In 2015 and 2016 the Republic of Cameroon could not just jubilate on their Independence Day, which occurs on May 20, but had something to show. During celebration images of major development in infrastructure and socioeconomic development were displayed for the view of invitees.

However, since 2018, the desire for development has come to face challenges arising from violent clashes between separatist fighters and the national army in the North-West and South-West of the country, thereby killing people, burning towns and villages, and displacing tens of thousands of citizens.

In his deliberation in Monrovia on the celebration of National Day on May 21, 2019, one day later after the main day, May 20, Ambassador Beng’Yela Augustine Gang said, “In recent months, my country has been traversing stormy weather with some vibrations being felt under the stout national edifice.”

Amb. Gang, however, mustered the courage that for the very large majority of Cameroonians, the long-established reputation as a haven for peace in the sub-region will not easily pass into oblivion.

He said amid the national challenges, both their leadership and citizenry have always deployed immense passion and conviction in the task of consolidating mutual tolerance.

According to the ambassador, the Cameroonian populations, despite the tough moments in the country’s history, have continued to move with confidence into each other’s ethnic and linguistic zones to find temporary fraternal relief.

While confronted by national crisis that has the propensity to halt development, Amb. Gang said the government’s intention for development of the people of Cameroon remains on the agenda.

He said in the last two years the government has been actively engaged in peace and reconciliation initiatives characterized by the creation of an exclusive, special Common Law section at the National School of Administration and Magistracy that trains career judges and civil administrators and state financial managers.

He added that under a decree of December 13, 2018, there was suspension of prosecution followed by the release of almost 300 detainees arrested in connection with the Anglophone unrest; the creation of a National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and multiculturalism by Decree of January 23, 2017, the opening of an English-speaking Higher National Polytechnique in Bamenda as an undergraduate-level institution attached to the University of Bamenda that was itself opened in 2011 as the second purely English Language State University of Cameroon.

Other were the launch of the over 20 million dollar National Emergency Humanitarian Assistance Program for the North West and South West regions, and the creation by presidential decree of November 30, 2018 of a National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration.

The NCDDR holding centers, according to Amb. Gang, has started receiving “Repented” fighters, who are assured that the laying down of their arms would be tantamount to total pardon and rehabilitation.

“With the slight resurgence of Boko Haram incursions, especially in North East Nigeria, Cameroon has been under renewed pressure to host over 30,000 hew refugees with UNHCR support; and lastly, but without being exhaustive, recent repeated calls by President Paul Biya that we have now reached the time for urgent forgiveness, pardon and reconciliation,” Amb. Gang said.

He said recent visit to Bamenda, Buea, Kumba and Limbe by Prime Minister Dion NGUTE in this May at the request of President Biya confirms that the mood in favor of dialogue and reconciliation is stronger.

He assured that Cameroon will in all circumstances move steadily toward a developing nation with the hope of attaining socioeconomic emergence as a respectable middle income country by the year 2035 (Cameroon Vision 2035).

In line with its vision, Cameroon is said to have completed various hydro-electric power plants; the kribi deep sea port, a modern, indigenously-owned cocoa transformation plant in the West Region, and a new, modern state hospital.

The defense forces of Cameroon, the Ambassador noted, has continued to play key development roles—building modern roads in areas abandoned by foreign contractors scared away by Boko Haram threats.

In sports, Amb. Gang recounted that Cameroonian under 17 National Football team won the African Nations Cup in Tanzania in April 2018, while the senior Indomitable Lions qualified for the next African Nations Cup, and aim to give excellent account of themselves in Egypt this June.

A number of activities including sport encounters in Basketball with Liberia preceded the celebration on May 21, and with the cooperation of Liberians, Amb. Gang extolled the people and the police of Liberia for making the celebration a success.

For Liberia’s situation, Gang said Cameroonians truly feel what Liberians feel, and in its current moment of tension have lessons to learn from Liberia’s past.

However, he added “We also nurture fraternal hopes that Liberia does not slip back by undue presumptions into a past that we all neither want to remember, nor to see repeated.”

He lauded his diplomatic colleagues in Liberia for remaining tireless, neutral, respectful and discreet in helping Liberia to avoid retrogression.

Minister of State without Portfolio, Trokon T. Kpui, on behalf of President George Weah and the people of Liberia, extended warm felicitations to the government and people of Cameroon and recalled how President Weah has his football history tied to Cameroon.

