91-year-old President Biya has sacked the Director General of External Research, Jean-Pierre Robins Ghoumo barely two months after he took over from Léopold Maxime Eko Eko.

The reason for sacking Ghoumo remains unclear but the external intelligence agency has struggled to steady itself following the arrest of former director Léopold Maxime Eko Eko.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered from reliable sources in Yaoundé that Ghoumo is widely believed to be loyal to Eko Eko and not Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh who is currently running state affairs in Yaoundé.  A well-placed source hinted that Ghoumo’s dismissal points to possible failure to execute his assignments satisfactorily.

Jean-Pierre Robins Ghoumo was appointed director of Cameroon’s intelligence service in December, but was told by Biya’s top aides that he will never be granted access to the files of his predecessor, Léopold Maxime Eko Eko, currently in jail.

By Rita Akana in Yaoundé

It is more than 6 years since 91-year-old President Biya launched a full-scale attack on the English speaking people of Southern Cameroons — but who is really winning the war in Ambazonia?

Frankly speaking, the answer cannot be straightforward. To be accurate, it is also no longer dependent on Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces and the Ambazonia Interim Government but much on the political situation in La Republique du Cameroun.

Judging from Yaounde’s military calculations, progress, so far, has been slower than expected, according to Cameroon Intelligence Report sources, although some Francophone military barons have insisted this is accidental and not deliberate.

While our chief political man, Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai says it is still too early to predict the result with any certainty, we of the Cameroon Concord News Group are of the opinion that there are some areas of the Southern Cameroons war in which Yaoundé or the Ambazonia Interim Government are currently leading.

Our London Bureau Chief Isong Asu breaks them down here:

One and indivisible Cameroon and the Federal Republic of Ambazonia

From every indication, neither President Paul Biya nor President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe has achieved the stated objectives they set out at the beginning of this campaign.

Immediately after Biya launched the invasion of English speaking Cameroon six years ago, he outlined the objectives and stated that “Cameroon was one and indivisible.”

Biya’s aims were to flush out separatists and to defend the territorial integrity of the Republic of Cameroon.

But the Biya Francophone officials have repeatedly shifted their goalposts, stating at the beginning that they were fighting Anglophone terrorists and changing it to separatists. And because of its ever-changing Southern Cameroons war aims, the Francophone dominated military has now commercialized the war and there are military bases all over Southern Cameroons including in villages that are not even accessible by road.  From Yaoundé’s perspective, we think they’re moving closer to achieving their objectives which is that of militarizing the entire Southern Cameroons.

But the Ambazonia Interim Government is making resistance gains and has managed to put pressure on French Cameroun’s tough defensive lines in Buea and Bamenda. This week, Amba fighters raided Buea the chief city in the South West Region and punished Southern Cameroonians who defied ghost town operation orders.

“We still have a long way to go in this war in Southern Cameroons, but recent actions in Buea and Bamenda are something Yaoundé should be worried about,” Soter Agbaw-Ebai said.

Correspondingly, one of Southern Cameroons main objectives — stated in President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s independence speech — is to liberate the entire Southern Cameroons from the union with French Cameroun. But this is appearing to be unattainable following the many divisions deep within the Ambazonia Interim Government. 

“So getting to Buea, I don’t actually think that’s ever going to be possible with the Ambazonia leader and his top aides still in Kondengui” Soter Agbaw-Ebai noted.

“No one in Europe takes those clowns in Maryland seriously so it is very hard to see how My Trip To Buea could be achieved in the near term. Only a change of regime in Yaoundé, which seems very unlikely at the moment can reactivate the journey to Buea” Soter Agbaw-Ebai furthered.

La Republique versus Southern Cameroons

If winning the war in Southern Cameroons was based on morale, Southern Cameroonians would emerge as the victor.

Morale among Amba fighters has been high even after the arrest of the Ambazonian leader Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in Abuja, Nigeria.  Stark resistances from Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces have forced President Biya to make some huge adjustments to his military deployments in English speaking Cameroon and cabinet ministers from Anglophone Cameroon including Paul Atanga Nji have been told not to comment publicly on the war.

“I think Cameroon government army soldiers are in a weaker position today because they appear to be panicking when deployed to the rural areas in Southern Cameroons,” Agbaw-Ebai said.

Biya and his Francophone political elites made their war aims very unclear from the very beginning, which has made it extremely difficult for them to win support for the war in both French and English speaking Cameroon.

A rising number of French speaking Cameroonians have started to express serious doubts about the progress that is being made in this senseless conflict in Southern Cameroons.

“Whether that means there will be some kind of threat to the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime, I think is a different question, but clearly there is quite widespread discontent with the way the war in Southern Cameroons has been run,” Soter Agbaw-Ebai pointed out. Morale has also been weakened by corruption among Cameroon’s military leaders.

Cameroon Government Military against Ambazonia Forces

It is difficult to say who is currently winning from a military standpoint because the two forces do not have complete control of the security situation in Southern Cameroons.

And even with the continued deployment of troops from French Cameroun to Southern Cameroons towns and villages, it is still unclear how effective these French speaking army soldiers plan to deal with the present invincible Amba fighters as well as how resilient Ambazonia fighters will be this 2024.

“For me, the two sides are relatively balanced and I believe the war will drag on for many years after Biya” Soter Agbaw-Ebai concluded.

By Isong Asu

London Bureau Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

Since 2016, the Anglophone separatist movement in Cameroon has become characterised by political violence. Armed separatists have imposed boycotts on education, burned down schools and infrastructure, and abducted or killed civilians accused of collaborating with francophone authorities.

In October 2016, lawyer and teacher unions held a series of protests in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon. They were protesting the economic, cultural, and linguistic discrimination of the Anglophone minority by the Francophone majority. The protests were peaceful, and took place after a series of formal requests to remove the French language from schools and courts in the Anglophone regions were denied. The government response to these peaceful protests was disproportionate. Over a period of several months, the government used an anti-terror law to imprison and charge Anglophone leaders with the death penalty. In addition, security forces arrested over 100 protestors, killed four, dissolved multiple Anglophone civil society organisations, shutdown internet access, and closed school and medical facilities.

The disproportionate response to the protests – notably through the use of the anti-terrorism law – catalysed the violent “Anglophone crisis” in Cameroon. As a consequence, it eliminated opportunities for peaceful solutions to the conflict. Public opinion in the Anglophone regions hardened, and initially modest requests for administrative reforms, such as the protection of the common-law tradition and English-speaking schools, turned into calls for outright secession and the formation of an independent state called Ambazonia. The resulting conflict between separatists and Cameroonian security forces has killed over six thousand people in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions and internally displaced over seven hundred thousand.

The origin of the Anglophone crisis is colonial; in 1916, the German colony of Kamerun was distributed to France and Britain as Cameroun and the British Southern Cameroons. In 1961, the two territories reunified as a federated state. The Constitution granted two official languages, education systems, and legal systems to represent the French and British systems of government. In reality, power was consolidated by leaders in the francophone capital, Yaoundé. Anglophone Cameroonians have complained of political and economic marginalisation since.

What has been overlooked is that the adoption of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1373 presented an opportunity to better develop the state arsenal that ensured power and control over resources, which remained in Yaoundé. Adopted in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, resolution 1373 required all UN member states to implement domestic anti-terror legislation. In reality, adherence to resolution 1373 created the context under which the Cameroonian government could eliminate the Anglophone self-determination movement, by framing its repression as counterterrorism. Since that time, studies have identified a strong correlation in some states between the strong adoption of anti-terror legislation and the desire to inhibit protests and penalise government dissent. The 2014 anti-terror law, promulgated in adherence to resolution 1373, is a highly effective tool for eliminating government dissent for several reasons: First, the anti-terror law “doubles up” on the penal code. This creates a dual legal system that is applied selectively according to who the Cameroonian government considers a threat. For example, after the 2016 protests, leaders of Anglophone civil society organisations were arrested and charged with the death penalty under the anti-terror law for “acts of terrorism, complicity in acts of terrorism, insurrection, rebellion against the state, incitement of civil unrest, propagation of false news.” Under the penal code, the death penalty is only applicable in states of emergency, siege or war. Under the anti-terror law, the death penalty becomes applicable in peacetime. Although the Cameroonian government relies more on the threat of the death penalty than on executions themselves, it is the selective application (at the discretion of government-appointed military judges) that deters opposition.

Second, the anti-terror law is approved by the international community. Because it is pursuant to the requirements of resolution 1373, it becomes difficult to criticise when it is used for illiberal intentions instead of a response to genuine threats of terrorism. The UNSC, for example, has only held one informal discussion on the situation in Cameroon, on 13 May 2019 – it focused on the humanitarian situation, not the use of the anti-terror law. The mutual evaluation reports that evaluate state compliance to resolution 1373 are also telling. In the 2022 report for Cameroon, written by the Task Force on Anti-Money Laundering in Central Africa (GABAC), the Cameroonian government was praised for using the anti-terror law against the Boko Haram militants in the Far North region and against the Anglophone separatists in the Northwest and Southwest regions. In doing so, the report constructs a moral equivalence between the Boko Haram terrorist group and the Anglophone separatists. These two groups not only have dramatically different goals and intentions, but utilise violence differently: for religious ideological nationalism in the former, and political goals of self-determination in the latter. By applauding the Cameroonian government for its use of anti-terror law against both groups, the GABAC implicitly approves of the denial of Anglophone self-determination by the Cameroonian government. As a consequence, Cameroon serves as an example of the spread of international norms for illiberal purposes.

Third, by designating the Anglophone separatists as “terrorists,” the anti-terror law has eliminated democratic avenues for dialogue on the issue of Anglophone self-determination, and successfully consolidated power in the francophone government. When the Cameroonian government used the anti-terror law to arrest the Anglophone leaders, the government signalled the self-determination movement as a threat and depoliticised it. This has been identified as a catalyst for the violent shift in the Anglophone movement and the civil war we see today, because democratic avenues for self-determination and dialogue were removed. Efforts at dialogue and the granting of a “special status” to the English-speaking territories have not minimised separatist violence, but instead allowed the elimination of legitimate political opposition and blurred the lines between self-determination movements and terrorism.

In sum, the use of the anti-terror law has not just eliminated opportunities for Anglophone self-determination, but has resulted in increased political violence: the very problem it was intended to solve.

Culled from Australian Institute of International Relations