https://allafrica.com/stories/202207200026.html

Five years into a deadly separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, hopes of finding a negotiated settlement seem more distant than ever as both the government and secessionist rebels dig in, according to civil society activists.

It’s a conflict marked by spikes of extreme violence that invariably target civilians. The latest high-profile incident was last month, when government soldiers killed nine people in Missong village, in the anglophone Northwest region.

Rights groups accuse both the security forces and secessionist fighters of serious abuses that include extrajudicial killings, rape, kidnapping, and torture.

The root of the conflict is the central government’s historical marginalisation of the two English-speaking regions, the Northwest and Southwest, home to about 20 percent of the population.

But the dynamics of the violence have changed with the growth of a lucrative “war economy”, typically involving kidnapping and the broader extortion of the civilian population. The political and economic spoils of the war have reduced the incentive to find a negotiated settlement.

“This is no longer a struggle for the common man, but instead an economic venture,” Alhaji Mohammed Aboubakar, the influential imam of the Central Mosque in Buea, Southwest region, told The New Humanitarian by cell phone earlier this year.

And that is not good news for the 640,000 people displaced over the five years of war. The conflict has upturned the lives of more than two million people and lead to sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by both sides, shuttered schools, and impoverished both regions.

https://allafrica.com/stories/202207200026.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglophone_Crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambazonia