In early April, in a village in the North West region of Cameroon, English-speaking separatist fighters attacked houses belonging to the Wodaabe, a group of semi-nomadic Fulani herders. During this attack, a dozen homes were burned and at least as many people killed. A militia from the deeply divided English-speaking separatist movement claimed responsibility and said it targeted the residence of a Wodaabe man who was cooperating with the Cameroonian army.
The attack came just a month after the assassination of a traditional chief in the locality of Esu, also in the northwest of the country, by Wodaabe youths. In retaliation, youths from Esu then set fire to Wodaabe homes, businesses and farms. Whereupon the Cameroonian army deployed an unknown number of soldiers to put an end to the unrest in this already highly militarized region.
A real civil war
This recent violence is just the latest manifestation of tensions that have pitted local communities against the Wodaabe in the North West region for more than a century. The villagers, who are mostly Christian sedentary farmers, view the Wodaabe, semi-nomadic Muslim herders, as outsiders who have no place in the area.
For some time, these tensions have been inflamed, and the number of victims is growing. This outbreak of violence is due to the English-speaking crisis, a real civil war: since the end of 2016, separatist warriors want to create an independent state, Ambazonia, bringing together the English-speaking regions of the North-West and South-West. In this context, many feel that the Wodaabe are aligned with the Cameroonian government, which has engaged in violent conflict in these two regions.
Old intercommunity tensions
At the start of the crisis, English-speaking Cameroonians led peaceful protests to obtain greater linguistic autonomy, but these dissensions soon gave rise to armed clashes, clashes that were violently repressed by the government. The Anglophone crisis is also fueling old inter-community tensions, which mark an unprecedented escalation. Some of the bloodiest clashes of the Anglophone crisis are between Wodaabe herders and agrarian populations.
The Anglophone crisis and old inter-communal tensions overlap: the separatist warriors come mostly from rural communities in these two regions, while the Wodaabe herders have forged strong relations with the Cameroonian government over the decades.
For example, during the Ngarbuh massacre in 2020, when elements of the Cameroonian army killed 21 civilians, including 13 children and a pregnant woman, Wodaabe groups assisted them. Conversely, separatists attacked the Wodaabe and stole their cattle to the point of forcing thousands of them to flee and move their herds out of the English-speaking regions; many Wodaabe mosques and properties were burnt down.
A matter of faith?
Also, some believe that this inter-community conflict now has a religious dimension: Wodaabe Muslims and Christian separatists are said to be fighting over questions of faith.
Organizations that monitor the persecution of Christians around the world warn of the growing risk of anti-Christian violence in the North West and South West regions; they denounce Wodaabe attacks on churches and believe that inter-community tensions have a religious background. As for the US State Department, while it does not go so far as to say that these clashes are motivated by religious issues, it writes, in its 2020 report on freedom of religion in the world, that they constitute a subject worrying.
On the side of social networks, the two camps multiply the rumors of religious targeted attacks. The stories circulating are reminiscent of those heard in neighboring Nigeria, where similar clashes between sedentary and pastoral communities are portrayed as religious conflicts – which is highly debatable.
The legacy of a fragile legal status
Current tensions between sedentary and Wodaabe communities in the North West date back to the early 20th century.e century, when the first Wodaabe settlers arrived from present-day Nigeria in search of fertile pastures. The British colonial authorities supported this migration to the northwest, eager to diversify the region’s economy and levy taxes on cattle.
While these herders were initially welcomed by local populations, the grazing paths of their herds began to disrupt crop rotation systems, triggering sporadic violence.
After the arrival of the first Wodaabe around 1910, their ranks continued to swell over the following decades. By the mid-1940s, many were permanently residing in camps established in the North West region; few were still traveling with the cattle. However, even though many Wodaabe were largely settled, the British colonial authorities refused to grant them the status of“native” ; so they remained “colons”.
Later, the British crown set up a system of permits limiting the places and periods of grazing. In other words, the fragility of their legal status forced these shepherds to maintain good relations with the colonial authorities.
The turn of independence
This past still has consequences for their relations with the state and local communities today: the Wodaabe tend to feel dependent on the authorities and seek to remain on good terms with them, even in post-colonial Cameroon.
Moreover, since the independence of Cameroon in 1961, the status of the Wodaabe has fundamentally changed. On the one hand, the rules governing grazing have been abolished, and their grazing rights have become almost unlimited. On the other hand, they obtained full Cameroonian citizenship in 1972.
In addition, they benefited from the 1974 ordinances, which nationalized community lands. These new rules allowed some well-to-do Wodaabe groups to acquire vast pastures previously considered community land and used for subsistence farming.
Although a large majority of Wodaabe remained poor, tensions with local English-speaking communities grew, with increasingly prolonged episodes of violence. Moreover, the Wodaabe have sometimes sought protection from the government and the army, thus reinforcing the idea that they were cooperating with the authorities against the local communities.
A situation aggravated by the Anglophone crisis
Since the middle of the XXe century, these tensions resurface in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon on the occasion of almost all major political moments. For example, in the first multiparty presidential elections in 1992, the opposition Social Democratic Front party, which enjoyed massive support from the English-speaking regions, promised to carry out land reform if elected.
The Wodaabe, who saw it as a threat to their pastures, overwhelmingly voted for the ruling Cameroonian People’s Democratic Rally. During the post-election unrest, many attacks targeted Wodaabe people and their property, largely because they were seen as close to the government.
As these tensions divide the entire society of the North West, it is not surprising that they are worsening with the Anglophone crisis. For example, the Amba Boys, these Ambazonian armed groups, multiplied after the Cameroonian army burned down villages in rural areas of the North West and South West between late 2017 and early 2018.
With the state or against the state
The department of Menchum, in the North-West, is one of the areas where tensions between English-speaking and Wodaabe warriors are particularly high. Some of the first secessionist fighters came from local Christian groups that have had disputes with the Wodaabe for several generations. This whole context leads the separatists to consider the Wodaabe as allies of the state, from which they want to secede; and this State is extremely violent against them.
As the Anglophone crisis worsened, secessionists began killing and abducting, sometimes for ransom, individuals they saw as opposed to their cause or sympathetic to the government. And these victims are in particular Wodaabe from the North-West. In response, the Wodaabe approach the government, concluding formal and informal agreements with it. They even formed their own paramilitary groups.
It would be simplistic to say that the conflict between herders and farmers is religious. This would be to ignore the complex, local factors at the origin of this spiral of violence.