On a plantation in Tiko, in south-west Cameroon, Adeline rubs the gap in her right hand where her index finger used to be. She arrived in the town in July 2018, having fled Ekona, 15 miles away. In that village soldiers terrified civilians by burning houses and shooting indiscriminately as part of a crackdown on militias that want the primarily English-speaking areas of Cameroon to secede from the predominantly Francophone country. Adeline hoped Tiko would prove a sanctuary.

It was anything but. A year ago Adeline was tending to an oil palm in the plantation when about 20 members of a separatist militia grabbed her, stuffed leaves in her mouth and tied her to the tree. They whipped her and cut off her finger. Her apparent crime: working for the Cameroon Development Corporation (cdc), a state-run company. “As I close my eyes I see the boys coming to get me,” says Adeline. “The trauma is still there.”

Cameroon was until recently a stable country in a fragile region. Today it is battling the jihadists of Boko Haram in the north, dealing with an influx of refugees from the Central African Republic in the east—and, most devastatingly, the “Anglophone crisis” in the west. Adeline’s is one of hundreds of thousands of lives ravaged by this conflict over the past three years. Paul Biya, the authoritarian who has ruled Cameroon for 37 years, had hoped that the crisis would prove short-lived. So did foreign powers, which have been largely quiet. Yet the conflict shows no sign of ending.

The origins of the turmoil began a century ago. After the first world war Britain and France took over different parts of the German colony of Cameroon. Upon independence in 1960 and 1961 the larger French territory joined the southern part of the British one to make modern Cameroon.

It quickly became one of the most centralised countries in Africa. Today just 1% of public spending is devolved to local governments, versus more than 50% in Nigeria. The country is officially bilingual, but the roughly 20% of people (4-5m in a country of 24m) who mainly speak English claim decades of marginalisation. Promises of devolution have been broken.

In late 2016 frustrations boiled over. First lawyers went on strike against the erosion of the English-style common-law system. Teachers soon joined the protests, citing, among other things, the appointment of French-only speakers in classrooms. Protest groups organised “ghost towns”: weekly shutdowns of towns such as Buea, the capital of the south-west region, that continue to this day.

The government hit back hard. The internet was shut off for four months. Groups organising the protests were banned and their leaders arrested. In October 2017 separatists responded by proclaiming the independent state of “Ambazonia”, named after Ambas bay in the south-west.

This led to a massive, violent escalation. International ngos estimate that 3,000 people have been killed during the crisis. But aid workers think the true figure is several times higher. Both separatist militias and security forces have committed atrocities, but the Cameroonian army is believed to be behind most of the bloodshed.

Security forces have burned more than 220 villages in the Anglophone region, according to the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (chrda) in Buea. One was Ekona. Formerly the site of a bustling market, today it is an eerie place, where the walls of charred houses are pockmarked with bullets.

“It’s like ‘Full Metal Jacket’,” says one aid worker, in reference to trigger-happy soldiers in a film about the Vietnam war. Ayuk, who lived in Ekona for four years before fleeing in April, says he can recall hundreds of incidents where soldiers fired at villagers. In one case his neighbour and two others were shot in their car on their way back from sowing plantain. “We had to bury him quickly,” Ayuk recalls, in case the army shot them as well.

Tah Mai, a journalist, lost two brothers in separate incidents involving the army. In November last year his brother and his wife were shot outside their house in Buea. A few months later his other brother was shot in the back in his home village in the north-west. “Mine is just like the many stories that you haven’t heard,” says Mr Tah.

No refuge

At least 500,000 people have been forced to leave their homes. Tens of thousands have fled to Nigeria, but most are in the bush, making it hard to count them. Even in the forests displaced people can be found by the army. Frida, who was also forced to flee Ekona, describes how she watched soldiers enter her bush camp. They shot two women accused of cooking for separatist fighters. Then they killed the informer who brought them.

Mass displacement is having grave effects on public health. There are outbreaks of monkey pox and measles, partly because of plummeting vaccination rates. Before the crisis about 70% of women gave birth with medical help in the north-west region. Today 3% do so. The result is more women and babies dying in the course of childbirth. Cecilia Mah, the matron at Mount Mary Hospital in Buea, says that it is hard to run a hospital when soldiers threaten ambulance drivers and seize suspected separatists convalescing in the wards.

The state is, however, not solely responsible for the chaos; separatists share some of the blame. Most of the separatist political groups, such as the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, and the Ambazonia Governing Council, are based abroad. Their leaders and donors are in America, Germany, Norway and other rich countries. In Cameroon their armed wings control swathes of rural territory. This can lead to surreal moments for aid workers. They may, for example, have to negotiate access to villages not with commanders on the ground but with middle-aged men sitting in living rooms in Washington, Oslo or Dortmund.

Many separatist attacks are aimed at the security forces. But some target Anglophone civilians. “If you disagree with them, they kill you,” says Cardinal Christian Tumi, the archbishop of Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital. He says that a traditional chief from his home village was “slaughtered like a goat” for allegedly collaborating with the authorities. Like Adeline, many people employed by cdc have been maimed.

Brutality by separatists is likely to increase as armed groups in the country seek their own sources of funding to break away from the patronage of leaders in the diaspora. So-called Amba boys are turning to kidnapping and extortion for funds; other groups are increasingly criminal entities, not political ones. In March the football team of the University of Buea was taken hostage; many parents paid ransoms. Most of the aid groups working on the ground have had workers kidnapped. “I fear we are creating a generation of warlords,” says Felix Agbor Balla, the president of chrda.

While bandits raise cash by extorting, the economy is collapsing. The Anglophone regions contribute about 20% of the country’s gdp. cdc was the second-largest employer in Cameroon, after the state. But most of its rubber and palm-oil plantations, and all of its banana ones, have shut because of attacks. Most workers have lost their jobs. Revenue is 90% lower than before the crisis; cdc has not sold a banana since August 2018. Its leaders get death threats from separatists. Asked how he copes, Franklin Ngoni Njie, cdc’s general manager, says he follows a simple rule: “I pray more. I go out less.”

And yet an even bigger social and economic crisis is looming. Almost 90% of children in the Anglophone regions have not gone to school for three years, a result of forced displacements and the enforcement of a boycott called by separatists who see schools as arms of the state. (According to this twisted logic a six-year-old keen to learn subtraction is a collaborator.) At home-schools set up by brave educators children arrive with homework hidden in their trouser legs, in case they are spotted by Amba boys.

The sabotage of education is one reason why many Anglophones are growing angry at the separatists. Ernest Molua notes that people used to refer to them as “our boys”; now they say “those boys”. The professor at the University of Buea believes that most Anglophones want more autonomy, ideally within a federal Cameroon, not independence. “There remains a strong sense of ‘Cameroonianess’,” he says, emphasising that Anglophones’ grievances are with the government, not their French-speaking compatriots. But Mr Molua worries that “the space for moderates is shrinking”.

Loaded language

Signs of compromise are scant. Separatist groups do not even have a common position among themselves, despite efforts by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss ngo, to help them find one. For his part, President Biya in September raised hopes by announcing a “National Dialogue”. Yet it was a sham. The meeting was not just about the crisis; it gave Cameroonian leaders from all regions a chance to air complaints (and collect per-diems). Many important Anglophones were either not invited or left in prison. “It was not a sincere effort,” says Alice Nkom, a lawyer.

Mr Biya has been aided by a muted international response. Donors have provided just 18% of the funding requested by the un for humanitarian operations in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions for 2019. (The only countries for which the un receives lower shares of support are Venezuela and North Korea.) Diplomatic pressure has been meagre, too. Nigeria wants Mr Biya’s help with Boko Haram and does not want to encourage the hopes of Biafran separatists in its own south-east. China is focused on its economic interests. British diplomats have offered gentle criticism in private but do not want to slam Mr Biya in public. Most importantly of all, France has done little but urge cosmetic concessions.

The only influential country willing to speak out is America. On October 31st it removed Cameroon from a list of African countries that get preferential trade terms, citing “gross violations” of human rights by the government. American diplomats hope the move will send a signal to Mr Biya that he needs to find a political solution.

For now there is only a bloody equilibrium. Separatist militias cannot take the towns; the army cannot take the bush. In the middle are people like Adeline. She says that she feels trapped between the two warring parties. And without a job any more she has no means to escape. So she waits, too weary to talk much about politics. “I just need my peace,” she says. 

Culled from The Economist

For 37 years one man has ruled Cameroon, a staggeringly corrupt, oil-rich state in central Africa. President Paul Biya is an old-fashioned autocrat. When democracy swept across Africa after the cold war ended, he called it a “distasteful passing fetish”. Then he realised he would attract less foreign criticism if he quietly intimidated opponents and rigged elections instead of banning them. He has done so ever since, and kept on good terms with Western powers by posing as a champion of stability in a fissile region. His troops, trained and equipped by France, Israel and America, battle the jihadists of Boko Haram and Islamic State around Lake Chad. They also regularly don blue helmets to keep peace in countries such as the Central African Republic. Yet Mr Biya cannot keep the peace at home.

Instead, a country that was once seen as an exporter of security is now being wrenched apart. A secession struggle rages in its English-speaking regions. Government forces are burning villages, shooting young men and raping women. The conflict has killed thousands and forced more than 500,000 people from their homes.

The strife began as a series of peaceful protests in 2016. Anglophones were aggrieved at their marginalisation in a country dominated by French-speakers. Cameroon is too rigidly centralised to satisfy minorities: only 1% of government spending is locally controlled, compared with more than 50% in neighbouring Nigeria. Strikes and demonstrations over the erosion of English-style common law and the dominance of Francophone officials have since mutated into what looks like a civil war. It could get much worse, as chaos grows, armed separatists kill and soldiers inflict horrors on civilians.

The outside world has barely noticed this disaster unfolding. Appeals for emergency assistance have attracted less than one-fifth of their target: less than half the people who have lost their homes have been given the two pieces of plastic and rope that make up the un’s shelter kit. Cameroon’s main backers have looked away, hoping Mr Biya’s government would quell the rebellion and get back to fighting jihadists in the Sahel. Instead of corralling the warring parties, the African Union and un Security Council have stood aside, rousing themselves only to “welcome” and “praise” Mr Biya’s “national dialogue”, a sham to which key separatist leaders were not invited.

This is a disgrace. The conflict, although bloody, is not intractable. Most people in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions are probably moderate and would be happy with some more autonomy and an end to the fighting. They could find common ground with those on the government side who might be willing to give a bit more power to the regions.

The longer the fighting persists, the harder it will be to resolve. With the army and separatists in stalemate on the battlefield, peace can come only through talks. For those to happen, both sides need to build trust. The separatists should start by lifting the ruinous ban they enforce on children going to government schools in the areas they control, which threatens to create a lost generation of illiterates. Rebel leaders abroad should tone down their inflammatory talk of secession. The government should release political prisoners and prosecute soldiers responsible for abuses.

Outsiders should press Mr Biya to make peace. President Donald Trump has rightly scaled back military assistance because of atrocities committed by the army. He has also kicked Cameroon out of a programme which grants duty-free access to the us market to African countries that respect human rights. European governments should also turn the screws, especially France, Mr Biya’s closest ally. The ageing strongman once said that only one-party rule could hold Cameroon together. In fact, his overcentralised autocracy has created pressures that could blow it apart. Only dialogue and devolution can save it.

