upon several notions that must be dismissed if the conflict is to be resolved.
The secessionists have been firm in their position for months that they will only settle for independence, what they often refer to as restoration. This is because a key notion of their argument is based on an element of historical revisionism.
Specifically, they argue that the UN resolution that organised the post-colonial plebiscite in Cameroon in 1961 gave what was then British Southern Cameroons independence. Hence they strongly believe that history and international law are on their side in their bid for an independent state called Ambazonia.
The infighting between and within the independence movement has led to chaos and, at times, incompetence. Yet, all factions agree on one thing: they will only settle for independence and the conflict will continue until it is obtained.
The government has not been any better than the secessionists in its actions. It continuously denies the severity of the crisis regarding displacement figures and the number of fatalities. Additionally, it refuses to accept that the current crisis has its more recent origins in the beatings, intimidation, arrests and killing of Anglophone teachers and lawyers in the latter half of 2016. The independence movement became violent only after the military killed pro-secession demonstrators in 2017. Even after the breakout of violent conflict in 2018, the government denies proven human rights atrocities, and says the crisis is solely the result of “Ambazonian terrorism”. In doing so, it ignores the root causes of the crisis, for which the government bears responsibility.
It appears that the situation in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon will continue to deteriorate at the expense of civilians. Despite substantial international efforts, the conflict has yet to be resolved, largely because of the stubborn and zero-sum mentality that has been taken by the two sides.
Unless the secessionists and the government are able to change how they approach the conflict, any chance of it being resolved soon is wishful thinking.
Source: Mail&Guardian