Anglophone Crisis
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The Anglophone Crisis (French: Crise anglophone), also known as the Ambazonia War,[10] or the Cameroonian Civil War,[11] is a conflict in the Southern Cameroons region of Cameroon, part of the long-standing Anglophone problem.[12] In September 2017, separatists in the Anglophone territories of Northwest Region and Southwest Region (collectively known as Southern Cameroons) declared the independence of Ambazonia and began fighting against the Government of Cameroon.[13] Starting as a low-scale insurgency, the conflict spread to most parts of the Anglophone regions within a year.[14] By the summer of 2019, the government controlled the major cities and parts of the countryside, while the separatists held parts of the countryside and regularly appeared in the major cities.[5]
The war has killed approximately 3,000 people[8] and forced more than half a million people to flee their homes.[5] Although 2019 saw the first known instance of dialogue between Cameroon and the separatists,[15] as well as a state-organized national dialogue and the granting of a special status to the Anglophone regions,[16] the war continued to intensify in late 2019.[17] The 2020 Cameroonian parliamentary election brought further escalation, as the separatists became more assertive while Cameroon deployed additional forces. While the COVID-19 pandemic saw one armed group declare a unilateral ceasefire to combat the spread of the virus, other groups and the Cameroonian government ignored calls to follow suit and kept on fighting.[18]
Limited attempts have been made at negotiating. Talks mediated by Switzerland in 2019 ultimately failed, and internal divisions among the separatists since the 2019 Ambazonian leadership crisis has complicated the situation.[19] The same year, separatist leaders who were extradited from Nigeria in 2018 were handed life sentences by a military tribunal. However, facing mounting international pressure for a global ceasefire, in July 2020 Cameroon began negotiating with these imprisoned leaders.[20] The talks were held between Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe and other imprisoned leaders and representatives of the Cameroonian government. The talks outlined a series of conditions for the Cameroonian government to accept that Ayuk Tabe said would create an "enabling environment" for substantial negotiations to occur.[21]
Background[edit]
The name "Ambazonia" is taken from Ambas Bay and Ambozes, the local name of the mouth of the Wouri River.[22] This is where the English language was permanently established for the first time in Southern Cameroons, when missionary Alfred Saker founded a settlement of freed slaves by Ambas Bay in 1858, which was later renamed Victoria (present-day Limbe).[23] In 1884, the area became the British Ambas Bay Protectorate, with Victoria as its capital. Britain ceded the area to the German territory of Kamerun in 1887. Germany had some trouble establishing control over the hinterlands of Victoria, and fought the Bafut Wars against local fondoms until 1907.[24]
Following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, Kamerun was divided between a French and a British League of Nations Mandate. The French mandate was known as Cameroun, and comprised most of the former German territory. The British mandate was an elongated strip of land along the border of Colonial Nigeria, consisting of Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons, including the historical Ambas Bay Protectorate. This territory was organized as British Cameroons.[25]
The British administered the territories through indirect rule, allowing native authorities to administer the population according to their own traditions. In 1953, the Southern Cameroons delegation at a conference in London asked for a separate region. The British agreed, and Southern Cameroons became an autonomous region with its capital still at Buea. Elections were held in 1954 and the parliament met on 1 October 1954, with E. M. L. Endeley as Premier.[26]
The United Nations organised a plebiscite in the region on 11 February 1961 which put two alternatives to the people: union with Nigeria or union with Cameroon. The third option, independence, was opposed by the British representative to the UN Trusteeship Council, Sir Andrew Cohen, and as a result was not listed. In the plebiscite, 60% of voters in the Northern Cameroons voted for union with Nigeria, while 70% of voters in the Southern Cameroons opted for union with Cameroon.[27] The results owed partly to a fear of domination by much larger Nigeria.[28] Endeley was defeated in elections on 1 February 1959 by John Ngu Foncha.[29]
Southern Cameroons became part of Cameroon on 1 October 1961 as "West Cameroon", with its own prime minister. However, the English-speaking peoples of the Southern Cameroons did not believe that they were fairly treated by the French-speaking government of the country. Then-president Ahmadou Ahidjo feared that Southern Cameroons would secede from the union, taking its natural resources with it. Following a French Cameroon unilateral referendum on 20 May 1972, a new constitution was adopted in Cameroon which replaced the federal state with a unitary state, and also gave more power to the president.[30] Southern Cameroons lost its autonomous status and became the Northwest Region and the Southwest Region of the Republic of Cameroon. Pro-independence groups claimed that this violated the constitution, as the majority of deputies from West Cameroon had not consented to legitimize the constitutional changes.[31] They argued that Southern Cameroons had effectively been annexed by Cameroon.[32] Shortly afterwards, French Cameroun's political leadership changed the constitution again, appointed French-speaking Paul Biya as Prime Minister and successor to Ahmadou Ahidjo ostensibly to deny the Speaker of the House of Assembly Salomon Tandeng Muna - an Anglophone the possibility of becoming president by succession.
