Many renowned academics have opined that criminal states are a new form of dangerous state developing at catastrophic rapidity in the Sub Saharan Africa region.

While state failure, military takeover and oligarchic regimes are emerging in the ECOWAS bloc, the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé, Cameroon which never had its origins from jihadi insurgency or lawless zones is now undeniably the biggest mafia state in the CEMAC area.

For 40 years, the Biya Francophone regime has successfully put an end to rule of law in Cameroon and its elite force known as the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), with a modus operandi similar to a criminal organization is monopolizing all the tools of political, military and economic power.

The Rapid Intervention Battalion was constituted predominantly with young men from the Beti-Bulu tribal extractions and the force only receives directives from a small group of individuals close to the 90-year-old President Paul Biya who consider the ownership of all the individual and collective affairs of the Cameroonian society as their inherent right and have no responsibility toward society and no obligation to be accountable.

Perhaps we can arrive at a more accurate understanding of the nature of the Biya Francophone regime if we examine calmly and honestly the prominent men and women of the regime who are currently being held at the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaoundé and also the abduction of the NERA 10 in Abuja, Nigeria, the Captain Guerandi affair including the brutal murder of His Lordship Bishop Balla of the Diocese of Bafia and the recent assassination of journalists Martinez Zogo and Samuel Wazizi. It is evident that Cameroon is a state in which criminal gangs have taken over key parts of the system of government.

However, when you mention the description mafia state, many Cameroonians are quick to look at only the executive and sometimes the military. But there exist a criminal super-organization that controls the legislative power of the two houses: the National assembly and the House of Senate.

So in Cameroon, we are not dealing with the ruling CPDM party as the main criminal organization which is hiding behind the façade and the machinery of a constitutional state but with a Francophone dominated government that has been using some mushroom political parties in French speaking Cameroun to seize and control power at all governmental levels.

There are Beti-Bulu gangs in Yaoundé who are hiding behind the fight against corruption and Francophone politicians who pretend to obey the rule of law and are arresting their competitors and opponents and punishing them through legal channels like the Yaoundé Military Tribunal and the Special Criminal Court.

In Cameroon under Biya, the consortium of CPDM crime syndicates have abandoned all legitimate tools of political control and, like many criminal gangs, are  working hard with celebrated criminals like Ministers Paul Atanga Nji and Laurent Esso to keep control on society through threats, extortion, kidnapping, terror and by showcasing cruelty and torture.

We of both the Cameroon Intelligence Report and Cameroon Concord News believe that the purpose of this Biya Francophone endeavor is not to administer Cameroon and Cameroonians but only to obtain money from the poor masses and expand their money-making power. A government that for over six years has been using its troops to kill innocent civilians and spread terror among a marginalized people in Southern Cameroons, must be viewed not as a nation-state but only as a criminal super-organization that has captured the instruments of government.

Biya’s foreign policy of developing and hastily improving relations with the Russian Federation at a time when the Russian Czar is destroying Ukraine cannot be understood even by its backers in Paris. The Yaoundé pro Russia stance can only be understood from the point of view of a criminal organization that controls the instruments of government and its focus on the interests of a particular group, (Beti-Bulu) and only thinks about expanding the sphere of influence of this group and enriching it.

In the face of such a criminal model of governance in Yaoundé, it is abundantly clear that the European Union is not serious about the war in Ukraine. The EU’s   political, economic and military relations with the Biya regime practically means empowering a mafia state that naturally seeks to replicate itself by connecting with other criminal organizations in the world including the one Vladimir Putin is heading in Moscow.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The wealthiest square mile in Africa is hosting a big international summit this week with a mixture of pride, relief, and a hint of unease.

Sandton – a glitzy banking district on the outskirts of South Africa’s increasingly dilapidated city of Johannesburg – is the venue for the latest meeting of the Brics group, an ambitious but amorphous bloc of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), united by a desire to challenge perceived Western dominance in global affairs. Dozens of other nations are queuing up to join.

The current wave of relief felt here in South Africa in relation to Brics can be explained by President Vladimir Putin’s recent decision to stay away from the summit.

Had he insisted on coming, South Africa would have finally had to clarify its position on whether it would carry out its international obligation to arrest Russia’s leader for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Spared that awkward challenge, South African officials are now revelling in their role as host – proudly filling journalists’ inboxes with a flood of emails about Brics breakfast meetings, trade fairs, township dialogues and the like.

This unusual degree of official enthusiasm serves, to some observers, to underline quite how far and fast this country appears to be steering away from the West, not just towards a more multi-polar world, but firmly into China and, to a lesser extent, Russia’s orbit.

At a recent pre-summit meeting of Brics foreign ministers in Cape Town, a Russian journalist leant over to me in a news conference and declared: “You can keep your human rights paradise [in the West]. We are remaking the world.”

Brics may still be in its infancy, but it is generating – at least in some quarters – a genuine and disruptive sense of energy and excitement.

A colleague who attended a foreign policy workshop organised by South Africa’s government told me of an overwhelming consensus there that China was the future, and the West was in decline.

Which is where South Africa’s unease comes into the equation.

The country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa – a wealthy businessman – will be acutely aware of the fact that the local economy, hit hard by Covid and grappling with the world’s highest levels of unemployment and inequality, desperately needs more foreign investment if it is to escape a spiralling crisis.

Russia is certainly not the answer. Its trading relationship with South Africa is almost non-existent.

China is an increasingly important player but is, nonetheless, overshadowed here by longstanding trade with, and investment from, the European Union (EU) and the US.

So why would South Africa jeopardise those key Western relationships – already strained – at a time of profound economic uncertainty?

The answer, at least in part, appears to lie within the country’s increasingly weary and erratic governing party.

After three decades in power, the African National Congress (ANC) is struggling to rid itself of infighting, corruption and administrative chaos.

Confronted with the war in Ukraine, for instance, South Africa’s government has offered a muddled grab-bag of responses – first condemning the invasion, then pointedly refusing to condemn it, then blaming Nato, praising Mr Putin, offering itself as a peace broker, hosting Russian naval exercises, rushing to explain itself to Washington, and casually repeating Kremlin talking points.

Then there is the still lingering mystery of whether South Africa supplied arms to Russia last year – as alleged by the US.

There is little doubt that President Ramaphosa is deeply uneasy about Russia’s invasion and anxious to portray himself as a wise and neutral advocate for a more multi-polar world.

But many in his government and party routinely undermine that stance – often citing nostalgia for Moscow’s support during the anti-apartheid struggle and a more general suspicion of US foreign policy.

The haphazard messaging has managed to irritate all sides in the conflict and succeeded only in making South Africa appear weak and indecisive.

Nelson Mandela’s “rainbow nation” is certainly struggling right now – with some even warning that it could soon become a “failed state”.

But this week’s Brics summit will, by contrast, provide the Kremlin with a useful platform to showcase its own, far more strategic and effective diplomacy.

Recent headlines from the continent may have been dominated by the coup in Niger, and the potential for Russia’s thuggish, opportunistic, Wagner Group mercenaries to exploit the chaos for their own benefit, as they have already done in Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR).