Culled from The Economist

Symbolic half-measures like revoking preferential trade status are not enough to force the repressive regime of Paul Biya to change. Canceling IMF loans and military aid would show that the White House is serious.

On Oct. 31, the Trump administration notified Congress that Cameroon would lose its eligibility status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in 2020. “Cameroon has failed to address concerns regarding persistent human rights violations being committed by Cameroonian security forces,” the White House statement explained, in what is the toughest executive branch language issued about escalating crises in Cameroon, building on a congressional resolution agreed to in July.

The announcement quickly caught fire on social media, a sign of hope for Cameroonians and others who have long called for more external pressure on the country’s octogenarian president, Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982.

But taking away Cameroon’s AGOA privileges—primarily duty-free access for designated products exported from eligible African countries to the United States, including textiles—will not cause much pain. It will not compel Biya to undertake much-needed political and economic reforms to solve the crisis in the country’s Anglophone region and the related violence driving a humanitarian catastrophe, the deep-rooted governance crisis that includes mass arrests of political opponents and journalists, and an economic meltdown that has been partly concealed by oil-related revenue and ongoing bailouts by international lenders.

The humanitarian crisis gets worse by the month: The Norwegian Refugee Council calls Cameroon the world’s most neglected displacement crisis, while UNICEF reports there has been a “15-fold increase” in the humanitarian emergency there since 2017. The real test of the Trump administration’s resolve on Cameroon will be whether it acts to curtail all military assistance, imposes targeted travel and economic sanctions on individuals, and uses its considerable leverage to punish the Biya regime through international financial institutions and at the United Nations.

Members of the Biya government know that removal from AGOA won’t do much damage. Indeed, CNN recently interviewed an official at Cameroon’s Ministry of External Relations, who pointed out that the country barely benefits from AGOA and that the Trump administration is only trying to punish Cameroon because of its growing ties to China. Indeed, Washington’s move could push Cameroon and other African states further into the waiting arms of China and Russia—countries that do not ask questions about human rights.

This raises the question of why the Trump administration, which is preoccupied with much bigger domestic and foreign-policy challenges, decided to take a high-profile but symbolic stance now and if it is truly seeking to take a tougher line against Biya.

Unlike most reciprocal trade agreements or international financial institution regulations, AGOA includes economic, political, and human rights criteria that make it easier for the U.S. government to find justifications for change in status. These criteria include progress toward establishing “the rule of law, political pluralism, and the right to due process, a fair trial, and equal protection under the law” and that a country “does not engage in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Other countries whose beneficiary status has been withdrawn include Burundi (since 2016), Mauritania (since 2019), and South Sudan (since 2014).

Unlike many other African countries, Cameroon never cultivated the AGOA preferences to drive private sector development, investment, employment, and exports. Today, the United States just squeaks into the list of its top 10 trading partners. Total AGOA-eligible exports reached $63 million in 2018, mostly crude oil, and had already dropped to just $8 million in the first six months of 2019.

Shortly after AGOA was signed into law in 2000, construction started on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, part of a massive project spearheaded by ExxonMobil to export crude oil from southern Chad. Today, Cameroon’s government receives a $1.32 transit fee for every barrel that flows from Chad through to the export port of Kribi. It also benefits directly from its own modest offshore oil and natural gas production, and further reserves await development.

The nature of governance in Cameroon has always relied on rentier (or gatekeeper) state opportunities—including tropical agriculture, timber, oil, and, more recently, soccer stadiums— over establishing the complex foundations for internationally competitive, value-added industry. There is no desire by the regime to break from its resource curse. It is not a surprise, then, that Cameroon sits near the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index or the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings, and it does not come close to passing the governance thresholds of the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

Culled from Foreign Policy

For almost four decades, members of Cameroon’s ruling CPDM party also known as the crime syndicate, have always used November 6, the day the country’s president, Paul Biya, also known as the monarch, came to power to celebrate.  This was the day many Cameroonians thought their destiny would change for the better.

As the country’s first president, Amadou Ahidjo, announced that he was leaving power, many Cameroonians thought that the young, handsome and self-effacing Biya would steer the country to the land of promise. He had studied in France on taxpayers’ money and having worked with Mr. Ahidjo for a long time, Cameroonians thought he would blend his Western education, experience with the huge financial reserves the country had at the time he came to power to launch Cameroon into a new political and economic era.

The goodwill towards Mr. Biya was unimaginable. Cameroonians could only swear to him. Ahidjo had not had a good education, but he had laid down a solid foundation for Cameroon’s economic and social prosperity. Under Ahidjo, the country was known for its five-year development plans which brought about fast and harmonized development in the country.

Cameroon was, indeed, a development model for many French-speaking African countries and Biya’s accession to power in 1982 triggered a wave of optimism in the country. Young Cameroonians were hopeful, especially as the country and the economy bequeathed to Mr. Biya were enjoying a boom. Unemployment was low, university graduates could easily find work and the private sector was delivering on its promise. It was, indeed, the pillar of the country’s rapidly-evolving economy.

But it did not take long for the country’s economic and political fortunes to start changing, unfortunately for the worse. Biya had taken over power promising to collaborate with his predecessor, but a few months from the day he took over, he started backpedaling from his promise. Amadou Ahidjo, the country’s pioneer president and the man who whole-heartedly delivered a beautiful gift to Mr. Biya on November 6, 1982, was slowly being transformed into a devil incarnate by Mr. Biya’s closest collaborators. The county’s first president quickly realized that he had manufactured his own “Frankenstein monster” who will later send him into exile to Senegal where he lived for the rest of his life.

