On September 8, U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Ben Cardin, joined by an impressive bipartisan group of cosponsors, introduced a resolution calling for an end to the violence in Cameroon and for inclusive dialogue to address the underlying political tensions that are at the root of the conflict between the state and anglophone separatists. They are the latest in a large and diverse group of senior U.S. officials who have worked to highlight the crisis in Cameroon. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Tibor Nagy has engaged in direct and personal diplomacy aiming to influence the situation. Congresswoman Karen Bass, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, has been resolute in condemning abuses, and has worked on a bipartisan basis to clearly communicate U.S. concerns and support for peace talks to Biya’s government, including in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives last year. The Trump Administration removed Cameroon from the list of countries eligible for trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and has scaled back military assistance to the country.

But Cameroon is a case in which concern in Washington does not translate into effective influence. In Cameroon itself, little political progress has been made as various factions grapple for control of the talks and sometimes competing lines of effort stop and start.  Meanwhile, the people of Cameroon continue to suffer despite calls for a ceasefire in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

Just this week, the army launched a new campaign in Bamenda, ostensibly to bring law and order to the city. The BBC reported that the operation involved house-to-house searches, seizures of citizens’ property, and even indiscriminate shooting. Residents of the city largely stayed home, caught between the government and separatists who have called for citizens to stay home as a form of protest, in an all-too-familiar impossible situation. This summer the Norwegian Refugee Council named Cameroon the world’s most neglected displacement crisis, noting that half a million people have been forced from their homes.

It can be painful to reckon with the limited capacity of the United States, or of any external power, to bring seriousness of purpose to urgently needed political dialogue. But ultimately civil conflicts with political roots cannot be resolved without domestic will and leadership, and Cameroon’s ossified political class has thus far failed to muster either. But the efforts of U.S. officials still matter. Should those vital domestic ingredients emerge, the United States is well-positioned to support a process that prioritizes the urgent needs of civilians and gives all parties in a tremendously diverse country greater opportunity in the future.

Source: Council for Foreign Relations

The main opposition leader of Cameroon, Maurice Kamto, has called mobilizations on September 22 to call for the departure of the president, Paul Biya, a day after he approved December 6 as the date for the holding of the first regional elections in the country.

Kamto’s Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (CRM) has pointed out that the protests have been called at the national level, after the opposition warned against the call for elections without a ceasefire in the Anglophone majority regions, the scene of a conflict for several years.

Thus, the spokesman for Kamto, Olivier Bibou Nissack, stressed that September 22 will be the day of the « revolution in Cameroon ». « Paul Biya must go, » he added, as reported by the Cameroonian newspaper ‘Journal du Cameroun’.

The date chosen coincides with the one that, three years ago, marked the beginning of peaceful demonstrations in the two regions with an English-speaking majority to demand reforms in the face of what the population denounced as a situation of discrimination in the country.

Both the CRM and the Social Democratic Front (SDF), led by John Fru Ndi, had stressed that they will not go to the polls if there is no ceasefire declaration and Kamto himself threatened to call for mobilizations in the event that a date was set for the vote.

The aforementioned protests by the inhabitants of these regions, once British colonies but who decided to join French Cameroon due to its alleged marginalization by the central government, led to harsh repression as a result of the self-proclamation of the independence of Ambazonia on October 1, 2017.

Since then, armed groups have proliferated and support for separatists, until then quite marginal, has grown. The Government has responded with harsh repression, during which human rights organizations have accused the security forces of committing atrocities.

The conflict has already left some 3,000 dead. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are already 60,000 Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria, while another 679,000 have been displaced within the country.

Paul Biya on Monday announced the country first regional elections in December, including in two western regions in the grip of a revolt by the anglophone minority.

The indirect elections on December 6 in the country’s 10 regions will put in place councils provided for in a 1996 constitution in a move towards decentralisation but not yet implemented.

These councils will also be elected in the two western regions where a nearly three-year-old insurgency has claimed over 3,000 lives.  

The two restive anglophone regions are home to a large minority of English speakers in a country where French speakers are the overwhelming majority — a situation that is the legacy of the decolonisation of western Africa by France and Britain more than six decades ago.

Years of resentment at perceived discrimination against anglophones led to the declaration on October 1, 2017, of the self-described Republic of Ambazonia in the two regions, triggering a crackdown by the authorities.

Biya, 87, has been in power for nearly four decades and has promised these two regions a special status in a bid to quell the unrest.

The regions will elect 90 councillors, who will have limited powers on local issues. Twenty of them will be representatives of traditional chieftains.

John Fru Ndi, leader of a key opposition party, has said he will boycott the election unless there is  a ceasefire first in the English-speaking regions.

Source: AFP

The French Cameroun dictator who was given marching orders to leave Swiss territory in June 2019 after a massive protest by French Camerounians at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva has ever since been shuttling between Yaoundé and his native Mvomeka’a for the past 14 months.

To be sure, it is exactly 14 months since the French Cameroun chief executive left Europe and has never again embarked on his so-called “short private stay”.

On June 23, 2019, Paul Biya and his wife, Chantal Biya after spending nine months in the nation’s capital reportedly left the country to rest at the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland.  But on July 5, only ten days later, the National Chairman of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate and Mrs. Chantal Biya were forced to return to Yaoundé.

French Cameroonian activists in the diaspora, grouped under the Anti-Sardinard Brigade (BAS), disrupted the presidential couple’s stay in Geneva with several demonstrations, including the most important on 29th June  that witnessed attacks on Paul Biya’s close guards with a spilled over effect on a Swiss journalist who accused the Biya guards of having molested him. The guards were convicted and expelled from Swiss territory.  Since then, Mr. Biya has not been on holiday on European soil.

He however, made two trips in France on the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron. The first was in Lyon in October 2019 for the 6th Replenishment Conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the second was to attend the Paris Peace Summit in November.

Paul Biya now spends most of his time between the Etoudi Palace in Yaoundé and Mvomeka’a, his home village in the South of the country. This is a surprising attitude for a President who has always been presented as a “holidaymaker”.

A report by Organize Crime and Corruption Reporting (OCCRP), as part of the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, indicated in 2018 that the Cameroonian President, in 35 years of reign, had spent the equivalent of 90 billion CFA francs for “short private stays” outside Cameroon, mainly in Geneva.

The same survey indicated that the Cameroonian treasury was releasing, on a daily basis for the same reasons, about CFAF 20 million only in hotel expenses of the Head of State and his delegation, excluding meals and other extras.

By Besong Esther Agbor in Halmstad

A leading Southern Cameroons elite in the Federal Republic of Germany has urged all Ambazonian groups all over the world to do all in their power to resist the French Cameroun’s shameful occupation of Southern Cameroons homeland saying all groups must join forces with Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Interim Government to foil a systematic political assassination of the people of Ambazonia.

In a telephone conversation with Cameroon Concord News on Wednesday, Dr Emmanuel Ngassa said the actions of some Ambazonian figures is undermining efforts being made by Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Ambazonia Interim Government towards upholding the inalienable rights of the oppressed people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dr Emmanuel Ngassa said those wasting time in the politics of the struggle are instead encouraging the Biya French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé to carry out more atrocious activities and denying the people of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia  their rights, and destabilizing peace and security in the Ambazonia homeland.

Dr Ngassa also praised the fighters in Ground Zero for sticking to the British Southern Cameroons resistance culture and history, making sacrifices for the Ambazonian cause, and rejecting any compromise with French Cameroun surrogates such as Ministers Paul Atanga Nji, Paul Tasong, Paul Elung and Dion Ngute over the past four years of the French Cameroun imposed war.

The creation of many splinter groups, Dr Ngassa added, is a costly mistake on the part of some Southern Cameroonians as well as a divisive move that encourages the continuation of the crimes committed by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime.