He expressed the hope that the bilateral relation between the two countries will continue to be nurtured.

Source: Daily Observer

The Consul-General of the Cameroon in Nigeria, Mrs Bessem Manga, has called on her compatriots at home and abroad to close ranks and embrace peace for the emancipation of their country.

Manga made the call late on Monday in a speech to mark the 47th Edition of the National Day of Cameroon in Lagos.

Newsmen report that the envoy made the call amid growing challenges in Cameroon, including the Boko Haram insurgency and secession threats in the southeastern flank of the country.

Speaking on “Unity in Diversity, a Major Asset of Cameroonian People in their Determined Move towards Emergence,’’ Manga said that peace was the crucial requirement for the country to aspire to greatness.

She said there was need for Cameroonians to come together and talk peace to make the country a united entity for its citizens at home and in the diaspora.

“The things that unite us are more than things that divide us. We need our people to come together to close ranks to celebrate our oneness.

“Peaceful cohabitation will make our country to move forward. My prayer is that peace should continue to reign in our dear country.

Manga applauded the government and people of Nigeria for their hospitality and show of love for hundreds of Cameroonians residing in various cities in Nigeria.

“I thank the government and people of Nigeria for welcoming and giving us chance to live within your midst. This shows how unified both countries are,” she said.

May 20 is marked yearly as the National Day of the Cameroon, although the French-speaking part of the country gained independence on Jan.1, 1960.

The British Cameroon joined the new state in 1961 but it was not fully integrated. A `federated’ system existed that prevented full national unity of the two Cameroons.

The National Day was marked first on May 20, 1972 when the Francophone and Anglophone speaking states of Cameroon unified to become one country.

Source: Today.ng

After the UN Security Council on May 13 held belated “Arria formula” session about Cameroon, an informal one with no outcome on which even co-sponsors Germany and the UK refused to answer Press questions, hypocrisy and cover up of the UN’s failure remain evident.

Now Turkey, which longs to be a big(ger) power in the UN, paying for example to re-name and bar the Press from the area next to the Security Council, now the “Turkish Lounge,” is lavishing praise for its business with Paul Biya’s Cameroun: in Ankara, “Cameroon’s ambassador hailed his country’s relations with Turkey Monday while marking National Day.  Victor Tchatchouwo made the comments at a gathering in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, under the theme “Unity in Diversity, a major asset of the Cameroonian people in their determined move towards emergence”.  Tchatchouwo expressed the importance of excellent cooperation and solidarity between Turkey and Cameroon. 

The ambassador said the number of high-level visits between authorities of both countries and commercial exchanges have been increasing in recent years.  During his speech, Tchatchouwo also highlighted the role of other mutual projects, including the scholarship program granted by Turkey’s Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB).  The envoy added that Ankara and Yaounde are engaged in many fields, including politics, commerce, economy and education.  Youth and Sports Minister Mehmet Muharrem Kasapoglu attended the embassy’s National Day celebrations.  He stressed the importance of Cameroon’s decision to open an embassy in Turkey for the first time.  “It will improve bilateral relations between our countries in every field,” Kasapoglu said.  “Cameroon is one of the important countries in Central Africa for us.  “The bilateral trade volume between Turkey and Cameroon was around $200 million last year,” he said.  He added that the two countries aim to reach a trade volume of over $200 million this year. 

Citing Turkish contractors’ ongoing infrastructure projects in Cameroon, Kasapoglu said: “Our companies’ interests in Cameroon have been significantly increasing.”  Tchatchouwo presented his letter of credence to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in December 2018.  He is Cameroon’s first ambassador to Turkey.  On May 20, 1972, Cameroonians voted for a unitary state in a national referendum.” Really?  The blathering about business with Biya is just blood money – with an echo of the Kurdish issue. Inside the UN, Guterres’ Global Censor Alison Smale, now leaving in August, used a false complaint of Inner City Press daring to cover events in the Turkish Lounge as one of the few bases in her no due process ouster order of Inner City Press, now in its 321st day. We’ll have more on this.

Kuwait is a member of the Security Council, for seven more months, and heard what was said in the UNSC on May 13. Even the sanitized Lowcock and handpicked NGO version was troubling. But now on May 30 the Amir of Kuwait and the Crown Prince, Al-Sabah, told cabled congratulations and best wishes to 37 year ruler now killer Paul Biya. Kuwait’s mission to the UN, when Inner City Press was roughed up and banned from entering the UN amid its questions about Guterres’ performance, opined that “as long as UNCA is against you, nothing will change.” So much for freedom of the press: UNCA has had a president who gave an UN/CA screening to Sri Lanka government’s war crimes denial film, a photo op to UN briber Ng Lap Seng, and now has Chinese state media judging its “journalism” awards for UN coverage – no reporting on Chinese UN bribery, nor mention of the exclusion of Taiwanese journalists from the UN, etc allowed! We’ll have more on this.