But at least as significant is the success with which Moscow, through its hard-travelling Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and through canny media messaging, has managed to present itself – after decades with almost no presence on the continent – as a credible alternative to “colonial” Western influence in Africa.

In countries wrestling with poverty, the impact of climate change, increasingly youthful populations, and growing unemployment, frustration with the status quo has left many people open to new alternatives.

Which begs the question – what have Western nations been doing to challenge Russia?

It is, of course, dangerous to make generalisations about this continent, and both wrong and offensive to suggest African governments are merely pawns in a reviving Cold War.

But where is the Western version of Brics? The UK has a “minister for Africa” – but almost no-one has ever bothered to stay in the job for more than a year.

A preoccupation with development projects, strict conditions and cherry-picked foreign invitations for favoured African leaders, has fuelled the claim that France, the UK and other former colonial powers are still treating the continent as a tiresome crisis to be managed, rather than a partner to be supported.

This may be unfair. After all, Western nations have, for decades, devoted significant energy and cash towards supporting health services, businesses and governments across the continent.

But the role of Western armies – French troops and American drones in particular – in places like Niger and Somalia, has provoked strong backlashes.

Which may help to explain why Brics’s alternative vision is gaining traction on this continent, and why the bloc will be making its case, loudly and confidently, in the conference halls of Sandton this week.

Source: BBC

Since 2016, the conflict in Cameroon between armed separatists and government forces has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced over 500,000 in the country’s north west and south west regions, where 2.2 million people need humanitarian assistance. The government’s hybrid approach to the crisis, combining political and security measures, has failed to appease local aspirations for autonomy, federalism, or even secession.

Compounding the problem, Cameroon – which has long been a stable authoritarian regime – looks poised to enter a process of leadership change that will make it more challenging to find a negotiated solution for the conflict.

Breakdown of federalism

English-speaking Cameroonians make up approximately 20 percent of the country’s population. To understand the causes of the conflict with the predominantly Anglophone population of the country’s Northwest and Southwest, one must examine both remote and immediate causes.

The crisis, like most similar clashes across the continent, is a product of the artificial borders drawn by colonial powers, along with the failures of decolonization and post-independence state-building. In Cameroon, as elsewhere, these failures were exposed by ethnic, tribal, and cultural cleavages that fueled resistance to a centralized state – making ethnicity a root cause and accelerator of political conflict.

The situation became clear in the 2018 presidential campaign, when incumbent President Paul Biya defeated Maurice Kamto in a free but not fair election. The ballot’s aftermath exposed the ethnic dimension of tensions between the Bamileke and Bamoun, who inhabit western Cameroon, and the Bassa, perceived by many as the country’s hegemonic ethnic group, buttressed by a centralized political structure viewed by much of the populace as illegitimate.

In the 19th century, present-day Cameroon was a German protectorate. After World War I, it was divided by a League of Nations mandate into two unequal parts – British Cameroon and French Cameroon – under the administration of those two colonial powers.

By the late 1950s, as decolonization in Africa accelerated, the newly independent states tried to use these inherited administrative structures to forge national identities in a continent fragmented along multiple ethnic, religious and geographic divides, and constrained by the arbitrary colonial-era borders.

French Cameroon gained independence in 1960, becoming the Republic of Cameroon. Inhabitants of the Trustee Territory of Southern Cameroon were given a choice: they could join recently independent Nigeria as a federated state or combine with the Republic of Cameroon, also as a federation. In a United Nations plebiscite organized in 1961, the latter option was chosen, transferring sovereignty to the Federal Republic of Cameroon. Many in the Anglophone states, however, accused French Cameroon of ignoring the principles of federalism, instead maintaining the centralized practices set forth by the unitary Constitution of 1960.

Escalating crisis

Federalism was formally overturned in 1972, under President Ahmadou Ahidjo, who changed the name of the country to the United Republic of Cameroon. In 1984, President Biya went one step further and truncated the official designation to the Republic of Cameroon, reverting to the original term under French administration. Anglophones reacted by challenging the decision in the courts.

Resentment and grievances generated by the failure of the federal principle resurfaced in 2016, triggered by the imposition of French as the language of education, the courts and administration. Since the Constitution grants equal status to the English and French languages, Anglophones perceived the imposition of French-speaking teachers, lawyers and judges as a form of marginalization. Initially, discontent came in the form of peaceful protests and strikes, with calls for the restoration of federalism.

The turning point in the crisis, starting its inexorable escalation into an armed conflict, came in January 2017, when the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, an umbrella of civil society organizations, started to organize a stay-at-home boycott campaign called Operation Ghost Town Resistance. In October, secessionist groups declared the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions. The declaration stated that Anglophone Cameroon had been recolonized rather than decolonized and was a case of black-on-black colonization.

The declaration started a shift in which civil society actors were replaced by political actors, demands for autonomy were dropped in favor of independence, and armed struggle became a viable option. The Ambazonia Defense Forces, as the armed wing of the separatist movement called itself, took control of portions of the territory. President Biya deployed the army in the Anglophone regions, promising to crush the rebellion.

Hybrid approach

To overcome the crisis, the Cameroonian regime has resorted to a mixture of political and security measures. The strategy is to appease groups demanding more autonomy, while militarily defeating the separatists.

After the 2017 strikes, the government established a National Commission to promote bilingualism and multiculturalism. In 2019, President Biya launched a national dialogue on unity and peace. More importantly, at least from a formal standpoint, in 2019 the parliament granted the Northwest and Southwest special status. Based on “their linguistic particularity and historic heritage,” these areas were given more autonomy to run local affairs, while receiving funds earmarked from the central government for local and regional governments.

In theory, the devolution of more power, responsibility and resources to regional bodies could be a remedy for the crisis. In practice, however, the decentralizing initiative failed. Firstly, the central government did not follow through on its 2019 promise to provide the funds and autonomy for real local government. Spending decisions still depended on approval from the capital, while centralization continued to rule even mundane aspects of people’s lives (for example, students completing their degrees claim they are forced to travel to Yaounde to get an official certificate).

Secondly, a political radicalization had taken place, as many Anglophones internalized secessionist denunciations of Yaounde’s “annexationist” impulses and came to believe that autonomy was no longer enough, leaving formalized federalism or independence as the solution.

The Cameroonian regime also took hard measures to address the crisis. In 2017, the government imposed a 90-day internet ban on the Anglophone region, which bruised an already fragile economy and inflamed feelings of marginalization. The government also deployed the Rapid Intervention Battalion – an elite internal security unit of the Cameroonian army that reports directly to the president – to fight the separatist forces.

Crisis accelerators

A convergence of factors suggests that finding a negotiated, sustainable solution to the current crisis may be difficult.

The first is that Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are endowed with significant natural resources, including timber, oil and fertile land. While the competing political claims for autonomy and independence are historically rooted, the competition for resources often acts as a grievance “accelerator,” as can be seen in other separatist regions in Africa where economic self-determination is salient.

