For more than five years, the English-speaking regions of the North West and South West of Cameroon have been experiencing a major political and security crisis, the legal nature of which is still uncertain. Are we dealing with “internal disturbances” or a “non-international armed conflict”? The stakes are high, while the repression of the regime is fierce. A look back at a “forgotten crisis” which has already killed more than 6,000 people.
In October 2016, English-speaking teachers and lawyers went on strike to denounce the “Frenchification” of teaching staff and the legal system. These sectoral demands immediately resonate with an English-speaking population (about 20% of the 28 million inhabitants of Cameroon) frustrated by the feeling of marginalization and discrimination compared to the rest of the country. This movement marks the beginning of a major peaceful popular mobilization in the North-West and South-West regions – known as NOSO – in the form of demonstrations.
The central power reacted with violence: the security forces violently repressed the movement with excessive use of force and numerous arbitrary arrests, then the authorities banned civil society organizations, cut telephone lines and suspended the Internet during more than six months (from January to April 2017, then from October 2017 to January 2018). English-speaking activists responded with strategies of civil disobedience by organizing “Ghost Towns” operations and boycotting schools and universities.
For a year, the situation in the NOSO resembled “internal tensions” with numerous arrests and detentions of demonstrators on the basis of the anti-terrorist law of December 2014, and a severe restriction of fundamental rights (freedom of opinion, of expression, of assembly, of the press, of association and the right to demonstrate). The repression, instead of putting an end to peaceful demands, is fueling a dormant Anglophone nationalism and beginning to lead to violence on the side of the demonstrators. The imprisonment of the main English-speaking leaders of the protest movement between January and August 2017 leaves more room for the voices of the separatists, initially in the minority.
THE REPUBLIC OF AMBAZONIA
On October 1, 2017, separatist groups symbolically declare the independence of the Republic of Ambazonia. The peaceful demonstrations that take place that day are bloodily repressed – at least thirty people are shot dead, hundreds of others are arrested. Faced with the brutality of the repression, the moderate voices are gradually eclipsed to give way to those who advocate secession and the armed struggle against the Cameroonian state. Consequently, armed attacks by separatist groups are increasing against the defense and security forces and the symbols of the Cameroonian state. The Anglophone crisis is gradually turning into a situation of “internal unrest” with armed clashes and an intensification of violence against civilians.
Separatist groups act to render the NOSO regions ungovernable. They killed more than forty gendarmes and police officers between September 2017 and May 2018 according to Amnesty International, and attacked schools and universities, as well as staff and students, attacked for not having participated in the boycott. Also according to Amnesty International, more than forty schools were attacked and burned by armed separatists between February 2017 and May 2018. Others, emptied of their students, were transformed into military camps. Due to the targeting of schools, more than 855,000 children have been out of school since 2017.
Separatist groups also attack public companies and commit serious human rights violations against civilians suspected of collaborating with the Cameroonian army: sexual violence, torture, summary executions, kidnappings. Traditional chiefs, accused of supporting or informing the authorities, are particularly targeted.
BLIND REPRESSION
Faced with the increase in violence committed by separatist groups, units of the Cameroonian army were deployed to restore order at the end of 2017. The authorities created a fifth joint military region (RMIA) in charge of West and North-West, and launch large-scale security operations that often resemble reprisal operations. The Cameroonian defense and security forces (FDS), convinced that the English-speaking populations as a whole are providing assistance to separatist groups, began to use, in 2018 and 2019, “scorched earth tactics consisting in razing villages suspected of ‘shelter separatists’, according to the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide.
Between October 2016 and May 2019, more than 200 villages were partially or totally destroyed by the FDS in areas where separatist groups operate, according to the NGO CHRDA. Such facts suggest that the Cameroonian authorities authorized the use of counter-insurgency methods, already used in Cameroon in the 1950s and 1960s, with the objective of isolating the rebels from the population, by targeting the villages considered as close to separatist groups. On May 15, 2019, following the murder of two Cameroonian soldiers, more than 70 homes in Bamenda were set on fire by soldiers and elements of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), an elite unit directly attached to the presidency. , in a retaliatory operation.
Examples of this type are numerous. On February 14, 2020, FDS accompanied by a local militia killed at least 21 civilians, including 13 children and a pregnant woman, in the village of Ngarbuh. According to Human Rights Watch, they also looted and burned homes. In December 2021, the FDS, according to the same NGO, killed at least eight civilians and burned dozens of buildings during three military operations in the North West.
Over the past three years, more and more of the Cameroonian FDS have been deployed on the ground without, however, succeeding in putting an end to the actions of separatist groups. Today, because of the many armed groups present on the ground, it is difficult to discern their motivations. Some behave more like groups of bandits targeting civilians for ransom.
INCREASINGLY ARMED GROUPS
In this context, can the situation of violence in the NOSO be defined as a non-international armed conflict (NIAC)? To do so, a number of criteria would have to be met. First, for there to be an armed conflict, there must be identifiable parties to the conflict with a minimum of organization as well as open hostilities with a certain intensity.
There are currently more than ten armed separatist groups in NOSO, including Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF), Southern Cameroons Defense Forces (SOCADEF), Red Dragon, Manyu Ghost Warriors… They could total between 2,000 and 4,000 fighters. Some armed groups have just a few dozen.
The main separatist groups regularly recruit fighters and their military equipment has improved markedly – particularly since 2021, thanks, among other things, to the financial support provided by the diaspora, and to the taxes and racketeering imposed by these groups in the territories they control. They now use improvised explosive devices (IEDs), in addition to rocket launchers and AK-47 machine guns. For more than five years, they have been fighting the FDS militarily in the NOSO using guerrilla techniques, and have in fact shown their ability to procure, transport and distribute weapons to their fighters.
It is likely that certain separatist groups exercise at least control over certain territories that are difficult to access in the NOSO regions – regions partly composed of dense forests with a patchy road network. Therefore, separatist groups necessarily have a “minimum” form of organization.
CONSTANT AND REGULAR HOSTILITIES
What is more complicated to discern is the collective character of this armed struggle and the organizational level of their hierarchies, while some of the political branches are located abroad at the level of the diasporas, and the armed units act in areas where communication networks are often inoperative. How are orders from the hierarchy transmitted? Through what command structures? How are theaters of operations defined? Do armed separatist groups show a minimum of collective organization or are we dealing with simple isolated groups? Questions that are difficult to answer. At first glance, the separatist groups do not appear to be organized like a state army with a clearly identified chain of command and the ability to launch large-scale military operations. For the most part, they have little or no contact with each other and carry out isolated and disparate actions, which sometimes amount to simple acts of banditry.
To fight the separatist groups, the Cameroonian authorities have deployed the police, the gendarmerie and the FDS. From 2017, army units began to be deployed, as well as special forces units. The Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) began to be deployed in 2019. Over the following years, all of these FDS were reinforced with men and military equipment.
The intensity and duration of episodes of armed violence between belligerents seem limited because the separatist groups use guerrilla techniques and specific attacks on the FDS, which are far better equipped than they are. But hostilities have been constant and regular since 2017. With the acquisition of rocket launchers and know-how acquired in the manufacture and handling of IEDs, attacks by separatist groups have caused more deaths on the side of the FDS since 2021. following the attack on a military convoy on September 16, 2021 in the division of Ngoketundja, located in the North-West region, and during which fifteen soldiers were killed, the spokesman of the Cameroonian army, Cyrille Atonfack Guemo, publicly worried about “the use of new weapons, which undoubtedly enshrine a paradigm shift in current operations”. In the days that followed, the numbers of the army and the BIR were reinforced in the field and tanks began to appear in the theater of operations. In 2021, there would have been more than 80 attacks caused by IEDs.
A FORGOTTEN CRISIS
Since the start of the crisis in the NOSO, the fighting has claimed more than 6,000 lives. According to statistics from UN agencies (UNHCR, OIM and OCHA), more than 640,000 civilians had fled the insecurity in NOSO: around 70,000 took refuge in Nigeria, and 570,000 moved to other regions of Cameroon. According to the NGO ACLED, which collects, analyzes and maps information on armed conflicts, 506 incidents were counted in the NOSO in 2021 (including 249 armed clashes, 219 violence against civilians and 38 attacks).
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has so far made no public analysis of the legal nature of the situation in NOSO – it speaks of “armed violence in the North West and of the South-West”. The same is true for international bodies and Cameroon’s main partner countries. Due to significant Cameroonian lobbying, no major debate has been held within the bodies of the United Nations or the African Union concerning the situation in NOSO. This is a “forgotten crisis”. This posture is favored by the absence of real documentation by the competent international bodies concerning the human rights violations committed since 2016.
In the event of “internal tensions” or “internal disturbances”, internal law is applied. In the event of a non-international armed conflict (NIAC), international humanitarian law (IHL) prevails. If it turns out that the situation in the NOSO is a NIAC, this would inevitably have important consequences in terms of obligations for Cameroon as well as for the international community. It would then be necessary for the belligerents to respect a set of rules aimed at protecting civilians.
IMPUNITY REMAINS THE RULE
For the Cameroonian authorities, the violence committed in the NOSO is similar to internal security disturbances and isolated and sporadic acts of violence. This violence therefore falls within the scope of national jurisdiction and it is up to the Cameroonian State to silence the violence and restore the rule of law through “reinforced law enforcement operations”.
Such management of the maintenance of internal security normally falls within the exclusive competence of the national police and the gendarmerie. So why call on the army and special forces like the BIR to manage internal unrest? The Cameroonian authorities have no interest in recognizing that the situation in NOSO is a NIAC. Thus, they do not have to apply the law of armed conflict (LOAC) and there can be no war crimes observed.
However, whether the situation in the NOSO is identified as “internal disturbances” or as a “non-international armed conflict”, the Cameroonian authorities have an obligation to enforce the rules of human rights. However, it is clear that impunity has remained the rule for five years.
The current vagueness around the Anglophone crisis is largely due to the fact that it remains unknown to the general public and is not the subject of any real attention at the level of the international community. For the moment, it accepts de facto the position of the Cameroonian authorities. Such a posture does not promote any real dialogue between the parties to the conflict. A way out of the crisis in the NOSO is however possible on the condition of renegotiating at the national level the social and political contract between Cameroonians. But within the ruling regime, officials remain obsessed with one issue: the succession of Paul Biya. This wait-and-see attitude is also required at the international level.
afriquexxi