On the other hand, publicly (mis) funded Voice of America which has Guterres favored access to the UN ran an article about the Arria meeting not by its UN correspondent but by another, who now writes about the Cameroon military with NO MENTION of its killings in the SW and NW of the country, or even abuses of civilians in the North. This is from VOA: “A Cameroon military engineering corps compactor is constructing a portion of the road linking its northern border town of Kousseri to the Chadian capital Ndjamena and Borno state in northeastern Nigeria.  Colonel Jackson Kamgain, director of Cameroon military engineering corps, says they re-launched the World Bank-sponsored project in March 2018 after it had been abandoned for four years.  He said since independence in 1961, the Cameroon military engineering corps has participated actively in the development of all localities and insures that major projects in conflict zones are not abandoned unlike in many other countries where military engineering departments concentrate only on making access easy for troops in areas of war or conflicts.” Why are taxpayers funding this? Or VOA after it lobbied UN Stephane Dujarric to oust Inner City Press? We’ll have more on this.

Because it was an informal meeting and the proponents would not answer questions and Antonio Guterres’ UN has yet to provide requested information to Inner City Press, it has allowed Paul Biya’s government to claim, in effect, that no meeting took place: “Some member states of the United Nations Security Council had an informal meeting on Monday to discuss the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Anglophone region of Cameroon.  A communiqué issued by the Cameroonian Ministry of External Relations however denied reports of a UN Security Council Meeting on the Anglophone region crisis.  According to the communiqué no such meeting is scheduled.    The communiqué further stated that, this meeting was a ‘’ free consultation entirely outside of the Council on the initiative of certain members who are interested in the humanitarian situation in Cameroon.’‘  It further added that outcomes of this meeting will not be binding on the government since the meeting was informal as specified by Cameroon’s diplomacy.”

The meeting ended without any outcome, after Paul Biya’s longtime Ambassador Tommo Monthe lashed out at social media as UNSG Antonio Guterres does. Monthe told Inner City Press, as it asked about Biya cutting the Internet in the Anglophone zones, that Inner City Press could get thrown out of the UN. And it was, by Guterres, now 321 days and counting.

(Inner City Press went and began interested at the Ambazonia / Southern Cameroons demonstration in the 47th Street park.

Culled from Inner City Press

Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko has sent greetings to Cameroon President Paul Biya as the country celebrates National Day, BelTA learned from the press service of the Belarusian leader.

The head of state emphasized the interest in the development of Belarus-Cameron relations across the board.

“I am convinced that by joint efforts we will manage to bolster friendly bilateral ties and significantly expand mutually beneficial cooperation,” the message of greetings reads.

Source: BelTA’s

Fighter aircrafts bearing names of Ambazonian towns and cities that were flying the Yaoundé sky to celebrate Cameroon’s National Day may not have been the only kind gesture that the Biya regime extended to Southern Cameroonians to avoid embarrassment. They had also been used in attacks in Southern Cameroons to kill women and children.

By early evening on Sunday in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, it became clear that there will be a marked low attendance of the so-called National Day at the Bongo Square in Buea because of the Southern Cameroons boycott. Cameroon Intelligence Report sources say that it was at this juncture that the Biya  Francophone Beti Ewondo regime decided to bring in van loads of its military personnel from La Republique in an attempt to prove that Cameroon was indeed one and indivisible.

The US ambassador and several other western diplomats were present at the Yaoundé 20^th may Boulevard today. However, many more French Cameroun soldiers arrived in vans in both the Northern and Southern Zones of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to increase the number of people at the 20^th   May National Day celebration.

Some French Cameroun officials have however denied knowledge of any such development and pointed out that the number of guests from French Cameroun for the 20^th May National Day celebration in Ambazonia were high even in the previous years before Biya declared war against the people of Southern Cameroons. However, given the strong bond that the ruling CPDM government and some corrupt Southern Cameroons political elites enjoy, the possibility of Yaoundé trying to bail out it’s newly appointed Prime Minister, Chief Dr Dion Ngute and a cream of Southern Cameroons political elites to get out from yet another spot cannot be ruled out.