A second factor is the political and regional divisions within the Anglophone regions themselves. While in 2016 various groups united behind the goal of defending their common Anglophone identity against the central state, differences regarding the means and ultimate ends are now evident. While some would accept the autonomy granted under special status, others want a return to the two-state federation and a third group insists on the armed struggle to win independence. Moreover, there are now multiple separatist militias operating in the region, feeding an escalating spiral of violence against civilians by both militias and security forces.

Paul Biya

During his 41 years in power, authoritarian President Paul Biya has moved the country toward further centralization, despite promises of autonomy for Anglophone minority regions. He is now 90 years old, and the transfer of power to his successor is likely to be bumpy. © Getty Images

A third factor is the regional context. The security outlook in West Africa has deteriorated over the past decade, amid a vicious cycle of terrorism, organized crime, food insecurity and displacement. In Cameroon and Nigeria, terrorist groups are active in the northern regions, while separatist militias operate in areas immediately to the south. Some have begun to cooperate among themselves, as seen by the 2021 alliance between the Ambazonia Defense Forces and the armed wing of the Indigenous People of Biafra, a Nigerian-based separatist movement.

Finally, social media are playing a growing role in the conflict, as parties turn to the digital sphere to air their grievances and spread information or disinformation. Digital platforms are particularly important for the interaction they allow with diaspora communities, which are key sources of intellectual and financial support. However, social media should be treated as a vehicle or medium, rather than as a root cause of conflict.

The end of stable authoritarianism

The Anglophone crisis must also be analyzed in the context of Cameroon’s political system, which is a case study of stable authoritarianism. Since winning independence more than six decades ago, the country has only had two presidents. President Biya, who came to power in 1982, is Africa’s longest-tenured leader after Teodoro Obiang, who has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979.

As in other African countries, Cameroon’s authoritarianism survived the so-called third wave of democratization, which took place in the 1990s. While the country formally adopted multipartyism, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) retained its hegemony and Mr. Biya has continued to win every presidential ballot since he came to power.

Not surprisingly, the consolidation of personalized and resilient authoritarianism went hand in hand with centralization. In 1982, as mentioned, the president used his power to establish a unitary and more centralized state. At the epicenter of power was the presidency, where President Biya exercised the direct power of appointment for all senior posts. Presidential term limits were removed from the Constitution in 2008, a year marked by violent protests over high food and fuel prices, which Mr. Biya seized upon as a pretext to stay in power indefinitely. A clause granting regions the power to elect governors was also deleted from the country’s constitution.

Even had President Biya behaved more moderately, the very nature of Cameroon’s regime – especially its dependence on dense patronage networks – was not conducive to decentralization, let alone federalism. Decision-making powers and funds have been tightly concentrated in national governing bodies, to the detriment of regional and municipal governments.

Scenarios

The Anglophone crisis is a cautionary tale about the centralized state model that has prevailed across Africa since independence. That model often ignores the importance of ethnic, cultural and religious identities. When these identities are perceived as being threatened – in Cameroon’s case, through fears of cultural marginalization in the educational, judicial and administrative systems – they generate local resentment of central authority and autonomic or separatist claims, which in the Anglophone regions are based on historically rooted notions of a common identity and territory.

Moreover, Cameroon’s regional crisis of legitimacy is now being reproduced at the national level. President Biya is 90 years old. Whether or not he runs for another term in 2025, succession is clearly an inevitable question. This outlook makes it more challenging to find a negotiated and peaceful solution to the Anglophone crisis. Periods of leadership transition (and the struggles they trigger) under resilient and personalized authoritarian regimes are often unpredictable. Given the several failed attempts at international mediation, and in light of widespread Anglophone skepticism about the government’s commitment to decentralization, the conflict seems bound to continue.

Source: gist report online

The Yaoundé initiative that was designed to resolve the crisis in Southern Cameroons, officially known as the Grand National Dialogue, is now, for all practical purposes, dead. Just like the Tripartite in the days of the late Ni John Fru Ndi and the SDF, this deal is no more. It has gone to meet its maker. This is a former deal.

To be sure, the undertaker, significantly, was none other than the senile character currently impersonating as father of the Cameroonian nation.

His name may be Paul Biya, but the 90-year-old Francophone dictator is in fact a combination of different things whose only job is mimicking the words whispered to his earpiece by his young and inexperienced wife Chantal Biya.

Biya’s acolytes say the Grand National Dialogue deal is dead and gone with Cardinal Tumi but Yaoundé is not willing to announce it!  

When he was relatively less senile in the 90s, on his campaign trail, Biya promised that he would personally supervise the construction of the Bamenda ring road.

But the prominent and successful failure has played the spoiler role to perfection and today Cameroon is in chaos.

Now with the numerous coups in Francophone Africa, it is evidently clear that only an intense and productive discussion with the NERA 10 headed by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe will guarantee peace and prosperity in the Sub Saharan geopolitical chessboard. Russia’s Wagner has reduced France in Africa to an outsize satrapy.

Correspondingly, Dion Ngute’s recent trip to Buea is simply La Republique playing for time before coming up with renewed mischief. Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Minister-Secretary General at the presidency himself has revealed, on record, that the Grand National Dialogue in Yaoundé was nothing but a gigantic farce.

The Ambazonia Interim Government though never fell into the trap. President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and Vice President Dabney Yerima saw through it from the start: never trust La Republique du Cameroun.

Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his deputy Dabney Yerima intuitively knew that no one deep within the Francophone dominated government in Yaoundé would respect the outcome of the Grand National Dialogue.

Biya and his gang have never made an effort to implement anything positive that came out of the Grand National Dialogue.  The unspoken mantra was to keep the Ambazonia Interim Government down.  

If Biya and his Francophone Beti Ewondo government were really interested from the start in achieving peace with the people of Southern Cameroons, the straightforward path would have been to ditch the current fake unitary system of government and go for federalism.

Instead, they have been using their corrupt pro Yaoundé Southern Cameroons political elites to demand more troops’ deployment to Ambazonia and making a mockery of the Canadian peace initiative.

Ngute’s latest trip to Buea without any Francophone CPDM baron in his delegation is an indication that the Grand National Dialogue is not a priority anymore.

Hence the Blame Ambazonia Game reaching a fever pitch all over in La Republique du Cameroun: Amba Boys are killing innocent people, Amba Boys are involved in kidnapping and extortion and Amba Boys are responsible for the suffering in Southern Cameroons. 

At least now it’s in the open: the only thing that matters for the Biya regime is to dish-out bribes to weak Southern Cameroons leaders and fighters and also to bribe as many traditional rulers as possible forcing them to denounce the Ambazonia uprising.

Nobody will miss the Grand National Dialogue. But what we of the Cameroon Concord News Group want the people of Southern Cameroons to take home is that the decaying Biya regime is an eminently untrustworthy entity.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

For over two years now, western media and human rights organizations have alluded without convincing evidence that the continuous hosting of entertainment and sporting events in Saudi Arabia is an attempt by the Kingdom to “sportswash” its negative human rights reputation.

While these unproven allegations are being made in the West about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a man in Buea, Cameroon, with a questionable character, has been engaged full-throttle in “imagewash“.

This man is Rev Fonki Samuel Forba, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon who has been burning through money like wild fire.

