The entrance to Buea, in southwestern Cameroon, is secured by the army. Since 2016, the city, like the entire English-speaking region, has been won over by an independence uprising. Initially based on social demands, the English-speaking protest turned into an armed conflict between the separatists and the central government.
Police, gendarmes, special forces are clearly visible under their bulletproof vests, helmets, balaclavas for some. They act under the protection of armored vehicles placed here and there. In military convoys, seated near the driver, we sometimes see white people in uniform. Israelis? Omnipresent on the ground, the men of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) have been trained since the creation of this elite corps by former officers of Tsahal, the Israeli army.
We find these soldiers all along the road that connects Buea to Douala, the main port of the country, less than 100 km away. They occupy checkpoints, hold access to towns, control vehicles. They also extort: 500 FCFA (a little less than 1 €), the same price as the official toll.
A deceptive normality
The police occupy the main roads but not the forests, villages or rural areas. If the English-speaking separatists avoid pitched battles, they lay traps for them, set up ambushes, harass them by opening fire suddenly before immediately disappearing into the woods.
Without the deployment of these armed forces, everything would seem normal in Buea, at least at first sight. But this is not the case. Francophones are no longer welcome: they are accused by the separatists of working for the government and the army. The latter have infiltrated the city, they have melted into the population, are transformed into ghosts. Until they strike, arrest, kidnap, torture, kill “bad English speakers”under the helpless eye of the police.
“We know who you are”
“Here, nothing is under control”, testifies an English speaker in her thirties working for an NGO, met discreetly in her office in the city center. She is afraid to talk to a white man, and even more to a French speaker: “Everyone spies on everyone, everyone denounces everyone. Francophones risk their lives by coming here, as do Anglophones who receive them. I saw very closely what happens to “traitors”: their bodies are cut up, I know, I saw. »” Everything can happenat any timelaunches one of his young colleagues. We are victims of this conflict, and we must live together or flee, find refuge, but where? Abandon our property and our families, but to go where? »
These young women do not want to be quoted, nor to see their NGO named or their action exposed in a French-speaking media. One of their colleagues received a death threat on her phone a few days earlier: “We know who you are, we’re going to kill you. » She has since gone to Douala, too scared to come back even once a week. These messages are to be taken seriously even if, often, they are used to extort money, an effective way of ransoming those who remain.
In this chaos, many are indeed the thugs to rob the good people by posing as separatists. “We have been at war since 2016, minds are exhausted, unbalanced and out of control. We hear gunshots, there are attacks in the city, we receive threats, we don’t know what is happening. Who is our neighbor? Who is he really? And this one ? And even in our NGO there are traitors. The phone number of our colleague who left for Douala was only known to a handful of us,” sighs one of the employees.
Solitude
A third who does not take her phone out of her hand also ensures that she lives in fear. She returns home early in the afternoon, lives with her parents, they lock themselves in their house, wait for the night to pass, keep themselves as discreet as possible, nothing has changed for five years.
In the neighborhood of these aid workers, there are at least 15,000 displaced people. Given the insecurity, NGOs are struggling to meet all the needs. But how to complain? And from whom? Especially since the security forces sent to secure the city also commit abuses, often in retaliation. They opened fire without nuance, attacking villages deemed close to the separatists.
In the middle, civilians are taken hostage and bow down. On one side or the other, they are potentially considered as “collaborators”. And to collaborators, no quarter or pity. Among them, Prisca, 28, a refugee in Yaoundé. His testimony alone sums up this forgotten war in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon: “I was a hairdresser in Mamfe (1)I lived with my parents, I was happy, it was before 2016. And then the Ambazonians (2) rose up, they attacked our village, one night, then another night. Each time, we fled into the bush, we stayed there for days and days, without eating or drinking, among mosquitoes and wild animals. And then we returned to the village, hungry and terrified. »
She catches her breath: “One night, during a new attack, they killed my two brothers, they set fire to the house, I escaped, my two children with me, and two little brothers. We lived six months in the bush. We then walked for a long time, an aunt drove us to Yaoundé, her husband worked for the government, but he died. We have no more resources. If we return to the village and it is known that my uncle was a civil servant, we will be killed. Only God can help us. »
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The Anglophone crisis in a few dates
In Cameroon, a former colony dominated by French speakers, two regions are predominantly English speaking: the North-West and the South-West. Placed under British protectorate, they were attached to the rest of the country at independence in 1961. Since then, some English speakers have always felt marginalized by French speakers.
In 2016, teachers and lawyers mobilized peacefully to demand reforms. The regime suppresses these demonstrations, the mobilization hardens, separatists take up arms.
On October 1, 2017, they founded the “Republic of Ambazonia”, the conflict continues and gets bogged down.
This war left more than 6,000 dead and more than a million displaced, according to the International Crisis Group think tank.