But irrespective of the French Cameroun Biya effort, participation at the 20^th May function in Southern Cameroons remained significantly low.

Today’s 20^th May celebration in Southern Cameroons was marred by intrusive behavior and harassment of the French Cameroun CPDM guests in every nook and crannies of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.  It was very clear that the boycott was sparked off by a call from the Ambazonia Vice President, Dabney Yerima’s decision to officially boycott the celebrations due to French Cameroun’s murderous attack throughout Southern Cameroons territory.

The unprecedented and over-zealous move by the Francophone governors of the South West and North West regions did not only target pro Yaoundé Southern Cameroonians during today’s 20^th May celebrations, subjecting them to intense  French Cameroun security scrutiny but also prevented most of the Ambazonian moderate invitees from entering the Buea or Bamenda 20^th May Boulevard.

The Cameroon National Day is officially celebrated on May 20th.While no senior elite from British Southern Cameroons were noticeable anywhere in the Northern and Southern Zone, the usually packed French Cameroun celebration that every year overflows with Francophone SDOs and DOs was an extremely low-key affair this Monday.

By Seseskou Asu Isong in London

The Yaounde government is coming under enormous pressure. The regime that once said the form of the state was non-negotiable, is today contemplating building a federal system for the country.

The country’s Prime Minister recently indicated that the president wanted to dialogue, but would not dialogue with separatists. This position is gradually changing as the international community mounts more pressure.

The government is gradually cracking and Americans are not relenting. The government dissolving resolve can be clearing noticed as government ministers keep on contradicting each other.

Speaking on Friday, May 17 on France 24, the country’s territorial administration minister, Atanga Nji, an ex-convict, said that the president was ready and willing to dialogue with separatists. A significant shift in the government’s rhetoric.

A shift that is being welcome across the world, though many observers are still skeptical about the regime. They hold that the government must put forth a clear agenda, adding that there must be a mediator and the genuine inclusive dialogue must be held out of the country for the Diaspora and civil society to fully participate.

But before this happens, the Biya regime must change its ways. The Yaounde government must submit itself to international scrutiny.

Stopping human rights groups from coming into the country does not give the nation a good name. The International Crisis Group has been banned in Cameroon as the rights group has been very critical of the dictatorial regime.

A Human Rights Watch representative was recently refused entry into the country. Amnesty International is not given free and unfettered access to the two English-speaking regions of the country for it to document atrocities.

The government must understand that these organizations have the resources and means to conduct open source investigation to obtain the facts they need. What is the government hiding that it does not want the international community to know?

The government’s dishonesty and refusal to hold a truly genuine dialogue on the Southern Cameroons crisis has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

The Southern Cameroons Diaspora has done a good job at courting the international community and the fruits are there. Americans have embraced the cause and they are doing all they can to rally other countries to the cause.

The Americans and Canadians are pouring enormous pressure on the government. America does not want to break up the country, but it is clear when it comes to what it wants.

The US wants a federal system for Cameroon and Tibor Nagy, the American undersecretary for African Affairs, is promoting this idea and the American society has bought the idea hook, line and sinker.

This has also been the Canadian idea since the conflict started some three years ago and the Canadian government is not wavering on this.

It has the experience of dealing with minorities and can help Cameroon build a solid federal system that will make the Central African nation one of the best countries in the world.

Southern Cameroonians might have lost loved ones and homes, but they must work with the Americans to address those issues that have triggered this unfortunate situation.

Extremism in this case will be foolish. America and Canada are great allies. Do not alienate them. The Diaspora that has so far done a great job can now start sensitizing the fighters on the ground regarding the American, Canadian and UN positions.

The real work has just started and all Southern Cameroonians must make their contribution.

Dr Arrey Joachim

In Cameroon, civil war is brewing along linguistic lines. Its origins lie in the botched decolonization of the country’s anglophone territory, but President Paul Biya’s repressive regime has poured fuel on the fire. Lorraine Mallinder reports.

Lucy speaks of her last day in her village of Mbonge with arresting clarity. The 64-year-old was cooking plantains to sell by the roadside when soldiers came sweeping in to root out separatist rebels known as Amba Boys. She remembers the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns and the screams of villagers scattering ‘helter-skelter’ – many fleeing to the bush, shot in the back as they ran. ‘Whosoever the bullets met, the people died,’ she says.

Mbonge is in Cameroon’s anglophone southwest. The soldiers were with the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), an elite Israeli- and US-trained corps deployed by the francophone regime to crush an anglophone uprising in the northwest and southwest regions. In Douala, a port city just over the border from anglophone Cameroon, countless people who have fled the conflict tell similar stories: of security forces shooting indiscriminately, torching homes and sometimes entire villages in their determination to snuff out the separatist threat.

Some call it the ‘anglophone problem’, others ‘the war’. Semantics can be blurring, but the numbers don’t lie. At least 1,600 people have lost their lives, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). Caught between government forces and the Amba Boys, nearly half a million have fled their homes, many trapped in the bush, terrified of returning to their villages but unable to seek refuge in the towns, often because they don’t have ID cards. Wary of being seen to take sides in a conflict that is becoming deadlier by the day, NGOs struggle to get food and medical assistance to those in need.

Colonel Didier Badjeck, chief of army communications, terms the regime’s actions as ‘legitimate defence’. The military, he claims, is targeting the Amba Boys – the nickname a reference to the separatists’ self-declared independent state of Ambazonia – in their rural camps, minimizing the risk of civilian deaths. He accuses groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has reported on military abuses, of supporting the separatists. These groups, he says, are ‘compromising the country’s honour’.

One NGO source says otherwise. The BIR, he says, has a ‘licence to kill’. And it wields it liberally, with utter impunity.

At first sight, the musket-bearing Ambas would appear to be no match for the mighty BIR and its high-tech Israeli rifles. But the BIR and its lowlier army counterparts are unaccustomed to cat-and-mouse games of guerrilla warfare. And the mice are proving especially nimble, a rag-tag of around seven separatist militias and an unknown number of smaller cells, according to ICG, who know the dense forests like the backs of their hands. More importantly, the separatists have the support of the people, for even if they themselves have been guilty of killings and torture, anger at military excesses is reaching boiling point.

In recent speeches, President Paul Biya has paid lip service to bilingualism and decentralization, but he fails to convince. Lion Man, as his supporters call him, has not survived 36 years in power by making compromises. So confident is he of his cast-iron grip on the country, maintained through paralysing bureaucracy, entrenched patronage networks and legal witch-hunts against political opponents, that he can afford to chillax at length in Geneva every year. Meanwhile, in the sealed-off anglophone regions, the conflict rages on, far from the world’s view.

‘The way things are going now, the situation will be endless,’ says the NGO source.

The devil comes in

In Buea, capital of the southwest, we meet human rights lawyer Agbor Nkongho. In 2016, Nkongho led lawyers and teachers in protests against the government’s efforts to enforce the use of French in anglophone courts and classrooms. The regime responded with shooting from the air and on the ground, locking up protesters it labelled as ‘terrorists’. Today, an estimated 800 to 1,000 people are in prison, many of them moderates. What had started out as a civil rights protest soon spiralled into a full-blown conflict. The government’s brutal response mainstreamed separatist sentiment that had been simmering for decades.

The conflict has its roots in the botched decolonization of Cameroon in the 1960s. Formerly a German colony, it was carved up between the British and the French after the First World War. While French Cameroon gained independence in 1960, the smaller British Cameroons were denied a shot at self-determination. Instead, they had to choose between joining Nigeria or French Cameroon. The northern zone went with the former, the south opting to be folded into French Cameroon. The fledgling federal state started with two stars on its flag, symbolizing the union. But in the early 1970s, two stars became one. Francophones, who make up around 80 per cent of the population, now called the shots. The anglophone regions, rich in oil and other natural resources, were sidelined into near-insignificance.

A federalist at heart, Nkongho is caught in the middle. Jailed by the regime for eight months, he has also received death threats from separatists. Nkongho is critical of the Amba Boys, who chop off the fingers of workers ignoring strikes, torture teachers defying their boycott on schools and kill anyone suspected of collaborating with the state. As the territory descends into chaos, rival diaspora leaders in the West who are funding the two main militias – the Ambazonia Defence Forces and the Ambazonia Self-Defence Council – continue to maintain a hard line. In their battle for supremacy, their fighters occasionally clash in the bush. ‘If they’d pulled together, they could have obtained territory and controlled it,’ says Nkongho. ‘If they were really organized, they would open schools and teach the kids their history.’

