Government-led talks to end a two-year-old separatist insurgency in Cameroon faltered before they began on Monday as separatists and opposition politicians boycotted the event.

President Paul Biya initiated the week-long national dialogue in an effort to calm violence between militias and the army that has killed more than 1,800 people and displaced more than 500,000, according to United Nations estimates.

But Anglophone separatists, who are trying to form a breakaway state called Ambazonia in the country’s minority English-speaking regions, immediately dismissed the idea because their conditions for dialogue have not yet been met, they said.

“No Ambazonian will take part in Biya’s charade,” said Cho Ayaba, a leading member of the Ambazonian Governing Council.

The council has called for a withdrawal of the army from the English-speaking Southwest and Northwest regions, for international arbitration over the crisis and for the release of all arrested separatists.

Cameroon’s main opposition party is also refusing to attend until the government releases its leader and former presidential candidate Maurice Kamto, who was arrested in January and could face the death penalty for leading protests against an election last year that he denounced as fraudulent.

Biya, 86, won re-election in that vote, extending his nearly four decades in power.

The Anglophone conflict began after the government cracked down on peaceful protests in 2016 in the English-speaking regions by teachers and lawyers complaining that they were being marginalized by the French-speaking majority.

Demonstrators were shot dead and the movement became radicalized. Now at least a dozen groups have taken up arms and have carried out deadly attacks on army posts and the police. The army has responded by burning villages and shooting dead civilians in the English-speaking areas.

Tens of thousands have fled to Nigeria or sought refuge in French-speaking Cameroon.

Opposition parties, civil society groups and representatives of the Catholic Church were present in the main conference center in the capital Yaounde on Monday.

Prime Minister Joseph Dion, an Anglophone appointed early this year in part to jump-start negotiations, was also present.

Dion said the talks were held to end acts of violence and to enable the Northwest and Southwest regions to regain the “necessary serenity”, adding that “all men and women who love peace” had been invited.

Cameroon’s linguistic divide goes back a century to the League of Nations’ decision to split the former German colony of Kamerun between the allied French and British victors at the end of World War One.

For 10 years after the French- and English-speaking regions joined together in 1961, the country was a federation in which the Anglophone regions had their own police, government and judicial system. Biya’s centralization push since he came to power in 1982 quickly eroded any remaining Anglophone autonomy.

Now, moderates who have long called for a return to some form of federal system to ease tensions say their voices have been drowned out by secessionists on one hand and Biya on the other.

“It is farcical to not have a commission to discuss federalism, which is at the core of all this,” said Akere Muna, an opposition politician and former presidential candidate who is participating in the talks. “Now the federalists are a minority and the separatists are the majority.”

By Besong Eunice Nchong

Cameroon will start a “national dialogue” on Monday in a bid to end the separatist conflict in the country’s Anglophone provinces, but key rebel leaders have already refused to participate.

Nearly 3,000 people have died and half a million fled their homes since fighting broke out in 2017 between the army and armed fighters who want independence for Cameroon’s two English-speaking provinces.

The talks, led by Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, are scheduled to take place from September 30 to October 4 at the Congressional palace in the capital Yaounde.

President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 37 years, hopes the talks will end a crisis that is also hurting the economy of the coffee and cocoa-producing Central African country.

October 1 marks the second anniversary of the spiral towards conflict – the declaration of the self-described “Republic of Ambazonia” for Cameroon’s English-speaking minority.

Even before it began, the national dialogue ran into trouble with many activists arrested and experts voicing scepticism that it would yield tangible results.

English-speakers account for about a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 24 million, who are majority French-speaking.

Anglophones are mainly concentrated in two western areas, the Northwest Region and the Southwest Region that were incorporated into the French-speaking state after the colonial era in Africa wound down 60 years ago. Many locals there complain of discrimination and marginalisation.

In a report published last week, the International Crisis Group (ICG) estimated that around 3,000 people have been killed by separatist violence and the military crackdown.

The ICG said the talks do not include separatists or Anglophone leaders who support more federalist solutions.

“It thus risks further frustrating Anglophones widening the gulf between the two sides and empowering hardliners,” the group said.

“The government should make greater space for Anglophones, particularly federalists who are willing to attend. It should also seek a neutral facilitator.”

Biya’s government has rejected both a return to more federalism and any proposed separation.

But Anglophone supporters are also divided between those two options for their regions.

The government’s dialogue spokesman, George Ewane, said Cameroonian authorities had held preliminary discussions with some separatists, adding that even hardliners were welcome to join the talks.

‘Smokescreen’

Mark Bareta, a separatist leader who is very active on social media, was the one most open to dialogue and it was through him that invitations to the others were sent, Ewane said.

But on Friday, Bareta announced that he was pulling out, saying that “the only way to have real negotiations is to hold them on neutral territory”.

Of the 16 separatist leaders invited, those heading armed groups such as Ebenezer Akwanga and Cho Ayaba are also snubbing the talks.

Akwanga told AFP that the event was a “smokescreen for the international community rather than an attempt to secure a complete and lasting solution … to the annexation of our country, Southern Cameroons.”

Most of the leaders have expressed willingness to hold talks with the government but in the presence of an international mediator and in a foreign country with the terms for secession the main item on the agenda, according to the ICG.

However, more moderate Anglophones like Cardinal Christian Tumi, the influential archbishop of Cameroon’s commercial capital Douala, have welcomed the initiative and urged the separatists to participate.

‘We can’t talk to ghosts’

An official from the Southwest Region said traditional chiefs had asked armed groups to attend the talks but they had spurned the offer.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, however asked the groups to “emerge from the woodwork”, adding that “measures have been taken to ensure the security of those who attend.”

“We cannot talk with ghosts,” the official said.

Locals are meanwhile divided about the outcome of the talks.

“No good can come of this. It’s a game,” said a hardcore secessionist who identified himself as Agbor.

“If we must go for talks, it would be to discuss the terms of separation and not anything else,” he said.

But Jeannette Benga, a prominent figure of civil society in Buea, the capital of the Southwest region, voiced hope that “the two come to an agreement.”

Blaise Chamango, the head of an NGO said the five-day talks were not enough to “debate the anglophone crisis and the other major problems in Cameroon.”

SOURCE: AFP NEWS AGENCY