Rev Fonki has been the moderator of the PCC since 2014 and has just over a year left in his official tenure, and his job description designates him as the spiritual leader of the institution he presides over.

The consensus among PCC Christians is that he has wrecked the church by robbing the institution’s finances with no limits and possesses no fear of God.

He has been accused by those close to him of possessing no iota of spirituality, and he has appointed, without justification, his henchmen to positions they are ill-equipped for.

Cameroon is a country not renowned for keeping statistics on anything. Still, a recent survey of PCC members in the Northwest and Southwest regions of the country returned that the moderator has an approval rating of 9.3%. Even in Akwaya, where he says he comes from, his approval rating was 16.9%.

With such dismal approval ratings, Rev Fonki is working hard to restore respectability to his battered image before he exits the stage next year.

A recent video which went viral on social media with Rev Fonki dancing and spraying cash around like a Nigerian scammer in a Lagos nightclub did not help him.

So, last week, the ‘chief scammer of Buea’ arranged with some like-minded crooks in a mushroom institution which has distinguished itself for shady academic quality to confer on him an honorary PhD.

The Protestant University of Central Africa in Yaoundé is one of Cameroon’s many institutions of higher learning, with lecturers and administrators who know little about academics, honesty, spirituality and humility.

This institution has never had a credible reputation, and it surprises no one with brains that they followed Rev Fonki’s wish to grant him his questionable degree.

The Reverend brought a few clowns to the sham ceremony dressed in Manyu traditional regalia claiming to be notables from Akwaya—a sad joke of a spectacle.

Watching a short clip of the charade unfold on Facebook invokes rage and many other strong emotions.

Apologists for Rev Fonki are now forwarding the video of the shameful commemoration stating that he is now an academic and honorary doctor.

No amount of “imagewash” by a man with no integrity and academic standing will change the facts.

In biblical days, Rev Fonki would have been sentenced by the highest court of the land to death by stoning and would have earned it for his contribution to wrecking the PCC, using exaggerated thievery as a weapon.

Today, people are required to address him as Rev Dr Fonki Samuel Forba. The world has changed for the worse. The “imagewash” Gospel, according to Rev Fonki, is here.Hallelujah!!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

This year, precisely from the 20th to 22^nd of October 2023, SOBA UK will bring the world together again at Celtic Manor Resort, Newport in Wales.

SOBA UK’s innovation theme has been revealed to both Cameroon Intelligence Report and the Cameroon Concord News.

“Empowering for Success: Unlocking the potential of the boy child” is the theme that will be executed by renowned academics and business leaders. Cameroon Concord News Group is proud to have been invited for this event.

Each year, SOBA UK creates immersive experiences where guests feel like members in the UK House of Lords!!  This particular year, guests will feel like Royals!!

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group understand that the exquisite Celtic Manor Resort, nestled amidst the enchanting Coldra Wood in Newport is a model that engages your senses, surprises you throughout the convention, excites you to interact with hands-on activities, and takes down barriers so guests feel comfortable to network with everyone at the event.

As Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of the Concord Group, I have requested our London Bureau to visit the Celtic Manor Resort!! We’ll give you a hint after the visit!!

To this I put my name:

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

He went to Russia to beg as usual, using the Russia-Africa Summit as an excuse or a pretext, but Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, also known as the Lion man, will be leaving the Russian capital, Moscow, with a bloodshot eye.

Russia may be in need of allies but it does not have money to give to irresponsible governments like the Yaoundé regime which has been on a begging spree for decades.

Russia has already forgiven some of the continent’s debt but this does not imply it has money to distribute to African leaders who have clearly demonstrated that their relationship with money is causing death and destruction in their countries.

The Yaoundé government, led by the country’s collapsing president, Paul Biya, is an example of a government which cannot use in a responsible manner, any money given to it by its allies and international organizations.

If Mr. Biya will have anything of import, it might be assurances from the “Russian Czar” that it would not overthrow the corrupt and moribund Yaounde government which has been in power for over four decades and has nothing to show for its existence.

Russia has been the brain behind the anti-French sentiments across West Africa and these sentiments are resulting in the overthrow of pro-French and incompetent leaders in French-speaking West African countries, with Mohammed Bazoum of Niger Republic being the latest victim.

For some years now, Yaoundé has been the target of Wagner Group forces and this has rattled the beleaguered Yaoundé government which has been weakened by corruption, Boko Haram and Ambazonian fighters who are regrouping to finally take back their beloved Southern Cameroons.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

President Biya’s end is very near and his fall will be sudden, swift and bloodless. It is more than a month ever since the 90-year-old travelled to France from where he reportedly fired General Ngambou Esaïe after the soldier man warned Minister Paul Atanga Nji that he was walking on broken bottles.

We of the Concord Group can now reveal that a new president is in the making. In the nation’s capital Yaoundé, Biya’s acolytes both within his ruling CPDM party and the military are claiming that he is still in charge and that it is business as usual.

But there is still much they in Yaoundé don’t know. And one of such is simply that, you cannot remain head of state forever!

There are under-the-table talks that the army may intervened due to the sacking of General Ngambou Esaïe which is widely seen as clearing the way for Franck Biya, President Biya’s eldest son to succeed the father.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands Biya and his men are in Geneva planning a massive purge deep within the ruling CPDM party with prominent CPDM barons being targeted.

According to Cameroon Intelligence Report sources, plans are being made to arrest top figures both in government and in the military.

Where is Paul Biya?

Mr Biya has been conspicuously absent since he travelled to France a month ago. The 90-year-old president is now at the mercy of his young and foolish wife who is keeping him under guard at the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva. He only reads prepared statements and talk to cabinet ministers who speak his native tongue.

But he has not been seen by the Cameroonian people since his recent trip to France. So, who actually fired General Ngambou?

It is clear that Chantal Biya and her relations are now in charge of state affairs in a country that is disintegrating! The ruling CPDM party should disown Biya and if they do—- A new president is indeed in the making

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

A list of 67 suspicious transactions scheduled for investigation by Cameroon’s tax agency shows a total equivalent of $656 million in undeclared payments from state coffers to questionable business entities and individuals. The list, obtained by the Arizona Project team in Cameroon (see box at end of article), covers the period 2017 to 2021 and contains the names of beneficiaries with foreign connections, some real and some possibly fake.

However, the tax investigations, initiated by former tax agency Director-General Mopa Fatoing, seem to have been snuffed out. No results have been forthcoming and Mr Fatoing was recently removed from his post by Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya.

This is another finding of the Arizona Project (See story: ‘The murder of Martinez Zogo’) investigation into the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo, which was conducted by Cameroonian and West African journalists in ZAM’s partner Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors (NAIRE), together with the ZAM platform itself and international partners in Italy, Nigeria, Togo, and Equatorial Guinea (see credit box). There are no indications whatsoever that any one of the individuals named on the list -except for Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, who is now jailed on charges in connection with the case- have anything to do with the murder of Martinez Zogo. But the journalist’s gruesome killing created a climate of terror and silence in which any and all corruption investigations in Cameroon, including the tax agency’s list of 67 cases, came to a standstill.

