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Southern Cameroonians are winning the battle for Ambazonia

Southern Cameroonians are winning the battle for Ambazonia

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After more than three years of a war that has left half of Southern Cameroons’s population displaced, villages reduced to rubble, and over 3000 killed, the Federal Republic of Ambazonia appears to be a reality.  The war is far from over and any victory may prove pyrrhic given the devastation wrought. Even so, it now seems La Republique du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons are going their separate ways. French Cameroun dictator Paul Biya has outlasted nearly all Western leaders of his generation and even beyond but there are signs the Southern Cameroons war will still be fought even after him.

How are Southern Cameroonians surviving? Some pro Yaoundé commentators grew optimistic about the impending collapse of the Ambazonian revolution immediately after the arrest of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in Abuja, Nigeria. The Biya regime had a massive advantage from the very inception of the Southern Cameroons struggle due to the fact that La Republique du Cameroun had no internal and external opponents to put serious pressure on Biya and his consortium of crime syndicates. Today, the regime’s anti Bamileke stance and the arrest of Prof Maurice Kamto and several other divisions are all signaling that collapse now seem possible.

To be sure, Biya’s survival after the last counterfeit presidential elections was no accident: There were clear domestic and external causes. The regime used cynical and brutal tactics to maintain key backing at home, while on the international front, it had steadfast allies such as the French and the European Union and reluctant and incompetent enemies led by the Francophone diaspora.

Recently, France’s closest allies are walking away from it as it is believed that Paris is supporting the Yaoundé government in its resolve to kill the people of Southern Cameroons. Many EU countries are insisting on Yaoundé calling for an inclusive dialogue that will help normalize things.

But Yaoundé has been indifferent to those calls. Many EU countries have already allied with the United States and Canada on how the Southern Cameroons crisis could be addressed. America’s determination and its ability to mobilize other countries, including some of Cameroons neighbors like Equatorial Guinea, have rattled the regime and its supporters.

Southern Cameroons institutions put in place by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is helping Ambazonians withstand the pressures of the French Cameroun war. Notably, the Ambazonia Restoration Forces have remained loyal to the Interim Government. And even the Yaounde sponsored coup by Sako Ikome and Chris Anu against the Ambazonia leader did not get the desired impact.

Without heavy equipment, the Southern Cameroons fighters have inflicted huge casualties and caused some defections deep within the Cameroon government army and the size of the French Cameroun military is shrinking day-by-day.

After the April 6th coup, Biya packed security positions and elite units with tribal loyalists, many of them are members of “essingan” a Beti -Ewondo traditionally sect that persuades top ranking military officers and senior cabinet ministers that Biya was their best route to security and privilege. With age telling on him and poor health, the Southern Cameroons crisis has exposed Biya emptiness and it is abundantly clear the Amba resistance has caused a crack within the essingan sect.

Cameroon army soldiers have also been burning homes and destroying food crops, believing that such tactics will cause the Southern Cameroons population to yield and betray the fighters. This strategy has been in effect for more than two years, but the Southern Cameroons population is very determined. Most southern Cameroonians are for independence and will not settle for anything less.

The Yaoundé government is really frustrated. Its international allies are walking away and this is creating brand new problems even in the North where Boko Haram remains a lethal threat. The withdrawal of American military support in the North has exposed Cameroon’s army soldiers to more attacks from Boko Haram and prompted a new deployment.

As soon as the Ambazonia unrest broke out three years ago, Biya falsely characterized Southern Cameroons as terrorists, rebels and government posters appeared warning of sectarian divisions. Eventually, this did not work. Government officials seem to be seeing the writing on the wall. The government is out of money and the West’s decision to turn the heat on the collapsing Yaoundé government seems to spell the end for a regime that has thrived on corruption and tribalism.

As the oil refinery has gone, the government does not have money to buy and corrupt more people. Some of its fervent supporters are already jumping ship. Many senior government officials are already sending their families abroad as they know that America’s determination to bring change to Cameroon can never be underestimated.

The “river of money” in the Ambazonia Southern Zone has gone dry. CDC, PAMOL and SONARA are all facing problems and these are corporations that have stood the Biya Francophone government in good stead over the last fifty years.

With these corporations facing tough challenges, it is clear that Biya is in real trouble. The government is at its wit’s end. The challenges are only mounting.  Before long, civil servants and the military will not be receiving their salaries. The military, in particular, has stood solidly behind the government during its bad days. Will it still stand with the government now that its coffers are empty? The stress is obvious and for cause. The military might just as well jump ship.

There is genuine Southern Cameroons ideological support for President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe who has often insisted that no Southern Cameroonian citizen is bigger than the revolution. The sacrifice that the people of Southern Cameroons have made has rubbished claims by Yaoundé that the resistance is an externally orchestrated plot.

Another key Biya Francophone ploy was a campaign of intimidation. Southern Cameroonians have destroyed the Biya regime’s wall of fear something that is still a kind of wishful thinking in French Cameroun. Many Southern Cameroonians have bravely risked their lives and many more are joining the armed struggle.

French Cameroun’s attempts to divide, delegitimize, and criminalize the Ambazonia Interim Government has failed and the Ambazonia population is no longer willing to stomach unjustified violence from the Francophone army. The French Cameroun’s concocted Atanga Nji Amba Boys portraying the Ambazonia Restoration Forces as violent, criminals, sectarian has also failed woefully.

The Biya regime is struggling to make its false narrative on the Southern Cameroons situation real. Peaceful demonstrations have been specifically targeted, and thousands of Southern Cameroonians have been detained, facing torture, sexual assault, and humiliation. Over 400 have disappeared in the Kondengui and New Bell prisons, as many as 50,000 have either fled abroad precisely into neighboring Nigeria and became radicalized.

With Paul Biya still in power in French Cameroun and without an inclusive dialogue as advocated by the international community, both Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun will continue to be caught in a turbulence of epic proportions and the stress will continue.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai


Ambazonia: 70 homes razed by French Cameroun soldiers after Amba Fighters killed 2 gendarmes

Ambazonia: 70 homes razed by French Cameroun soldiers after Amba Fighters killed 2 gendarmes

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The charred ruins of some 70 homes dot the streets of Alatchu village in Cameroon. The houses were razed by government troops after anglophone separatists seeking independence from the francophone majority allegedly killed two government soldiers.

On the sidewalks of the village, a few traders sell fuel while others struggle to find buyers for their freshly made palm wine. On a normal weekday, children would be on their way to school.

But that hasn’t happened in nearly three years in Alatchu, a now sparsely populated village just outside the Northwest regional capital of Bamenda. Recent fighting in the village left at least one person dead.

The separatists have made school boycotts a major part of their campaign for a new anglophone nation called “Ambazonia”. According to UNICEF, more than 600,000 children have been affected by school closures.

The UN says more than 80 percent of the schools in Cameroon’s two predominantly anglophone regions – Northwest and Southwest – are still closed. More than 70 have been destroyed, while students, parents, teachers, and other school personnel are subjected to routine violence and intimidation if they refuse to toe the boycott line.

“I lost my job in November 2016 because schools shut down,” one teacher told The New Humanitarian, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. “I was against the school boycott, and my house and property were burnt because of that.”

With peace talks deadlocked, some 1.3 million people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, and the number of those displaced in the two anglophone regions has climbed to 450,000.

Half of those displaced are children – many of whom fled with their families after schools were shut and the buildings were used as barracks or hide-outs by armed groups.

Map of Cameroon showing Northwest and Southwest regions

Targeting the education system is “putting the future of an entire generation of children at risk – children who with the right support and opportunities can build a more stable and prosperous future”, UNICEF spokesman Toby Fricker said last month.

The number of children being kept out of school in Cameroon has spawned #educatethemnow – a homegrown movement urging government forces and separatist groups to respect schools as ‘no-go’ zones.

Ghost towns

The conflict in Cameroon has been described as one of the world’s neglected crises.

French and English are both official languages in Cameroon, but the anglophone minority has long felt marginalised.

Peaceful protests from groups calling for the use of English in courts and school classes in the Northwest and Southwest regions escalated in October 2016 when security forces killed dozens of demonstrators and jailed hundreds more. The situation deteriorated a year later when separatists unilaterally declared independence and the armed conflict intensified.

The violence led to the creation of several separatist armed groups that have since allegedly killed or kidnapped dozens of people, while government forces have carried out violent raids against rebels. Part of the separatists’ civil disobedience campaign has been to close businesses and schools, turning many villages into ghost towns.

According to the International Crisis Group, the clashes have killed at least 1,850 people since 2017, but other estimates say the toll could be as high as 5,000.

Separatists are calling for mediated talks on independence. The government has balked at demands for independence but says it is willing to consider decentralisation.

Several separatist movements reportedly met last month with the Swiss government and representatives of the Cameroonian government. This week, Swiss officials confirmed for the first time that Switzerland is officially helping the Cameroonian government to negotiate with the separatists.

Spreading needs

The insecurity and instability have also sharpened humanitarian needs outside the Northwest and Southwest regions.

Most of those displaced are in the country’s two majority anglophone areas, but an estimated 30,000 others have fled to neighbouring Nigeria, while some 4.3 million people in the country overall need humanitarian assistance.

“We got here with no property, no money, no nothing,” said the teacher from the Northwest region, who fled to the capital of Yaoundé after losing his job in 2016. “Friends and people who pitied us on the streets helped us get two rooms. We sleep on the floor – no beds, no mat… not even a drinking bucket or food to eat.”

The teacher and his wife had seven children. One was killed by a stray bullet as they fled for safety. Three have returned to school with the help of neighbours. The others haven’t been to school in three years.

The teacher said schools, businesses, and houses in his village of Kumbo now lie derelict, covered by grass and weeds.

Photo of burned school in Cameroon
Government Bilingual High School in Fontem, Southwest Cameroon.

Catholic Bishop George Nkuo of the Kumbo diocese told TNH that more than 380 civilians were killed and more than 700 homes torched in the area from September 2018 to March 2019.

There have been “practically no schools functioning in the area for the past two years”, he said, adding that they closed shortly after students at one Catholic school were kidnapped – a move allegedly taken by separatists to try to enforce the school boycott.

Longer-term fallout

Many warn of far-reaching consequences for the country if children fail to return to school. Some say they have already witnessed the consequences.

Agbor Gilbert Ebot, a Cameroonian filmmaker who has spent time in several camps for internally displaced people in Cameroon and refugee camps in Nigeria, warns that the children face particular risks from sexual harassment and criminality.

“I visited Cameroonians in a refugee camp in Nigeria and returned 10 months later to find a 15-year old with a set of twins,” he said. “I asked her what had happened while I was away, and she said men wanted to sleep with her before helping her. She has two younger siblings to feed.”

Ebot said young girls who have dropped out of school have reported being sexually harassed by both government soldiers and separatist fighters. Some who have become pregnant are often left with no help from the fathers, he said.

“If parents want to send children to school, they can do so at their own risk.”

Boys, Agbor said, are often forced to leave schools because the military targets them, and many end up becoming separatist fighters.

The government hopes to reopen schools in September, and says it will drive out rebels occupying buildings.

The government says 50 schools are still being occupied by separatists in the Northwest and Southwest regions – a charge the rebel groups deny.

Tapang Ivo Tanku, a spokesman for the separatist Ambazonia Defence Forces, or ADF, blamed government forces for razing schools and homes.

