Language of hatred fuelling ‘disastrous’ civil war
As a volunteer foot soldier in Africa’s newest war of liberation, Robert Enow is ready and willing to die for his cause. Given the weapons he has to fight with, that is probably just as well. On a good day, he and his fellow “Red Dragon” fighters in south-west Cameroon take on the government’s troops with homemade, single-shot muskets. On a bad day, they rely on cutlasses, clubs, and juju charms that are said to make them bulletproof.
“The Cameroon government troops have much better weapons than us, and most of the time, they win,” Mr Enow, 28, told The Daily Telegraph. “In our first battle against them, seven of my comrades died. But this fight comes from our heart: we don’t want to be part of La Republique anymore.”
The reason why his region is now engulfed in bloodshed is apparent the moment he opens his mouth. He speaks in English. In francophone Cameroon that marks him and five million others out as a minority.
“La Republique” – a phrase he spits out with contempt – is one of the few French phrases he uses. He and many other Anglophones hope not to have utter it much longer.
For after decades of complaining that they were second-class citizens, Cameroon’s English-speakers are now fighting for an independent homeland – a demand that has not gone down well with Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon and an old-school African strongman who has ruled since 1982.
Last night marked the start of a two-day curfew in anglophone areas, ahead of today’s anniversary of a symbolic “independence” declaration made by separatist groups last year. On Oct 1 1961, English and French Cameroon merged, a date supposed be celebrated as Unification Day. The separatists have also urged a boycott of this Sunday’s presidential elections, when Mr Biya, already Africa’s oldest non-royal leader at 87, will seek a seventh term in office.
“We Ambazonians are no longer interested in the vote, because Biya is just a dictator,” said John Samuel, 64, who said his cousin was killed last month in an army raid on Buea, the capital of the south-west region.
The violence first flared two years ago, when Cameroon’s bewigged, anglophone lawyers protested against plans to put francophone judges into their British-modelled legal system.
The protests were violently broken up on the orders of Mr Biya. But in the age of social media, footage of it was all that was needed to ignite half a century of unaddressed grievances.
Ever since, weekly “Ghost Town” days – general strikes where the entire anglophone region grinds to a halt – have been organised. Dozens of armed separatist groups like the Red Dragons have sprung up. What started as a political squabble has now become a low-level civil war, with roughly 600 dead in the last year. Nearly 40,000 refugees have fled to Nigeria, while another 160,000 have been left homeless in Cameroon.
Human rights groups say the army has burnt down scores of villages, sometimes with the occupants still inside. The charity Caritas, that works on both sides of the border, describes the crisis as “disastrous”. Small wonder, then, that many Anglophones have proclaimed “La Republique” dead, and declared their own breakaway state of “Ambazonia”.
Cameroon’s linguistic fault line is the legacy of dubious colonial manoeuvring half a century ago, when what was then British-run Southern Cameroon was offered a referendum to either become part of Nigeria or be merged into francophone Cameroon. The vote went in favour of joining the French-speaking section, which back then was more prosperous. But ever since, Anglophones have complained of underinvestment and a government dominated by French speakers.
Whether the dream of Ambazonia will come true is another matter. The separatists are no match for the French-trained army, who already face an outcry for executing civilians accused of being Boko Haram fighters.
The guerrillas also stand accused of atrocities, with footage surfacing last month of them beheading a soldier.
Mr Enow admitted that kidnapping and torturing soldiers was sometimes necessary to level the battlefield. “We use force to get them to tell us what village they’re going to attack next,” he said. “Then we normally kill them.”
Such rhetoric has alarmed diplomats, who say the relatively low death toll does not reflect the savage way the conflict has escalated. Amid pressure from Britain, France and the US, Mr Biya has introduced some belated reforms, but Western officials fear it may be too little, too late.
Calls for an independent Ambazonia will get little support from the international community, which does not back new nation states lightly.
But even if it does not exist officially, Ambazonia is already a fact in the minds of many refugees, for whom no olive branches from Mr Biya will now make amends. “His soldiers killed four young men and a teenage girl in my village,” said Arron Joseph, 30, one of hundreds of refugees now sheltering at Agbokim Falls, where a 100ft torrent separates Cameroon from Nigeria. “I now consider myself an Ambazonian, not a Cameroonian.” Names have been changed.
‘We use force to get them to tell us what village they’re going to attack next ... then we kill them’