In a memorandum dated 20 March 1985, Anglophone lawyer and President of the Cameroon Bar Association Fongum Gorji Dinka wrote that the Cameroonian government led by Paul Biya was unconstitutional and announced the former Southern Cameroons should become independent as the Republic of Ambazonia. Dinka was incarcerated the following January without trial.[33] Three years later, he escaped to Nigeria.[34]
In 1993, representatives of Anglophone groups convened the first All Anglophone Conference (AAC1) in Buea. The conference issued the "Buea Declaration", which called for constitutional amendments to restore the 1961 federation. This was followed by the second All Anglophone Conference (AAC2) in Bamenda in 1994. This conference issued the "Bamenda Declaration", which stated that if the federal state was not restored within a reasonable time, Southern Cameroons would declare its independence. The AAC was renamed the Southern Cameroons Peoples Conference (SCPC), and later the Southern Cameroons Peoples Organisation (SCAPO), with the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) as the executive governing body. Younger activists formed the Southern Cameroons Youth League (SCYL) in Buea on 28 May 1995. The SCNC sent a delegation, led by John Foncha, to the United Nations, which was received on 1 June 1995 and presented a petition against the 'annexation' of the Southern Cameroons by French Cameroon. This was followed by a signature referendum the same year, which the organisers claim produced a 99% vote in favour of independence with 315,000 people voting.[35]
SCNC activities were routinely disrupted by police.[36] On March 23, 1997, about ten people were killed in a raid on a gendarme camp in Bamenda. The police arrested between 200 and 300 people, mostly SCNC supporters, but also members of the Social Democratic Front, an opposition party with significant support in the Anglophone regions.[37] In the subsequent trials, Amnesty International and the SCNC found substantive evidence of admissions through torture and force.[36] The raid and trial resulted in a shutdown of SCNC activities.[38] In response to this, in April 1998 a small faction elected Esoka Ndoki Mukete, a high-ranking member of the Social Democratic Front, as the new chair of the SCNC. In October 1999, when many of the accused were found guilty in the 1997 trial, the faction led by Mukete became more assertive. On 1 October 1999, militants took over Radio Buea to proclaim the independence of Southern Cameroons, but failed to do so before security forces intervened.[39] The leadership and many members of the SCNC were subsequently arrested.[38] After clashes with the police, the SCNC was officially declared illegal by the Cameroonian authorities in 2001.[40] In 2006, a faction of SCNC once again declared the independence of Ambazonia.[38]
In 2006, Nigeria ceded the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon, ending a decade-long territorial dispute. Local militias opposing the border change took up arms against the Cameroonian government, starting the Bakassi conflict. The conflict was a sea-based insurgency where the rebels used pirate tactics, attacking ships, abducting sailors and carrying out seaborne raids as far away as Limbe and Douala. While some movements (such as BAMOSD) sought to make Bakassi an independent state, others came to tie their cause to that of Ambazonia. In November 2007, the "Liberators of the Southern Cameroon People", a previously unknown group, killed 21 Cameroonian soldiers. Most militias in Bakassi laid down their arms in September 2009.[41]
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