At least 11 Cameroonian soldiers died Saturday, Nov. 13, when suspected Anglophone separatist militants ambushed them with Improvised Explosive Devices(IEDs) at Matazem, Santa Sub-Division in the country’s embattled North West Region.
The attack came just a day after a 9-year-old pupil was shot dead in the same region by a Cameroonian police constable in an attempt to stop a driver who allegedly refused to comply, triggering violent protests from the surrounding town.
The death enraged residents who were still incensed by an Oct. 14 tragedy when a member of the Cameroonian military had killed a five-year-old child in Buea, capital of the South West Region, also roiled in revolt. That incident also was an attempt to halt a vehicle whose driver reportedly refused to comply. The officer was subsequently beaten to death by the angry mob.
“Any citizen misconduct (such as refusal to cooperate and disobedience/disrespect of security officer) could be subject of suspicion and eventual immediate target of the forces of law and order. Regrettably, the victims are misplaced targets,” wrote Suh I Fru Norbert, lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Comparative Politics in Cameroon’s University of Buea in a text to The Epoch Times. “Both incidents may not have been premeditated, [but] they coincided in two regions sharing a common public security challenge—which is disruption of public life,” Norbert added.
Tensions between Cameroon’s Francophone-led government and English-speaking secessionist movements reached a turning point in 2016, after the government imposed French-speaking teachers and lawyers on Anglophone schools and courts.
Colonial Past
The conflict stems from Cameroon’s past, which was a German colony that was later split between France and Britain.Stalemate
Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict is in a stalemate with each of the belligerents—government and separatists—believing it can defeat the other in battle. Hardly a week runs out without reports of confrontations between Cameroon government forces and Ambazonian fighters, usually resulting in casualties on both sides.Analysts have warned that the warring factions are taking innocent civilian lives. At least 11 students of the University of Buea were wounded after an IED exploded on the campus allegedly masterminded by Ambazonian fighters. It happened just days after another explosion killed a taxi driver in the same city.
“The repeated detonations could mean a proliferation of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and perhaps its technology too among those using them,” Norbert said.
“In a context of generalized armed insecurity and conflict, it will not be an overstatement to say that soft targets cannot be spared, so long as they are viewed as credible resources to further political claims,” Norbert said.
There is no military solution to the Cameroon Anglophone crisis, according to former UN official Munzu.
“The international community is not going to find the solution to this crisis,” Munzu says. “That is the responsibility of Cameroonians.”
“But it [international community] can support, facilitate, mediate the finding and implementation of a viable solution,” Munzu said.
“This is a problem beyond our control,” said Wilson Tamfu, professor of Public and International Law in Cameroon’s University of Buea, in a phone call with The Epoch Times.
Common Ground?
The Cameroon Anglophone conflict has left 4,000 dead, and displaced close to a million while at least 60,000 people have fled to neighboring Nigeria. “Separatists want to prove that they are in control of the English-speaking territory that they call the ‘homeland’,” Munzu said.“Their strategy has largely succeeded to disrupt the livelihoods and cripple the social, economic and cultural activities of most of the population in that territory. But they are far from achieving their primary objective, which is to route the Cameroonian state out of the English-speaking part of the country and ‘restore the independence’ of this territory.”
“But the fact that we have forced La Republique du Cameroun [the Cameroon government] to essentially now begin to discuss federation within their circles, which, from the beginning was an abomination in their ears, tell you that they are coming to the end of this,” Anu said