The disagreement between the two men resulted in several coup attempts, and this led to the killing of many of the first president’s collaborators. The unity for which Cameroon was known got shattered when the two men started drifting apart. Cameroon, the once beacon of peace, had just started its journey to the world of tribal politics.

From 1984, when Biya survived the April 6 coup, he clearly demonstrated that he would transform governance in Cameroon from a regional representative system into a tribe-based system wherein only people from his ethnic group would be appointed to key positions.

The implementation of that decision started when key positions such as the ministries of finance, armed forces, territorial administration and gendarmerie were given to key Biya allies and proteges, most of whom were from his ethic group. Most Cameroonians who had sympathized with Mr. Biya thought the decision was only a temporary measure to clean up the mess left behind by the failed coup. Little did they know they would have to put up with such a corrupt system for decades.

Even the military had to undergo a rapid transformation. Key positions in the military were granted to the Betis, people from Biya’s ethnic group that constitutes less than 10% of Cameroon’s population. Today, the Center and South regions which are predominantly Beti, account for more than 70% of the generals in the country’s military.

Regarding, state-owned corporations, there are more Betis as head of corporations. Of the 34 state-owned corporations in Cameroon, 18 are headed by Betis. Some of these corporations are headed by people who are either related to the president or his wife and many of them do not have the right experience to run such corporations. Many state-owned corporations have been run aground due to corruption and incompetence, leaving thousands of Cameroonians jobless and homeless. Many have died as a result of the hardship that follows the collapse of those corporations.

Many years after having run the country as a single party state, Mr. Biya in 1991 finally yielded to pressure from the population for multiparty politics in Cameroon. However, this did not come without bloodshed. Thousands of Cameroonians clamoring for multiparty politics in the early 1990s were slaughtered by Mr. Biya’s forces. University students in the country’s lone university at the time were killed and others arrested and sent to the Yaounde maximum security prison.

Despite the brutality, the people stood their ground and in 1992, the country’s first presidential elections were held with the opposition leader, John Fru Ndi, defeating Mr. Biya. However, Mr. Biya refused to leave office. He ordered a state of emergency in the entire northwest region, Mr. Fru Ndi’s stronghold. The impact of the crimes of this period are still lingering, as many young Cameroonians still bear the scars. Their amputated arms speak to the brutality with which Mr. Biya’s forces dealt with those they suspected of challenging his authority and victory.

Since 1992, Mr. Biya has won every election, using the same tactic. In 2018, he used the same tactic on Professor Maurice Kamto who was the clear winner of the presidential election. On October 22, 2018, Cameroon’s Constitutional Council validated Paul Biya’s re-election, with 71.28 percent of the votes. The Council’s decision was immediately contested by one of Mr. Biya’s rivals, Professor Maurice Kamto, who claimed the results had been altered.

In early November, dozens of pro-Kamto protesters were arrested in Bafoussam, Western region. Biya was sworn-in for a seventh term as president on November 6. He immediately imprisoned Professor Kamto and his aides for eight months, a strategy Biya’s government has used over the decades to break down his opponents mentally and psychologically.

 Today, in Cameroon, it is normal for people to disappear, especially those who are very critical of the government’s high-handedness. The country’s maximum-security prison is full of opponents of the regime and this is giving the country a very bad name. These violations have been condemned by Human Rights Watch in its latest report on the country.  The report points to massive and brutal human rights abuses by the country’s security forces.

 “Cameroon, a country previously known for its stability, faced violence and serious human rights abuses in 2018. The country endured abusive military operations against a secessionist insurgency in two Anglophone regions, attacks by the Islamic militant group, Boko Haram, in the Far North, and a worsening humanitarian crisis. President Paul Biya, 85, won a seventh seven-year term on October 7,” the report says.

‘In the South West and North West, government security forces have committed extrajudicial executions, burned property, carried out arbitrary arrests, and tortured detainees. A Human Rights Watch report documented a range of abuses by both sides in the Anglophone regions, including arson attacks on homes and schools. According to the International Crisis Group, government forces and armed separatists killed over 420 civilians in the regions since the crisis escalated in 2017,” report underscores.

“The humanitarian consequences of the Boko Haram attacks and separatist insurgency are of growing concern. As of November, the United Nations estimated that more than 244,000 civilians were displaced in the Far North and 437,500 in the Anglophone North West and South West regions. About 32,600 Cameroonians found refuge in Nigeria. Also, Cameroon has continued to forcibly return Nigerian asylum seekers, fleeing Boko Haram attacks in northeastern Nigeria,” the reports adds.   

But Mr. Biya’s worst legacy is the war in the two English-speaking regions of the country. The war which started as a protest by teachers and lawyers against marginalization quickly developed into a full-blown conflict when government forces acted in their usual and traditional manner by cracking down on lawyers, teachers and students of the University of Buea.

For three years now, Cameroon has been the theater of a huge armed conflict that has resulted in the death of some 3,000 civilians, with more than a million Cameroonians escaping to neighboring countries, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom while some 450,000 have been internally displaced. More than 200 villages have been torched by government troops and the fighting is still playing out in a manner that is far from being fair.   

Government forces have always responded to the growing separatist insurgency in the English-speaking regions by carrying out abusive security operations against communities suspected of supporting secessionist groups. Security forces have committed extra-judicial executions, used excessive force against civilians, tortured and abused suspected separatists and other detainees, and burned homes and other property in scores of villages.

Government atrocities have been documented by many human rights groups. Some will never be reported as the dead are quickly buried in locations that will be hard to find. Attacks documented by Human Rights Watch indicate that security forces have shot and killed many civilians, including at least seven people whom witnesses said had intellectual, psychosocial or physical disabilities who did not flee because they were unable or refused to. At least four older have been burned alive, after security forces set their homes on fire.

Human Rights Watch also documented three cases where security forces detained people suspected of supporting the secessionist cause, and then tortured and killed them in detention. In a fourth case, Human Rights Watch analyzed evidence of torture filmed by perpetrators, who appear to be gendarmes. On September 24 and 27, a total of nine men were allegedly executed by security forces in the town of Buea, according to videos reviewed by Human Rights Watch and a report by the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, a local non-governmental organization (NGO).

As Biya celebrates his 37^th year in power today, millions of Cameroonians are mourning and cursing the hour to which they were born to such a destiny. Unemployment, diseases and corruption have blighted many lives in Cameroon. The country’s hospitals have been reduced to consultation clinics and the total lack of infrastructure in the country has made life very challenging for Cameroonians. Death and destruction seem to be constants in Cameroon.

While Cameroonians languish in poverty, Mr. Biya and his children have simply transformed the state treasury into their personal ATM. Mr. Biya has the nasty habit of spending more time in Switzerland where he always seeks quality healthcare, a service he cannot provide to all Cameroonians and these services are costing the poor country a pretty penny.

While he is wasting taxpayers’ money in Switzerland, his daughter, Brenda Biya Eyenga, is squandering what little money her father leaves in state coffers when he is heading to Switzerland. Last week she was spotted in an expensive hotel in Dubai where she was spending her holidays. Experts put her vacation expenses at USD 75,000 for less than two weeks.

Mr. Biya’s scorecard for the 37 years he has been in power speaks to a dismal economic and political performance. A country that was designed to serve as a model to others has today become a symbol of mockery because of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and tribalism. It is common for Mr. Biya to use ex-convicts as ministers just to prove that he can do and undo. Any opposition to his rule always meets with an iron fist and this has caused many talented Cameroonians to leave the country.

By Kingsley Betek in Yaounde

The Trump Administration, which has made its stance on the Southern Cameroons situation known, has once more delivered a dazing blow to the beleaguered government that is not yet ready to dialogue with Southern Cameroonians who are fighting for an independent country.

Last week, the Trump Administration threw another dangerous blow at the cash-strapped and dying Yaounde government. The U.S has decided to cut off Cameroon from a trade pact that granted the Central African country access to the huge and lucrative market that has brought significant economic and financial gains to Cameroon over the last ten years.

The world’s only super power is accusing Cameroon of persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed by the country’s reckless and unprofessional security forces.

The decision to wean Cameroon off AGOA was contained in a letter to the United States Congress on Thursday, October 31, 2019, citing accusations of torture and extrajudicial killings of citizens by the country’s military as the reason for removing the Central African country from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

AGOA  is a piece of legislation approved by the U.S. Congress in May 2000. The objective of the legislation is to assist Sub-Saharan African economies and to improve economic relations between the United States and the region. After completing its initial 15-year period of validity, the AGOA legislation was extended on 29 June 2015 by a further 10 years, to 2025.

AGOA provides trade preferences for quota and duty-free entry into the United States for certain goods, expanding the benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program. AGOA expanded market access for textile and apparel goods into the United States for eligible countries, though many other goods are also included. This resulted in the growth of an apparel industry in southern Africa, which created hundreds of thousands of jobs.

However, the dismantling of the Multi Fibre Agreement’s world quota regime for textile and apparel trade in January 2005 reversed some of the gains made in the African textile industry due to increased competition from developing nations outside of Africa, particularly China. Some factories shut down in Lesotho, where most of the growth occurred. Orders from African manufacturers stabilized somewhat after the imposition of certain safeguard measures by U.S. authorities, but Africa’s share of the U.S. market was still reduced after the phaseout.

AGOA has resulted in a huge success in some well-organized African countries. In addition to growth in the textile and apparel industry, some AGOA countries have begun to export new products to the United States, such as cut flowers, horticultural products, automotive components and steel.

While Nigeria and Angola are the largest exporters under AGOA, other countries, particularly South Africa have been more diverse and unlike the former are not mainly concentrated in the energy sector.

To some countries, including Cameroon, AGOA is still of critical importance. Agricultural products constitute a promising area for AGOA trade. However much work needs to be done to assist African countries like Cameroon to  meet U.S. sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards.

The U.S. government is providing technical assistance to AGOA eligible countries to help them benefit from the legislation, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies. The U.S. government has established three regional trade hubs in Africa for this purpose –  Accra, Ghana; Gaborone, Botswana; and Nairobi, Kenya.

AGOA therefore has significant opportunities for Cameroonian businesses and the Cameroon government, but if Cameroon has to continue trading with the U.S., it must meet certain criteria including a good human rights record; a test it has failed woefully, prompting Washington to develop huge doubts about its ability to be in compliance with its international obligations.

Besides concerns by President Donald Trump, other U.S official have also been expressing concerns about the Yaounde government’s persistence on the path to self-destruction. Ever since the Southern Cameroons crisis started, the country’s military has killed more than 3,000 innocent civilians, with some roasted to death in their homes.

Also, some 200 Southern Cameroonian villages have been deleted from the country’s map and more than one million Southern Cameroonians have been displaced, with half of this number fleeing to neighboring Nigeria where they are living in precarious conditions.

Similarly, in a bid to give the separatists a very bad name, the Yaounde government has been burning down hospitals and schools. For more than three years, many children in rural areas in the restive regions have not gone to school as the government cannot guarantee their safety.

The Yaounde government has continued to murder its own citizens and its indifference to international calls for an inclusive dialogue that could bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict is clearly having a negative impact, not just on the country’s economy, but on the country’s international image and reputation. U.S officials are clearly upset with Mr. Biya and his ineffective and counter-productive measures aimed at resolving the crisis.