A terse letter

According to a letter written by former tax Director-General Mopa Modeste Fatoing, his office was put on the trail of the 67 cases by the state’s own anti-corruption agency, ANIF (L’Agence Nationale d’investigation Financière). ANIF investigates fraud and money laundering concerning state finances and is attached to the Ministry of Finance. The letter, which was attached to the Excel spreadsheet of the 67 transactions, is dated 5 July 2021. It is addressed by Fatoing to his revenue service’s “monsieur le chef de division des enquêtes, de la programmation et du suivi des controles,” i.e. the investigations divisions chief.

The tone of the letter is terse. “I had already instructed you to follow up on (the list),” he wrote. “Up to today, these instructions have not been followed. ANIF needs dossier numbers to work with.” However, little has been heard from the tax office on the list of 67. Mr Fatoing was removed and posted to an office position at the IMF in Washington on 26 January 2023, a mere four days after the murdered body of Martinez Zogo was found in the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé.

Titled “état des dossiers programmables” (“status of cases to be scheduled”), the Excel sheet containing the 67 payment lines shows that the tax agency is, or at least was, concerned that individuals with access to Cameroon’s state budget paid out massive amounts of state money for mostly unclear services between 2017 and 2021 to, inter alia, foreign exchange and money transfer companies, mining and wood logging companies, tourist and transport companies, hotels and financial consulting companies. In twenty-nine of the sixty-seven cases, there was no indication of what the money was for.

The 67 transactions also include a substantial number of payments to companies connected to media mogul Amougou Belinga, who was arrested in January 2023 on charges in connection with the murder of Martinez Zogo and for which he is still awaiting trial (See story: ‘The life and trials of a media tycoon’). According to the spreadsheet, Belinga’s companies could have received payments amounting to the FCFA equivalent of $125 million. But even though Belinga’s cases have largely been made public in Cameroon, were very publicly investigated by the tax authorities, and form the background of the current charges against him in the Martinez Zogo case, he is not the biggest fish to be found in the tax agency’s Excel sheet (1). That is an Italian called Eugenio Matarazzi, whose forestry company Société Industrielle de Mbang (SIM) appears to have received more than double that: over $273 million for “wood logging” in one transaction alone. According to the spreadsheet, Matarazzi also received $200,000 personally (see below for SIM’s and Matarazzi’s comments).

The Italian link

Unrelated to the tax case, Arizona Project Team partner Edoardo Anziano of IRPI (Investigative Reporting Project Italy, found that Matarazzi’s company has a reputation for illegal logging in Cameroon. In 2004, Anziano reports, the NGO Global Witness found irregularities in forest concessions where SIM was subcontracted by another company. In one case, this company “through its sub-contractor SIM” was found guilty of “timber extraction out of the limits (…), of failure in marking the stumps and trees, and of abandoning the timber produced.” In 2005, the following year, the NGO Greenpeace claimed that “the Cameroonian-based timber company Société Industrielle de Mbang (SIM) is involved in large-scale illegal logging in Cameroon, both directly and indirectly.”

Reports from local communities allegedly affected by SIM’s logging operations align with these accusations. “In the Mbam et Kim region, this company now has a virtual monopoly on logging operations, which it has won with the active support of a highly influential local elite,” a senior official of the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife told the news site Cameroun24. According to the Association des Journalistes Africains pour l’Environnement (Association of Environmental Journalists) in Cameroon, other officials have defined SIM’s activities as “illegal plundering of forests.”

The forestry minister helped, forest communities protested

According to a Facebook post from 2015 about a visit to Italy organised by the “Cameroon-Italy Friendship Association”, both the Italian ambassador to Cameroon and Matarazzi were present at a dinner organised by Theodore Datouo, the deputy speaker of the Cameroonian parliament. But Datouo is only one of a number of influential contacts of Matarazzi in Cameroon. His principal ally is forestry minister Jules Doret Ndongo, who has extended many forest concessions to SIM and has, according to a reliable source, also been instrumental in granting public money to SIM after it threatened to declare bankruptcy and lay off hundreds of its staff unless it was granted government assistance.

In 2020, community representatives of the eastern region of Lom and Djerem in Cameroon wrote to Doret Ndongo to ask him to stop yet another concession to SIM “because our water comes from the forest,” according to news site Stopblabla.com.

We could not establish if the concession continued regardless.

Both Matarazzi’s contacts Datouo and Ndongo are reportedly close to Chantal Biya, the wife of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.

In a letter sent in response to questions, SIM said that it does not ‘sell anything to the state of Cameroon’ and that it also ‘has never requested and does not receive state subsidies’, adding that Mr. Eugenio Matarazzi ‘has never requested or obtained money from the Cameroonian state.’ SIM attached tax certificates, dated 13 and 15 June 2023, declaring that neither it nor Mr Matarazzi owe any tax to the state of Cameroon. It also attached confirmation of a tax audit, dated 15 February 2022,, that covered the four years 2017, 2018, 21019, 2020, i.e. the same period as the list in ZAM’s possession. The tax audit confirmation letter reads, inter alia, that ‘envisaged adjustments were brought to the attention of the taxpayer.’ In its letter, SIM cites this, adding that ‘to our knowledge, this verification did not reveal the criminal acts which would have been reported to you.’ With regard to the reported irregularities in SIM’s forest concessions, the company said that “in Cameroon, forest concessions are awarded by the State and in particular the Ministry in charge of public procurement on the basis of objective criteria and following an open and transparent procedure. It is not uncommon for losers to cry out about “unfair competition” and “fraud”.” The company reiterated that accusations of irregularities, illegal logging, plunder and benefiting from elite connections are part of such “smear campaigns”.

Another major recipient of state money on the list of 67 is a foreign exchange company based in Maroua in the far northern part of Cameroon, which borders Chad and Nigeria: it received the equivalent of $227 million for unspecified services. A third recipient, a company that goes by its abbreviation, FINEX, received $38 million for “transport.” This appears to show that the government paid the real bus company First National Express FINEX for travel, which it provides between Cameroon’s two main cities Yaoundé and Douala. However, close scrutiny through the Orbis company database reveals that the FINEX beneficiary listed on the spreadsheet is a different company. The one on the list has (among other numbers) a Mauritanian phone number, is in shipping, and is represented by a person whose phone number is in Yaoundé but whose email address appears to be from within the French multinational construction company Bolloré network.

“No road like that”

Also in the top ten, in 6th and 7th place respectively, are two directors of companies in Nigeria, who were paid the equivalent of $13 million and $7 million respectively. The first director’s company could not be traced to its registered address at 10 Market Road in Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom state in Nigeria’s South-South. Colleagues from the Nigerian online news platform the Premium Times (PT) www.premiumtimesng.com, who went to check in Uyo, were told that “it does not exist” by local residents, cab drivers and other transport operators. The Chairperson of the Uyo Local Government Area, Uwemedimo Udo, told the team in a text message, “No road like that to my knowledge, please.”