Dr Emmanuel Ngassa noted that every Southern Cameroons group is expected to employ all its resources financial and human to put an end to this shameful treatment of the people of Southern Cameroons by the French Cameroun political system and its political elites.

By Isong Asu

This unfortunate and unpalatable drama in Cameroon has been going on for too long and the government’s response to acts of violence by restoration forces is predictable. Once a uniformed officer gets killed by armed fighters, Cameroonian soldiers go on a rampage, killing innocent civilians, burning homes and damaging businesses in the area. This is the government’s strategy to counter attacks by Southern Cameroonian fighters whose tactics and strategies have morphed over the years. 

Southern Cameroonian fighters started with hunting rifles, sometimes using machetes to decapitate soldiers and civilians they suspect of betraying the course. Today, they have acquired assault rifles and bombs that have made them real weapons of mass destruction for the country’s military. The country’s army soldiers dread encountering these fighters, especially in the dense equatorial forest in the country’s Southwest region where professionally trained Southern Cameroon fighters have resorted to hit and run tactics. 

The last few months have shown the world the atrocities the fighters and soldiers are capable of committing. In August, Southern Cameroonian fighters literally slaughtered Ms. Comfort Tumassang, a government a spy, in broad daylight in Muyuka, a small town some five miles from the Southwest regional headquarters of Buea. Her killing and that of the young man she worked with sent three of her friends packing from Muyuka, as Southern Cameroonian fighters had made them targets and they were willing to make good on their promise.

As a response to the her killing, the government dispatched troops to Muyuka on the same day and a few minutes after their arrival in the town, they arrested three young men whom they have been brandishing on national TV as the criminals who committed murder in broad day light. But the population knows that the government and its troops are in the business of lying and that anybody who takes their word seriously will end up with the wrong information. The government is noted for lying through its teeth and its word should never be taken seriously. 

More than three weeks after arresting those young men, the same troops are still looking for Ms. Tumassang’s killers. They have been burning homes in Muyuka, Ikata and Muyenge, sometimes robbing the population and ruining small businesses. Today, Ikata and Muyuka have been reduced to rubble and the population has simply moved to other places considered as safe havens. 

Yesterday, it was the turn of Bamenda. Some Southern Cameroonian fighters ambushed a police car, killing two police officers at the city’s commercial avenue. This sent the country’s military into a rampage. One civilian was killed, and many businesses were destroyed. A pattern that has become normal and predictable by the population. 

The government’s demonic and ineffective strategy to roll back the fighters is only turning out to be counterproductive. The strategy has been in effect since 2017 and the government cannot display any meaningful positive results. On the contrary, the international community has been criticizing its heavy-handed approach to solving the Southern Cameroons crisis which has resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 Cameroonians. As of today, more than two hundred Southern Cameroonian villages and  towns have been destroyed by government troops, creating hordes of refugees, with more than half a million Southern Cameroonians escaping to Nigeria and a similar number moving to East Cameroon where they are living rough and constantly being referred to as Internally Displaced Persons.   

For many, the hardship is unbearable and the hope of returning to their villages and towns is gradually fading away, especially as the government and the fighters are nowhere close to agreeing on even the slightest thing – talking. Both factions seem to be frozen in their positions. The fighters are determined to achieve their independence while the government, constituted of old and sick people, is still stuck in its old ways. It still holds that the tricks of the past will work again, but it is oblivious of the fact that times have changed, and the country’s English-speaking minority has significant support that may result in its toppling.

More than three million Southern Cameroonians live abroad, especially in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Nigeria and Australia and most of them are in support of an independent Southern Cameroons and are making significant financial contributions to the purchase and shipping of sophisticated weapons to the fighters, some of whom are mercenaries from neighboring Nigeria. 

Though the leaders of the insurgency are currently in jail in Yaounde, the fighting has not slowed down. Southern Cameroonian fighters have simply changed their modus operandi, and this is causing the arrogant Yaounde government to lose sleep and huge amounts of money. Resources that could have been used for development purposes are today being diverted to persecute a war that could have been avoided if the Yaounde government had opted to talk and negotiate. 

Its arrogance and love of brutality and violence which are its tools of choice of conflict resolution and management have today left the country in a difficult and complicated quandary. The country’s economy has taken a destabilizing blow to the liver with most state-owned corporations in the two English-speaking regions going under. PAMOL and CDC – the country’s second highest employer – have gone under and experts have already indicated that if those two corporations will ever be operational again, then the government must pour millions of dollars into their resurrection. Workers of those two corporations are today unemployed and the stress of losing a job and their inability to finance their children’s education are gradually sending many of them to an early grave. 

Many in the international community consider the government’s response to the calls for Southern Cameroons independence an act of stupidity. Many analysts argue that the government did not know that the times had changed and that new communication technologies had made it possible for Southern Cameroonians living out of the country to raise money and coordinate their actions with relative ease. Besides, with America, Canada and the United Kingdom standing firmly behind Southern Cameroonians, it will be impossible for the Yaounde government to win peace in the battlefield. 

If the military continues to kill civilians and destroy businesses in the two English-speaking regions of the country each time a soldier is killed by Southern Cameroonian fighters, it is clear that it has missed the point. The soldiers have not understood that each time they mount an incursion against the population, they are simply pushing the young men and women whose parents and relatives have been killed into the waiting arms of the fighters who are always ready to welcome them. 

If the government’s objective is to bring about peace in its two English-speaking regions, then it must know that it has missed its target. After four years since the conflict erupted, it must know that its strategy is totally wrong and counterproductive. More Cameroonians have been sent to an early grave and peace is still illusory. The country is in the grip of a civil war that will not be ending anytime soon. After four long years, the government should know that the battlefield will never deliver the results it wants. It must start thinking of new ways to deal with this ugly situation that has given the country a bad name and left the country’s economy on its knees. Talking will surely help. It is a pill that will be more effective than any “silver bullet” the government may buy. 

Though many lives have been lost, thousands displaced, and many businesses ruined, it is still possible to engineer a new political dispensation in Cameroon. War has never solved any problem.  It is always wise to talk. Talking with Southern Cameroonians is not difficult. Southern Cameroonian leaders are in jail and it will be a lot easier to bring them together for a peaceful resolution of the crisis that has left the government with a bloodshot eye. This will, however, require honesty, determination and sincerity on the part of a government that has thriven on tricks and dishonesty for more than three decades. The ball is in its court. It is up to it to choose the right conflict resolution tool. Violence, trickery and brutality will surely not deliver the right results. After four years, it is clear that a new approach is necessary. The world is watching! 

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Dusseldorf, Germany

Supporters of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo and former rebel leader Guillaume Soro on Monday filed their candidacies for a tense presidential election in October.

The candidacies of the exiled leaders add to those of incumbent President Alassane Ouattara and former president Henri Konan Bedie — while the top Catholic leader warned the country was approaching a dangerous point.

Both Gbagbo and Soro had been barred by the electoral commission from running due to convictions in the country’s courts.

“We have just submitted the candidacy file of our political leader, president Laurent Gbagbo, the father of democracy in Ivory Coast,” said Georges-Armand Ouegnin, president of the pro-Gbagbo coalition called Together for Democracy and Sovereignty (EDS).

Gbagbo, 75, was sentenced in absentia to a 20-year term last November over the looting of the local branch of the Central Bank of West African States during the post-election crisis.

He could be jailed if he were to set foot in Ivory Coast.

Ouegnin said the decision to block Gbagbo from running was political, calling for the release of all political prisoners and the return of political exiles, including Gbagbo.

But Independent Electoral Commission chief Ibrahime Coulibaly-Kuibiert has said that anyone convicted of a crime cannot contest.

The courts have previously backed the body’s position, and judicial sources said they believed his candidacy was unlikely to be validated.

Soro camp cries foul

The country remains scarred by a conflict that erupted after the 2010 vote when Gbagbo refused to hand over power to the victor, current President Alassane Ouattara. Around 3,000 people lost their lives in several months of violence.

Gbagbo currently lives in the Belgian capital Brussels after being tried by the International Criminal Court. He was freed conditionally by the ICC after he was cleared in 2019 of crimes against humanity, a ruling prosecutors are appealing.

He has not made any public statement about whether he wishes to run again.

Meanwhile, relatives and supporters of Soro, a rebel leader who became prime minister, called for his candidacy to be validated.

Soro’s spokeswoman Aminata Kone-Zie accused the government of subterfuge “to make our president (Soro) ineligible under an alleged criminal conviction”.

Soro, 48, has been forced into exile in France in the face of a long list of legal problems at home.

He was sentenced in April to 20 years in prison for “concealment of embezzlement of public funds”.

A former ally of Ouattara, Soro was a leader in a 2002 revolt against Gbagbo that sliced the former French colony into the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south and triggered years of unrest.

‘Radicalisation of positions’

President Ouattara, 75, and former president Bedie, 86, submitted their candidacy papers last week.

Violence erupted after Ouattara’s announcement he was seeking a third term, claiming the lives of at least eight people in August.

Although the constitution limits presidents to two terms, Ouattara and his supporters argue that a 2016 constitutional tweak reset the clock.

On Monday, the head of the country’s Catholic Church, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Kutwa, warned the country is approaching a “dangerous turn.”

He said Ouattara’s candidacy “is not necesssary”, adding his duty as guarantor of the constitution is “to take the time to organise elections in an environment pacified by reconciliation.”

“As the presidential elections approach, we are witnessing a radicalisation of positions from one side or the other,” he warned.

“These have become even more pronounced since the declaration of the president’s candidacy.”

The cardinal called on all sides to move towards dialogue.

The October 31 election in the world’s top cocoa grower comes after years of political turbulence and civil war.

Source: AFP

One might suppose the coronavirus pandemic has given African leaders an opportunity to rethink their approach to governance. This particularly holds true for Cameroon, which appears to have suffered the brunt of the virus in Central Africa, registering close to half of all 1 025 fatalities in Central Africa as of Monday. By this same date, the country had 18 762 confirmed cases, surpassing its neighbours Chad, Congo, the Central African Republic and Gabon combined.

But with the coronavirus, the more things seem to have changed, the more they seem to have remained the same. Despite the free lessons offered by the pandemic, Cameroonian officials appear not to have learned to build on public trust to better prepare for future crises like the climate crisis, which is slowly grinding, but devastating in its effects.

For any response to a crisis of the magnitude and complexity of the coronavirus to succeed, it will largely depend on the contribution and collaboration of the masses. President Paul Biya, 87, presumably understands this, which is why, when he managed to address his compatriots on the coronavirus for the first time on May 19, he called on them to remain united, supportive and disciplined.

“I, therefore, call on Cameroonians to have trust in public authorities,” Biya said. But Biya himself has not earned the trust he is requiring of citizens; because of that, the country’s citizens have not made “a lot of effort” to fight Covid-19, as he implored them to.

As part of measures to contain the coronavirus in Cameroon, the government made the wearing of face masks in public mandatory; limited gatherings to 50 people; and closed all land, air and sea borders. But the president has, on several occasions, appeared in public without a mask. Other public authorities, such as MPs, have flouted the restriction on gatherings, and the country’s airspace was opened to Air France to run commercial passenger flights from France — a high-risk country at the time.

Such behaviour by public authorities during a pandemic nips public trust in the bud. It means people are less likely to trust the same public officials asking them to make sacrifices by giving up certain rights and privileges for the sake of the nation.

It is, therefore, not surprising to see Cameroonians ignoring the preventive measures put in place by public authorities. Many citizens have become carefree. They no longer put on face masks in public, nor observe the hygiene and physical distancing measures set out by the government. The outcome is that the contagion keeps rising and there are no indications when the curve will flatten.  Manaouda Malachie, the minister of public health, recently warned of a second wave of the coronavirus in the country if strong action is not taken.

In future, this lack of public trust is going to frustrate responses to potential crises, should the tide not be reversed. People who mistrust their leaders in ordinary times can’t trust them one bit in extraordinary times.

In addition, the government has not been proactive in shining a light on the management of resources contributed by the public to help fight the coronavirus, putting its transparency in handling the pandemic in question.

In July, some citizens took to social media to question the whereabouts of about 4 000 bags of rice that had been donated in March by Orca, a home goods retail store. It was only then that the minister of public health communicated information about the donation. Yet the minister only shifted the burden of clarification from himself to the 10 regional governors: he said the bags of rice had been dispatched to the regions for further distribution. How or whether the bags of rice got to the intended beneficiaries is still unclear.

The health minister also offered an explanation of how about  21-billion CFA francs ($38-million) of funds designated for the Covid-19 response had been spent only a few days after an opposition MP raised an alarm over suspicions of corruption. Jean-Michel Nintcheu of the Social Democratic Front had expressed concerns that the money — contributed by the public through a national solidarity fund — had been subject to corruption, citing overbilling and conflicts of interests within the public health ministry and among its officials.

Cameroon has a longstanding problem of corruption. It has emerged as the world’s most-corrupt country on two occasions, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. Systematic corruption continues to be a problem. It would have, therefore, been surprising if the coronavirus didn’t come up against the all-pervasive corruption in the country.

The public health minister created a commission to investigate corruption in relation to the Covid-19 response, even though several anti-graft structures already exist in the country. But this doesn’t translate to a serious intent to fight corruption when a lack of transparency in the management of public funds leaves a perception of corruption in the minds of the people.

Giving room to citizens to perceive corruption in the response to a pandemic is exactly how not to handle a crisis. It will certainly affect future handling of crises. It is apparent that there is no one to compel these public officials to be transparent at all stages in their management of the current crisis — and their own consciences don’t appear to be sufficient.

Culled from mg.co.za

Rival factions of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate are clashing over every government initiative as end of Biya’s reign looms.

A recent U-turn on management of the Ebo forest is only the latest incident in unending clan warfare that is tearing Cameroon’s government apart, reports Africa Intelligence

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government Dabney Yerima has censured the recent meeting between French Cameroun Minister of Territorial of Administration Paul Atanga Nji and some Southern Cameroons traditional rulers describing the meeting as a treacherous stab in the back of the Ambazonian nation.

Cat calls greeted the said meeting with thousands of Southern Cameroonians around the world stating that all the Fons and Chiefs who took part in the forum be dethroned.

“They have betrayed their people and are all considered traitors to the people of Southern Cameroons and the revolution.  It is a treacherous stab in the back of the Ambazonian people” Vice President Yerima said in conversation with Cameroon Concord News Group Germany Bureau Chief late on Friday.

Vice President Dabney Yerima pointed out that some illusions pushed the Southern Cameroons traditional leaders to seek the meeting with the Biya French Cameroun regime.

The first illusion the Ambazonian exiled leader said is that the Fons and the Chiefs think the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is in a state of defeat, and they are viewing Biya and French Cameroun as victorious. “The reality however is that the Ambazonian nation has not been defeated and the Southern Cameroons people will not stopped their struggle until French Cameroun occupying forces leave their homeland”  Yerima noted.

Vice President Dabney Yerima revealed that the second illusion is that because of the poverty culture, some Southern Cameroons traditional rulers believe their political legitimacy is achieved through support from the Biya Francophone regime, the French Cameroun army, the French Cameroun National Gendarmerie rather than their own people’s backing.

Comrade Yerima concluded that the third illusion that prompted some Southern Cameroons native authorities to attend the Paul Atanga Nji meeting is that they believe that Biya and French Cameroun are seeking peace and coexistence with the people of Southern Cameroons, but the French Cameroun regime is in fact an occupying regime founded on brutality and violence and its only conflict resolution tool is the gun.

By Isong Asu in London