“The US government remains deeply concerned about persistent gross violations of human rights being committed by the Cameroonian government against its own citizens,” Deputy US Trade Representative C.J. Mahoney said in a statement.

This is not the first time the U.S. Administration is calling the Yaounde government to order. In February 2019, it cut more than USD 17 million in security aid and support to Cameroon over concerns about its human rights record.

It has been frowning upon the Yaounde government’s use of U.S. military equipment granted to the country to fight Boko Haram for the killing of innocent civilians in other parts of the country, especially in Southern Cameroons. After the BBC released a documentary detailing gruesome atrocities committed by Cameroon army soldiers in the northern part of the country against a mother and her children, the United States promptly ended its military cooperation with Cameroon.

Over the last few years, the Yaounde government has become so dictatorial, arresting and imprisoning its opponents without trial. The arrest and detention of Cameroon’s opposition leader, Professor Maurice Kamto, for eight moths speaks to the violations it is being accused of.

Though the AGOA decision is causing the Yaounde government many sleepless nights, it has been quick to prove that it can do without the benefits it has reaped over the years from this partnership with the United States.

Cameroon’s Minister Delegate at the Ministry of External Relations, Felix Mbayu, last week claimed that the sanctions were not biting and were not related to its human rights record.

“The simple truth is that the US is unhappy with a certain stance we take with China,” he said.

“The government has no move to make; we have other partners like China, Russia and Singapore who are ready to do business with us… We have no reaction to the US,” Mbayu told CNN during an interview.

“The least of our worry now is about the AGOA issue. By the way, it is a very small part of Cameroon’s relationship with the United States,” he added.

He estimated Cameroon’s exports to the U.S. under the trade legislation at USD 5 million, mostly consisting of agricultural and petroleum products which he said the U.S. “cannot do without.”

But the United States has been prompt to demonstrate that Cameroon will be losing a lot following the United States decision to cut if off AGOA.

In a statement aimed at reassuring Cameroonians despite the biting sanctions, the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon valued the country’s export to the U.S. at USD 220 million in 2018. It added that more than a quarter of the exports came off the AGOA legislation with 90 percent from petroleum exports.

Cameroon therefore stands to gain, and actions by the country’s authorities to down play the impact of the AGOA decision are being considered by many Cameroonians as a bluff that will not help the country and the government that is gradually being pushed to the wall by economic challenges and financial mismanagement.

 By Joachim Arrey in Canada

The demise of the controversial mayor of the Buea City Council, Patrick Ekema is one major thing that is giving pro French Cameroun CPDM barons more cause to worry about their chances of survival. To be sure, their situation is far worse than the jailed Ambazonia leaders.

As the Southern Cameroons leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe made history by stating that Biya was merely talking to himself during the so-called Major National Dialogue, prominent Southern Cameroons CPDM heavyweights denounced their own fighter and publicly debated whether the late Ekema Patrick was fit to even be a chief of bureau.

Patrick Ekema Esunge( to use his three names)  previously had shown a masterly ability to create controversies that would sink any candidate running in the Fako County. He also struggled to move beyond condemnations of his dodgy academic achievements.

Top Anglophone CPDM militants including his kinsmen, former Prime Minister Peter Mafany Musonge, Senator Mbella Moki and Arthur Lysinge openly challenged his political remarks.  Southern Cameroons citizens, pro Yaounde Southern Cameroonians, Christians and Muslims alike backed away from him. But supported by President Biya of French Cameroun and Minister Paul Atanga Nji, the “Nyamoto Kpwatolo” continued to display negative combativeness against his own people when reconciliation and contrition might have been wiser choices.

The emptiness of CPDM political power

The spectacle swirling around Mayor Ekema Patrick’s tragic end on Sunday and deep within many Anglophone CPDM barons is continuing just as the more disciplined and organized Ambazonia Interim Government appeared to be finally consolidating strength for the final phase of the liberation war.

Anglophone Senators, MPs, Mayors are operating from French Cameroun and facing questions about their respective roles in the French Cameroun genocidal campaign in Southern Cameroons.

In a maneuver that symbolized how the regime in French Cameroun is trying to accommodate its CPDM Southern Cameroonians, Biya has been publicly flirting with the Swiss government and a dissident Ambazonia group calling itself, Sako’s IG.  

However, most European nations including the United States of America have repeatedly advised Yaoundé to start talking about the issues that the Ambazonia people care about — and to start doing it now with the jailed leadership.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Since the struggle for equality and justice by the people of Southern Cameroon against the Francophone north began, leading to an almost endless conflict between separatists from the Anglophone south and government forces, over 500, 000 Cameroonians fleeing from the crisis have been displaced.

While some of the displaced have taken refuge in rural areas and the forests, majority have spilled into border communities along the West African coast, with Cross River and Taraba States in Nigeria becoming the big hosts.

For those who fled their cozy abodes and structured lives in the wake of the crisis and found shelter in different parts of Nigeria, life has been everything but sweet. In a case of being displaced from home yet being unsettled abroad, life, indeed, has been a parody. Aside living in totally poor and inhuman conditions in camps hurriedly put up without consideration for basic amenities required for living, survival has been by the day and for the fittest.

Before the influx of the displaced Cameroonians, Adagom and Okende villages in Ogoja Local Council of Cross River State were quiet and agrarian. But the arrival of thousands of registered refugees eroded that serenity, as the two host villages with a population of less than 3, 000 have now become busy, with a cluster of 72 new communities (41 in Adagom and 31 in Okende) built up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and their partners. The development took vehicular and human traffic to a level never experienced before.