The PT team also could not find the second director’s company at its registered address of Plot 3, block 38, Yinka Bello street off Admirality Way 12 in Lekki Phase 1, Lagos. “The occupants of the building in the said address are Lagos Bridge Hotel,” the PT team reported. “An official of the hotel said they have occupied the space since 2006, three years before the incorporation of (the company you are looking for).” Neither of the two companies seems to have a website, and an extensive search shows that they don’t have an online presence on social networking platforms. “All efforts to retrieve contacts for the individuals or their company ask them for comment proved futile,” reported the PT team.

A person listed in 9th place is based in Jaipur, India and received $5.6 million for unspecified services. We could not find any functional contact details for the businessman, but a person matching the name and the Cameroonian company registration is listed as chairing a company in “raw farm products” with headquarters in Singapore, which does not appear to have a website, nor a contact address or email. It shares its Singapore address with a shipping company. The same individual is also listed as a director of a travel company with offices in Abuja and Kano in Nigeria, but there was no response at either of the two listed office telephone numbers when the Premium Times team tried to call. No contacts could be found for two other companies registered to the same person in Benin either. In 10th place is a company in Yaoundé, which received $5.5 million, also for unspecified services. According to its Yaoundé registration, the entity does market research into “wellness,” but no response was obtained from emails and phone calls to the listed contacts.

Foldout or box

The case of Baba Danpoulo and his friendship with the president

The payment amounts for the last seven entries on the tax agency Excel sheet are left blank, which means that one cannot assess how much these entities received from Cameroon state budgets. Most remarkably, among these seven entries is the name of Baba Danpoulo, a multi-millionaire reputed to be one of Africa’s ten richest men and a personal friend of President Paul Biya. Danpoulo, who claims to be worth at least $940 million, stands accused by South Africa’s First National Bank of defaulting on loan and interest repayments to the extent of $165 million, for which FNB has attached buildings he bought with his loans in South Africa, including the Thibault building in Cape Town and a 32-storey high rise in Johannesburg.

In response and amid much outrage in Cameroon government circles, a Cameroon court froze the bank accounts of two South African companies operating in Cameroon, the mobile network MTN and Tiger Brands subsidiary Chococam, in November 2022. The two companies recently approached a higher court in Cameroon for leave to appeal this action. This retaliation has been called “ridiculous” by an anonymous “advocate who specialises in international law” in Cameroon. The advocate published an in-depth analysis of the wrangle in Cameroonian media, agreeing with South Africa’s foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor that such acts “damage international relations.” “And we are not even asking where Baba Danpoulo got all his wealth from,” the advocate commented.

Baba Danpoulo’s lawyer Aggée Mbanzehe said in response to questions that “these are very sensitive and I need to discuss with my client.” When approached again four days later, Mbanzehe reiterated that “Mr Baba is not around and I need his special authorisation to give any information about those sensitive issues.”

Among the next twenty listed beneficiaries from payments ranging from $4.5 to $1.5 million are: a mining company registered in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, that does not appear to have a website or a functioning email address; a construction company registered in Oman; an import-export company registered in Nigeria under a Nigerian representative but with a Cameroonian married couple as directors and a person with the same name as a director of a previously sanctioned Belgium-based diamond buying company which does much business in Central Africa. Phone calls to the company’s listed office in Antwerp, made to ask for comment on its inclusion on the tax agency list were left without a response and an email bounced. A travel company with branches in Togo, whose director, according to our investigative partner in Togo, is from Benin, would have received close to $2 million from Cameroonian state coffers. The director, who was reached by phone, denied this, saying he or his companies had never received any payment from the state of Cameroon.

A money transfer company with offices in Equatorial Guinea as well as in Cameroon features in 23rd place on the list and has, according to the tax agency’s spreadsheet, received over $1.5 million. Colleagues from the Equatorial Guinean Diario Rombe, which operates from exile in Spain, knew of this company as connected to ruling circles in that country.  Upon investigating, they discovered that, on the business site ZoomInfo, the company is listed at a New York address with a number of US-based representatives. However, the same people appear on several similar-looking websites with what are probably stock photos, exactly the same every time, while the contact phone number listed on ZoomInfo is still Cameroonian.

“Customers left high and dry”

The same money transfer company has recently been the target of much outrage in Cameroon. A local colleague reports, “It stopped paying out money that came from (the diaspora in) Europe. It even closed its doors. It is rumoured that some Africans in the diaspora with a base in Strasbourg, France have accumulated money abroad and customers in Cameroon have been left high and dry.”

A phone call by the local colleague to the company’s branch in Akwa, Douala, was answered by a security man and later by an administrative employee, but neither of these responded to the question of whether operations were ongoing, or where the Cameroonian CEO who has reportedly not been seen for a while, might be reached. All other efforts to contact the company or its representatives for comment on the current situation as well as on its inclusion on the tax agency’s list, whether by email or phone, also remained fruitless.

The company’s website seems only intermittently functional, but its Facebook page still lists Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Strasbourg as its areas of operation. A recent posting on its page by a dissatisfied customer called “Stella Alexis” says “Tsuippp, agence fausse,” which roughly translates as “you are a damn fake agency.”

USA fronts

A number of other companies that feature on the list are ostensibly registered in the United States, but these registrations may, like the money transfer company’s New York registration on ZoomInfo, be fronts for individuals who are resident in Cameroon or Central Africa itself. These individuals may also be using the names and logos of other people, or other real companies, without their knowledge.

A Cameroon-based man, for example, 24th on the list and the recipient of around $1.5 million, is using the logo of a financial consulting company CBIZ based in Cleveland, USA, on his LinkedIn profile, claiming that he is a “documents controller” for CBIZ. A spokesperson for CBIZ in Cleveland told us that they did not know this man, nor have they worked with any Cameroonians.

Another Cameroonian, who according to the tax agency document was paid around $670,000 through his Cameroon-based company for “cellulose products,” mentions on his LinkedIn profile that he lives in Chicago, US. A ZoomInfo page mentions the same man as a co-founder of an identically named company in California, USA. Like CBIZ in Cleveland, the California-based company said in response to questions that they did not know the man, nor have they worked with any Cameroonians.

Our investigations into the cases on the list did not include Amougou Belinga’s companies, since payments from state coffers to him were widely investigated and published in Cameroon, inter alia by Martinez Zogo, already. (To find out more read ‘The murder of Martinez Zogo’).

Foldout

Our correspondence with the International Monetary Fund

On 14 June 2023, ZAM wrote to the IMF in Washington, asking to be connected to former Cameroon Directorate of Taxation Director-General, Modeste Fatoing. Fatoing had been pushing to investigate the 67 cases but was transferred by President Biya to an IMF post in Washington on 26 January 2023, four days after Martinez Zogo’s mutilated body was found in a suburb in Yaoundé. No response to the email was received. ZAM emailed a second time on 20 June 2023, this time including more detail, saying that it was “very important that (Modeste Fatoing) is made aware of questions relating to his posting to the IMF, four days after the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo in Cameroon.” Our email continued to say that our working hypothesis was that “both the murder (of Zogo) and Mr Fatoing’s posting (were) connected to illicit financial flows that the Cameroon revenue service was investigating under the leadership of Mr Fatoing” and that “this investigation appeared to have come to a halt after the murder of Zogo and the removal from Cameroon of Mr Fatoing.” Our email asked that, “in the case that Mr Fatoing is not able or willing, or cannot be enabled by you, to give his views on the above,” the IMF itself answer the following questions:

1. Were or are you aware that Mr Fatoing was posted to the IMF by Cameroon’s president days after the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo?

2. Were or are you aware that Martinez Zogo had forcefully denounced high level corruption, particularly illicit payments to a businessman, Amougou Belinga, who stands accused of having externalised millions of dollars in Cameroon state money towards personal business ventures in France?

3. Were or are you aware that Mr Belinga is now in jail in Cameroon on charges of the murder of Martinez Zogo, whose mutilated body was found on 22 January 2023 in Yaounde?

4. Were or are you aware that the Cameroon revenue service under the leadership of Mr Fatoing was investigating no less than 67 illicit financial outflows from Cameroon state coffers (including ones who benefited Mr Belinga), many of which seem to have ended up in European countries as well as in the United States?

5. Were or are you aware that this investigation has come to a standstill after Mr Fatoing’s departure from Cameroon to the IMF?

6. What is your comment on the current situation, where it appears as if the IMF is sheltering a corruption fighter who has been sidelined from Cameroon?

7. Protective as such shelter might be to Mr Fatoing, how does the IMF envisage proceeding vis a vis Cameroon, where monetary and financial policy appear not to be in good order and corruption fighting institutions, as well as the revenue service, are noticeably silent after the murder of Martinez Zogo and the removal of Mr Fatoing?

8. Does the IMF aim to encourage good financial governance in countries like Cameroon and if so, how does it do that? Our email ended with the sentence that “we would very much like to include your and Mr Modeste Fatoing’s comments for our publication.”

To this email, an IMF spokesperson responded on the same day, 20-6-2023, that:

* The issues concerning the work done by the tax agency in Cameroon are best dealt with by the relevant institutions in Cameroon. It is not in the IMF’s purview to comment on this.

* To clarify, the employment of IMF staff is based on a rigorous and impartial recruitment process that is driven by IMF guidelines and international best practices for recruitment. Modeste Fatoing Mopa was competitively selected to the position of Head of TADAT secretariat in our Fiscal Affairs Department in a process that attracted several internal and external candidates. Modeste started his functions at the IMF on February 6, 2023.

The ZAM and NAIRE Arizona Project

The Arizona Project model dates back to 1976, when Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who had been working on stories about land fraud and the Italian-American mafia in Arizona, was blown up in an explosion caused by TNT that had been placed under his car. In response to the murder, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) in the US put together a team of 30 reporters who gathered in Phoenix to finish Bolles’s story. It was the first large-scale collaborative investigative journalism project in history.

After the murder of Martinez Zogo, the Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors (NAIRE) initiated a discussion with ZAM on the possibilities of carrying out an Arizona Project in Cameroon in order to assist colleagues under siege in that country and retrieve important information. ZAM agreed to use its office as a base for the coordination.

The decision to send colleagues into Cameroon was not taken lightly. It would be risky because of the danger of violence, detention, and torture for which Cameroonian security forces are known. However, NAIRE found members willing to go regardless. They were Selay Kouassi from Ivory Coast, David Dembélé from Mali, and Bram Posthumus, also based in Ivory Coast. They were to work in close contact with Cameroon-based colleagues, who had access to information but could not be exposed for their safety. These colleagues, as much as ZAM and NAIRE would like to credit them in full, cannot be named for the same reason.

Investigations editor Evelyn Groenink worked full-time in the ZAM back office to coordinate the project, serve as liaison, and edit the results.

When the team discovered that illicit financial flows from Cameroon to foreign countries were a crucial factor in the murder of Martinez Zogo, international partners in the Global Investigative Journalism Network were also ready to help. These were:

• The Investigative Reporting Project Italy, in particular reporter Edoardo Anziano, who dived into the case on the Italian side.

• Premium Times reporter Kabiru Yusuf, who, in spite of the investigative publication’s heavy workload, was made available by his editors to work on the Nigerian and USA fronts of the story.

• Diario Rombe (Equatorial Guinea/Spain), which investigated a money transfer agency link between Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

• Pierre-Claver Kuvo , editor of De Cive in Togo and coordinator of the Togolese Consortium of Investigative Journalists “Togo Reporting Post”, who focused on the links to Togo and Benin.

ZAM and NAIRE extend their greatest thanks to these colleagues, who worked with (other) African investigative journalists in solidarity.

The project also owes thanks to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), which provided crucial and much-needed advice.

Culled from Premium Times Nigeria

As the war in Ukraine rages on—and the West’s limited attention to Africa focuses on Sudan—the civil war in the Anglophone part of Cameroon meanders along. It continues into its sixth year without any sign of political settlement due not to Western indifference and inaction, but to Western diffidence and actions that send the wrong signals to the kleptocratic regime of President Paul Biya.

France is hardly signaling that it wants to be part of solving the Anglophone crisis peacefully. And despite a strong, bipartisan U.S. Senate resolution passed in January 2021 calling for dialogue to end the conflict, and the Biden administration’s extension of Temporary Protected Status to Cameroonians in June 2022, the White House and State Department have otherwise taken no public action toward promoting peace.

There are lessons from Sudan that will likely remain unlearned in Cameroon until it is too late, when a looming crisis over Biya’s successor could potentially drive conflict from the periphery to the center of the country. Cameroon offers a similar and tragic case study for Western foreign policy toward the continent.

Lack of consequences for military leaders in Sudan since 2019, and lack of support for civil movements and institutions by outside actors, led to a culture of impunity and violence escalating to an all-out struggle for political and economic power. With an impending succession crisis, endless war on the frontiers, a factionalized governing party, and fragmented security forces, Cameroon faces similar risks. Outside actors have not yet grasped that a lack of consequences for those with guns puts everyone without guns in jeopardy.

It’s not that no one is ringing alarm bells about Cameroon. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide released a brief in May entitled “Preventing and Mitigating Mass Atrocities in Northwest and Southwest Cameroon: Identifying Policy Options,” highlighting the urgent need for global attention. The Norwegian Refugee Council has included Cameroon on its list of the top 10 “most neglected displacement crises” for the fourth year in a row. The International Crisis Group released a report in March that offered some concrete proposals toward political reform.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that, given various crises, one out of six Cameroonians needs humanitarian assistance and protection, totaling 4.7 million people. In May, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect confirmed the current official figure of at least 6,000 killed since late 2017 in the Anglophone regions and at least 715,000 displaced. The actual numbers are likely much higher.

With an impending succession crisis, endless war on the frontiers, a factionalized governing party, and fragmented security forces, Cameroon faces similar risks to Sudan.

Over the past six months, as attention focused elsewhere, the situation in Cameroon has gone from bad to worse. Some hope emerged when Canada announced publicly in January that it “welcomes the agreement by the parties to enter a process to reach a comprehensive, peaceful and political resolution of the conflict” and that it had “accepted the mandate to facilitate this process, as part of our commitment to promote peace and security and advance support for democracy and human rights.” Various other domestic groups and external actors, including Pope Francis, quickly announced their support of the Canadian effort.

Three days later, however, the Biya government countered that “it has not entrusted any foreign country or external entity with any role of mediator or facilitator to settle the crisis in the North-West and South-West Regions.” Any nascent momentum toward peace ground to a halt, and suffering persists unabated.

In fact, the Biya regime continues to be rewarded in ways that ensure military repression continues, with no incentive to pursue a negotiated peace nor substantive political reforms. That same week in January that the government denied a Canadian-facilitated peace process, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its third review of Cameroon’s economic situation after meetings earlier in the month. This led to yet another tranche ($73 million) for Cameroon after the IMF board met in March. All IMF reports on Cameroon since the original, three-year (2017-2020) Extended Credit Facility emergency bailout gloss over the impact of war, mismanagement, and kleptocracy on economic growth and development outcomes.

The regime is increasingly confident that loans, grants, investment, and humanitarian assistance will keep rolling in no matter what it does.

The IMF’s fourth review, released on June 29, kept that tradition as it unlocked a further $74 million. While it admits, with typical understatement, that “Cameroon’s performance under the program is mixed” and that “three of five indicative targets under the program have been repeatedly missed,” the fourth review never mentions ongoing war and excessive military expenditures.

By April 2023, Cameroonian officials were emboldened enough to publicly announce their intention to regain eligibility under Washington’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the preferential trade terms for some African states that former U.S. President Donald Trump removed due to human rights abuses back in 2019. While AGOA eligibility would have minimal impact on Cameroon’s economic fortunes, it would be another diplomatic victory for the regime, one that manipulates Western interests to limit consequences of its poor domestic track record. In June, the government confirmed support from the U.N. system for “reconstruction and development” in the Anglophone regions even as the war rages on.

The regime is increasingly confident that loans, grants, investment, and humanitarian assistance will keep rolling in no matter what it does, so instead of trying to improve the economy or end the war, it continues to import military hardware and expand its already bloated and fragmented security forces.

Cameroon is thus looking more like Sudan every day as insecurity and economic stagnation resulting from poor governance is ignored by external actors. Besides growing criminal insecurity in its major cities, killings of journalists, and a spreading cholera crisis, the country faces nearly interminable conflict along its periphery, in what was formerly the British Southern Cameroons (the two Anglophone regions), the British Northern Cameroons (where Boko Haram and its successors continue to threaten villages and farms), and along the border with perennially unstable Central African Republic.

Labelling all insecurity as simply “terrorism” for an international audience, Cameroon convinces many countries to keep selling it arms, vehicles, and aircraft. The impending succession crisis after more than 40 years under Biya will thus take place in a weakly institutionalized political system where the ability and propensity to employ violence has increased dramatically. Sudan offers a stark warning of the possible consequences.

While Sudanese and outside stakeholders rejoiced over longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir’s removal from office in April 2019, the transitional government was in place just long enough for Sudan to reach the first stage of its long-delayed acceptance into the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. In June 2021, the IMF and World Bank boards approved initial debt relief for Sudan, dropping the accumulated $56 billion debt to $28 billion. At that point, Sudan was on track for its own Extended Credit Facility and, later, to even further debt relief under HIPC.

But the October 2021 coup, and now the outright destruction of the country by two rival generals since April 2023, reversed those limited gains. Arms exports to and joint ventures within Sudan (including with Russia’s Wagner Group) ensured both sides were well-equipped even as the economy suffered a decadelong slide. War usually fought on the periphery has now reached most cities and regions across the country. So, besides the enormous human toll, private capital formation and public infrastructure are being destroyed at a rapid rate from Khartoum to West Darfur. The volunteer, neighborhood resistance committees once crucial to the transition in 2019 but subsequently sidelined now scramble to fill the gaps of a collapsing state.

The development in Sudan of two separate military institutions—the regular armed forces and the institutionalization of the irregular Janjaweed militia as the Rapid Support Forces in the mid-2010s—ultimately did not fulfill at least one key objective of Bashir’s regime: It did not coup-proof his regime by building up two countervailing forces. Those rival military organizations are now tearing the country apart.

Cameroon has followed a similar process of expansion and bifurcation of security services over the past two decades, and the resulting situation creates the potential for confrontation once Biya, now 90, becomes incapacitated. There is a constitutional process of succession, triggering a presidential election within months, but few expect the ruling party factions to rally behind any one candidate. (Biya may yet hang on and run in the 2025 election at age 92, or pass off his baton to his son Franck). A real concern is that different ruling party factions have influence over different branches of the fragmented security forces.

The Presidential Guard protects the President and key government installations The regular armed forces have a traditional three-branch (army, navy, air force) structure, and contribute to a regular peacekeeping rotation in the Central African Republic, but the regular army is the least well-equipped compared to the Presidential Guard and the Bataillon d’Intervention Rapide (BIR), a separate branch established in 2001 under Israeli military advisors. The BIR has since expanded to a number of individual battalions as well as its own air and maritime components, and is permanently engaged in combat operations against both Boko Haram and Anglophone armed groups.

While both the Presidential Guard and the BIR are controlled directly by the presidency, they report up different factional chains of command and keep a close eye on each other.

Besides the expansion and fragmentation of the security forces, since 2020, new armored vehicle imports have been identified from Canada, France, and mostly from the United Arab Emirates. At least two used Bell 412EP helicopters (built in North America and powered by Pratt & Whitney Canada engines) were procured since 2019, joining others already in service. Four new Italian-built Leonardo AW109E helicopters have been delivered more recently; they were photographed flying in a May 20 military parade and elsewhere in Cameroon after being held up in Italy since 2018 due to either lack of money or export permits, or both.

And this new equipment is on the top of the significant military assistance from China, France, Israel, Serbia, South Africa, and the United States between 2014-2018 to help in the struggle against Boko Haram. Many of those aircraft, vehicles, and helicopter assets have since been deployed to the Anglophone areas, including U.S. surveillance aircraft, Chinese tank destroyers, and the more recent Italian helicopters.

In short, there is no incentive for the Cameroonian government to agree to substantive peace negotiations, better economic management, or political reforms. The various political factions are solely focused on jockeying for power in preparation of the post-Biya era. There are simply no consequences to Biya and ruling-party factions under him for continuing the war (and considerable evidence that many benefit from its continuation): There is no effective elected opposition, there are few restrictions on military imports, international financing continues from all sources, there is no pressure coming from neighbors or other African leaders or organizations to negotiate, and the West keeps sending mixed signals about whether it takes peace and conflict resolution seriously.

Like the military leaders in Sudan who now fight for power without constraint, the factions looking at a post-Biya Cameroon have not faced any consequences for stalling either peace talks or real political (or economic) reform.

The moment Biya loses his grip on power through incapacitation or death, it is possible that similar struggles could break out within the ruling party, with factions leveraging different elements of the security services to back their claims.

The United States, Canada, Norway, the European Union, and key international institutions need to send consistent signals in support of peace, justice, and democracy, rather than call for peace but support the brittle status quo. What peace and justice ultimately look like can only be determined by Cameroonians, but that process requires more openings for potential reformers willing to talk and more restraints on hard-liners before Cameroon advances any further down the road to Khartoum.

Culled from Foreign Policy