“Our position on the reopening of schools is very clear,” Tanku told TNH. “If parents want to send children to school, they can do so at their own risk because we cannot guarantee their safety on the streets and in classrooms being burnt by the military. Our streets need to be completely demilitarised.”

Culled from The New Humanitarian


Amba leadership Crisis: The Tassang Wilfred Letter reveal a man unable to resolve the many conflicting aspects

Amba leadership Crisis: The Tassang Wilfred Letter reveal a man unable to resolve the many conflicting aspects

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Deacon Tassang Wilfred one of Southern Cameroons detained leaders has again released a letter from the Kondengui High Security prison. The former head of SCACUF observed in “As Though We Were Dead” that Southern Cameroonians should consider the NERA 10 as nonexistent.

Deacon Tassang Wilfred is a very brilliant Southern Cameroons trade unionist. He helped shape the character of the Ambazonian revolution and started seeing himself as the leader when he was elected to head SCACUF. He even at one point contradicted Tapang Ivo and Mark Barata during their days at the top and like the Prince of Peace; he observed that “Southern Cameroonians should forgive Tapang Ivo and Mark”.  All these constituted a bargain at a discounted price that was surprisingly available for the renowned Deacon Tassang Wilfred, one of Southern Cameroons revolutionary bells.

Tassang’s style is sometimes colourful sometimes chatty, and in many occasions consistently inconsistent. It is as if the election of Sisiku Ayuk Tabe to head the Interim Government did not go well with him. He writings including his most recent “As Though We Were Dead” indicates that the much respected Ambazonian like some of the fake leaders in the Diaspora is more interested in creating a political space for himself.

His writings have always carried a mixture of analysis blowing hot and cold of failures in the Southern Cameroons quest for independence and accompanied by some uncomfortable moralizing.  Tassang’s approach has always been thematic and not chronological. You need a pretty good knowledge of the Southern Cameroons leadership crisis to make sense of it sometimes and the teacher has a capacity for self-diversion.

But as his most recent letter “As Though We Were Dead” immodestly reveals, Deacon Tassang Wilfred no longer has the remarkable influence on the Southern Cameroons war of independence and politics both domestically and internationally.

Where Tassang can now be challenged is the assertion that Southern Cameroonians should “Consider the Nera10 as dead. Negotiate as though you were seeking retribution for the more than 30,000 wasted Amba souls. Go for La Republique’s balls (excuse my French). We all (Nera10) put together, are not any more deserving of Ambazonia than angel Martha, most brutally butchered in babyhood by the evil from Yaounde.”   The Tassang approach begs the question of who is actually the face of the Ambazonia revolution and who will be on the Southern Cameroons negotiating table?

Tassang seems to argue against a rules-based system of international relations which provides for any revolution or struggle to have a symbolic personality at the head.  To be sure, Tassang’s letter writing policy will be both his legacy and epitaph in his relations with the Ambazonian people and the NERA 10.

So much has been written about the relationship between the Ambazonia leader Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and Deacon Tassang Wilfred. Both men have respectively displayed their particular talents – President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe has his natural guile and persuasiveness and Tassang his intellectual firepower. If the relationship is one of marriage then no court in Southern Cameroons will deny Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and Deacon Tassang Wilfred divorce or dissolution.

Tassang cannot be blowing hot and cold at same time. Saying the Ambazonia leadership should not rule from prison but gives directives and funny instructions now and then from the same prison paints a picture of a man who is either committing the same errors or falling into spectacular new ones.

Now Tassangs says the NERA 10 should be assumed dead or nonexistent by the so-called free leadership …so where does he belong? When he was Chief Executive of SCACUF there was no issue but as soon as Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe took over his attitude has been anything but collaborative!!

The battlelines between his supporters and the Southern Cameroons Interim Government currently under the stewardship of Vice President Dabney Yerima are firmly drawn. But he was and remains a consistently inconsistent phenomenon.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai


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