The population of refugees, according to the Director General, Cross River State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Mr. Princewill Ayim, keeps increasing daily, making it a challenge to put an accurate figure to the displaced persons being harboured. While a UNHCR report, stated that, “in Cross River alone, the 26, 000 figure as of March 2019, has grown to about 28,713,” Ayim confirmed that the number of unregistered refugees doubles the UNHCR figure.

In Taraba State, the displaced Cameroonians have taken refuge in five out of the 16 local government areas, namely; Takum, Ussa, Donga, Sardauna and Wukari.

Trauma, Hardship In Camps
As the refugee population continues to grow at the camps, the living condition and well being of the settlers are said to be everything but pleasant. Aside from the dehumanising conditions that they live in, majority of them have resorted to taking up menial jobs in the environs as a means of survival.

The Adagom settlement is just by the Ogoja-Katsina-Ala Highway. It has 41 small one-room structures, each mostly accommodating a household of five. It has no bath, toilet or kitchen facility. The cooking is done outside, while bath and toilets are provided outside by the UNHCR. The environment is moderately clean, with solar streetlights, and general pump boreholes provided in strategic corners across the massive settlement.

Asu Javis Owan, a 24-year-old, who runs a barbing salon outside the settlement, in company of his friends, was full of praise for the UNHCR and the Nigerian people for accommodating them, but he bemoaned the conditions at the camp.

He said: “The problems here are many. We do not have water and food. Occasionally, food would be there in the warehouse, but it would not be distributed. They will end up burning it when it goes bad and it pains us.

“They pay us monthly; each person gets N7, 200. But for three months now, they have not paid. The money is good, but before they pay us, we may have run into so much debt. They paid last in July. We survive with this money; we are just struggling.”

Owan arrived at the Adagom settlement with his parents last December after the army in Cameroon drove them away from Okwaya in Southern Cameroon over alleged claims by the Paul Biya-led government that they were terrorists.

Issues of poor access to education, feeding, health, prostitution, joblessness, discrimination and others were also raised when The Guardian sought other opinions in the camp. For instance, about 80 persons are said to have lost their lives in the past one year due to poor health facilities, hunger and trauma.

In the settlements in Taraba, some respondents told The Guardian that life has been pretty difficult as assistance expected from the authorities, especially from the Federal Government of Nigeria are not rendered when due.

The development, they added, has now resulted in the regular occurrence of avoidable vices in the camps as helpless parents, left with no alternative, succumb to trading their children for money.

The dire situation could, perhaps, have been the trigger for 20-year-old Claudia, a refugee at the Adagom camp, who recently sold her baby for N70, 000.

Claudia had arrived Nigeria from Cameroon in October 2018, pregnant, alongside over 40, 000 other refugees.

Charles Ojon, leader of the refugees in Adagom camp, recalled that Claudia was delivered of a baby shortly after she arrived at the camp, but had been struggling to survive the hellish conditions at the camp.

But for a dispute, which arose from the sharing formula of the proceeds from the baby sale, the act may have gone unnoticed.

According to Elvis Manget, one of the refugees on the security team of the camp, the deal was discovered when an argument ensued over the money. Some of the refugees who witnessed the incident said Claudia had been suffering since she arrived at the camp.

Claudia blamed her action on hunger and hardship.

Ojon said: “When the police came, she said she sold the child because of hardship; that there is no food or anything to feed the child with. That was just before they paid our July allowance. Then, everywhere was dry. A lot of us have been selling our things and using them to settle debts.”

Another refugee, who said he first met the woman when she had a case with a resident of Ogoja, whom she had an affair with, corroborated Ojon’s claim.

The refugee said: “A Nigerian had earlier been here to take her to his house; they slept together but he did not pay her after their business. So she came to report the matter to us; that was when I first saw her and the kid. We were sent to go and bring the man and the matter was later settled.”

In Taraba, some parents have also been compelled to give their children away as domestic helps. And some have lost contact with the children, who have since been taken to far-flung locations across the country.

Bubs Ali, a 13-year-old boy, who escaped from Cameroon along with his parents and came to Ussa, now goes round the villages helping people on their farms and often times washing plates in restaurants.

Worried that his dreams of getting educated may have been shattered, he called on the international community to urgently wade into the upheaval in his country.

Unlike Ali, many unlucky children in camps in Taraba State are currently miles away from their siblings and parents, as they have followed agents acting as middlemen for households in need of house helps.

A 46-year-old woman, who preferred to be anonymous, said many of those in the camps have fallen victims to agents, who, according to her, “always come here promising to help us train our children.”

The Guardian gathered that while some of the agents put on the garments of faith-based organisations to exploit the parents, some went as far as donning the emblems of Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) to be able wean the children off their parents or guardians.

Most of the camps visited were populated by women and children, and were in dire need of health facilities and sanitary systems. Outbreak of diseases seem imminent, as The Guardian observed in one instance that the refugees drank water from the same ponds with animals, just as they defecated indiscriminately around their surroundings due to lack of latrines.

The ugly situation of the refugees is made worse by the prevailing security situation in the Southern part of Taraba State, which has continually led to killings between the Tiv and Jukun, kidnappings and banditry.

According to some of the displaced persons, the ongoing killings in the zone have made life more difficult for them, in that they are always afraid to go out in search of work, or food and get mistaken as Tiv or Jukun in the process.

Refugees As Strain On Host Communities
Since their arrival and continuous inflow into their host communities in both Cross River and Taraba states, there have been muffled complaints by locals and their representatives that the massive presence of the Cameroonians was hitting hard on health facilities.

In a chat with The Guardian, a local council chairman, currently playing host to some of the refugees in Taraba, narrated how the massive influx of the refugees into his council in Ussa was fast crippling facilities.

The council boss, Rimansikwe Tanko Musa, stressed the need for governments at both the state and federal levels to establish a hospital in Ussa, stating that, “what we have here is a clinic. So, we need a hospital to address these challenges.”