There have also been kidnappings, notably November’s Boko Haram-style seizure of 78 schoolchildren and three staff members from a school in Bamenda, capital of the northwest. It took place during a strictly enforced dusk-to-dawn curfew, causing many to question how the group cleared checkpoints on their 19-kilometre journey to the town of Bafut, where the hostages were later released. Separatists and the government blamed each other, the former claiming the abduction was staged to damage their reputation. On the ground, the jury is still out. Courage, a teacher from Bamenda, says the children themselves are still giving conflicting stories.

In the anglophone regions, people now speak of ‘real Ambas’ and ‘fake Ambas’ – the latter covering anything from alleged state-sponsored mercenaries to the gangs of bandits now roaming the land. ‘When you have a house that is always quarrelling, the devil outside realizes and comes in,’ says Brenda, a civil rights activist from Mamfe, in the southwest.

In February, the conflict spiked during a 10-day lockdown. In the northwestern town of Kumbo, 176 people – mostly schoolchildren – were kidnapped and released the next day amid rumours of ransoms. Kumbo was especially volatile, security forces burning houses and shops, and threatening hospital staff, according to HRW. In the southwest, a hospital in the town of Kumba was burned, killing four people. Nobody knows who did it, but military attacks on hospitals are not uncommon. Wounded locals often resist being admitted for treatment for fear of being hauled out by soldiers.

Nkongho estimates that around 30 people lost their lives during February’s violence.

Gerontocracy

The first casualty of war is truth, they say. Especially in a country where journalists risk being hauled before a military court for doing their job, increasingly on charges of ‘fake news’. Currently there are four journalists from anglophone Cameroon in jail, three of whom are known to be in Yaoundé’s notorious Kondengui Prison. One, Thomas Awah Junior, of Afrik 2 Radio, is critically ill.

Journalist Mimi Mefo attracted worldwide support when she was arrested in November 2018. Released on the orders of President Biya, she was warned that the military would eventually get her. Living in permanent fear, she continued to work, threatened by online trolls whom she suspected of being government agents. Now in London, she believes she will be arrested again if she returns.

‘Many journalists are now doing self-censorship,’ she says. ‘The government doesn’t want the story of Cameroon to be told.’

The story of Cameroon right now is one of a gerontocracy holding ever-tighter on to power, crushing the country in its death grip. Anglophones are not alone in their opposition to a government that has over-stayed its welcome – possibly by 26 years. Many Cameroonians believe Biya stole victory in the 1992 elections from John Fru Ndi – an anglophone, as it happens.

History repeats itself endlessly here. Biya, now 86, was re-elected for a seventh mandate last year, amid allegations of fraud. Though, as one diplomat in Yaoundé notes wryly, the outcome was already baked into the system. The opposition organized protests, which ended in mass arrests, including the jailing of opposition leader Maurice Kamto in January. Potential rivals for power are regularly locked up. Cameroonians like to joke that an entire parallel government resides in prison, given the numbers of former high-ranking officials incarcerated.

Observers wonder whether the anglophone conflict will prove to be the regime’s unravelling. Aside from being a drain on state finances, it is now hitting export crops like bananas, rubber, cocoa and coffee hard. And it’s not as if the regime doesn’t have other problems to contend with. Up in the far north, the war on Boko Haram jihadists drags on into its fifth year. And in the east, troops are battling armed gangs from the war-torn Central African Republic.

Diplomatically, the country is under strain. Traditionally a stable foothold in Central Africa, it has long escaped international criticism. But last year, it was stripped of hosting the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, partly owing to security concerns. And, this year, the US scaled back military aid, citing concerns over human rights violations. It’s unclear whether the move was in response to abuses in the anglophone regions or in the far north, where soldiers have also wielded their ‘licence to kill’ with reckless abandon. Either way, it came as a blow to the regime.

The President is fighting back, employing the services of Glover Park Group, a Washington DC-based lobbying and communications firm. In the anglophone regions, people despair that the narrative is going Biya’s way, the state asserting its right to crush ‘terrorists’ and ‘criminals’, who often turn out to be innocents. NGOs at the mercy of capricious bureaucrats who can withhold passes dare not speak of the abuses they witness lest they lose access to the conflict zone.

One international aid worker, who is assisting people in the bush, agrees that Biya may be winning the PR war. ‘But that’s the only war he’s winning,’ he says. ‘The military know that brute force is not going to win the conflict. You can’t catch so many people hidden in the population.’

‘On the ground people are blaming the government,’ says one journalist in Buea. ‘The people are fed up. The government has failed.’

Culled from New Internationalist