The chairman said that the medical facility available, including drugs, have been over-stretched by the displaced persons. He lamented that the council was now in dire need of a well-equipped hospital.

The chairman, who spoke through his supervisory counselor on Primary Health Care, Sechap Giwa Rikuye, said: “While two of the wards in the council are presently being occupied by the refugees, one of the wards in the neighbouring Special Development Area of Yangtu, which also depends solely on the health clinic located in Ussa, have also been overtaken by the refugees.”

Apart from the state governments and the Taraba State Primary Health Care Development Agency (TSPHCDA) that have been giving some helping hand to the refugees, Musa added that the government at the centre has not deemed it fit to give any form of assistance to the camps.

Just as Ussa seeks the immediate establishment of an equipped hospital, it is the same story across other affected councils as their chairmen also called on the federal government to complement the state government’s effort in order to make life comfortable for the refuges as well as their host communities.

The agency that claimed to be aware of the presence of displaced persons from Cameroon in the state, said a lot of plans are in the pipelines to ensure that their health situations is adequately addressed

The Executive Secretary of the agency, Alhaji Aminu Hassan Jauro, who made this known through the State Health Education, Mrs. Mercy Maigoge, said the agency would not go to bed pending when 100 percent routine immunity coverage is actualised, stressing that the state government” is fully in support of what the agency is doing.”

The agency in collaboration with “our development partners” he said “are going to work collectively round the clock to ensure quality service delivery in the health facilities scattered across the affected councils.

Urging the health workers not to discriminate against the refugees and the people of the communities, the collaborating partners and the agency, as stated by him, have designed out plans to bring succour to persons assessing the health facilities and to put an end to child killer diseases in those camps “

Also, aware of the massive presence of Cameroon refugees in the state, governor Darius Dickson Ishaku, who recently played host to the Chief of Field Office, UNICEF, Nigeria, Bauchi Field Office, Mr. Bhanu Parhak said, “we are host to Cameroon refugees;  we will continue to try our best to assist them.”

The governor who said he has directed all council chairmen playing host to the refugees “to take adequate care of them” said the state will continue to do that until the situations in Cameroon is addressed.”

Source: The Guardian

La Republique du Cameroun has never had such an incompetent and corrupt president as they have today in the person of Paul Biya. A former aide to the 86 year old leader recently told Cameroon Concord News Group that “Biya should be arrested, brought into the streets of Yaoundé, openly disgraced and shot.”

The French Cameroun dictator faces an unending political crisis in Southern Cameroons including the re-emergence of the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram.  However, he continues to run every aspect of the nation without due process or fairness or any legal rights.

Whatever Biya wants, Biya gets! And of course he and the chartered members of his ruling CPDM crime syndicate have never been held to account for their crimes in Southern Cameroons which includes killing of thousands of innocent Ambazonia citizens and raping and harassment of women. Now he uses the word terrorist to describe genuine opposition directed at him.

Biya has constantly been modifying the constitution of the nation and we of this publication believe that he no longer has a clue what the Constitution requires of the president of the republic. Biya has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. His kinsmen and women including some of his supporters see his being in power as God-sent and the most magnificent win any tribe could have experienced.

This is of course incredibly offensive to Southern Cameroonians who are people with a conscience and who believe in the rule of law. The Ambazonia resistance and quest for an independent nation is a very serious moment in La Republique du Cameroun’s history.

La Republique du Cameroun has never had such an incompetent, oafish, intellectually challenged leader as Yaounde have today. Soon and very soon, even his Beti Ewondo supporters will be forced to see how dangerous he is to the so-called one and indivisible Cameroon.

Not all of Biya beneficiary- supporters will abandoned this sinking CPDM ship, but eventually more and more members of the French Cameroun army will be looking out for their own best interests, and hopefully the interests of La Republique du Cameroun.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The 86 year old French Cameroun dictator is reportedly destroying basic human rights and putting the long standing democratic culture in Southern Cameroons at risk. Biya gave the green light to Cameroon government army soldiers to use excessive force without proper justification against innocent Ambazonia civilians in a conflict that has entered its fourth year.

Ever since the proclamation of the independence of Southern Cameroons by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, Southern Cameroonians have seen the French Cameroun leader frontally attacking with his military and his policies all of British Southern Cameroons political, economic and social institutions.

With unflinching support from the French government and the deliberate silence on the part of the United Nations, Mr. Biya has blatantly refused any face-to-face talks with the leadership of the Ambazonia Interim Government or with representatives from the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch.

French Cameroun political elites such as Justice Minister Laurent Esso, the Minister Secretary General at the presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and the Minister for Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo who basically run the ruling CPDM crime syndicate are not allowed to speak to the media.

The Yaoundé regime has adopted a hard-line security strategy that has fueled a surge in army killings in Southern Cameroons in the last three years. Biya himself has frequently lambasted the leadership of the Ambazonia Interim Government and the Southern Cameroons diaspora including French Cameroun political leaders, activists and media outlets – accusing everyone but his gang of attempting to destabilize the so-called one and indivisible Cameroon. 

For 37 years, Mr. Biya has been the target of massive nationwide demonstrations over his policy that ranges from plain fiction to the most absurd.  Biya’s supporters often take to the streets in a show of support, but generally in smaller numbers in Southern Cameroons.

For more than three decades as head of state, Biya has successfully narrowed down the democratic space in both La Republique du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons. The former Roman Catholic Archbishop of  Yaoundé who enjoyed political flirtation with the Biya Francophone regime was heard murmuring privately that his kinsman Biya has slowly but surely transformed La Republique du Cameroun into an elected dictatorship were the head of state is above the law.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai