This dyad belongs to the conflict Cameroon: Government
Summary of conflict Cameroon: Government
Cameroon has seen several bouts of fighting over governmental power. The country’s first government after independence fought against UPC, a Marxist party turned rebel group. After heavy fighting in 1960, the rebels were substantially weakened and only managed to carry out sporadic attacks through the rest of the decade. In January 2015 a new phase of the conflict started, as the originally Nigerian Islamist group Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS) released a video in which it demanded Cameroon to scrap its constitution and embrace Islam. While the Cameroonian government had already fought the group for over a year, this had been in the context of neighboring Nigeria’s conflict.
In 2025, the conflict between the Cameroonian government and JAS remained active, however, the level of violence decreased in comparison to 2024. The conflict remained centered in the Far North region of Cameroon, with clashes taking place close to the Nigerian border as JAS targeted military and police posts in villages and continued to plant Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) along roads.
Background
The territory that today constitues Cameroon has had many affiliations in the past. During the colonial era it was first occupied by Germany, but after the allied victory in the Second World War control of the territory was transferred to France and Britain. The northern part of Cameroon, which was administered by France, gained its independence on 1 January 1960. The southern, British part of Cameroon was, after a referendum, reunited with the northern parts in October 1961.
UCP violence 1960-1961
Cameroon's road to independence was fraught with violence, as UCP (Union des Populations du Cameroon; Union of the Populations of Cameroon) took on first the colonial power France and then the country's first government after independence. The first phase of fighting was a so-called extrastate conflict between UCP and France over the territory Cameroon, whereas the second constituted the first phase of the governmental conflict in Cameroon.
UCP was established in 1948 as a Marxist party with two overarching goals; independence, and the reunification of the divided Cameroon. Too popular for comfort, the party was banned prior to the 1955 election. After having attempted to get back on the political scene for a year but failed, the UCP went underground and initiated a guerrilla war against the French colonial power.
During the first two years of the conflict, the fighting was mainly concentrated to the Nyong-et-Kélé division. More specifically, operations were carried out in a fairly delimited stretch of territory in what the government called the “Zone de Pacification” north of Douala through Ngambé to the capital Yoaounde and south to Eséka. In 1958 the conflict escalated as new French units were deployed to reinforce the troops fighting UPC. The rebels subsequently suffered many setbacks, the main one being the death of the leader of its militant wing Ruben Um Nyobe in mid-September. Another important UPC leader, Mayi Matip, was able to escape the French onslaught and soon turned himself into the authorities. He subsequently sent an appeal to the remaining guerrillas to do the same and 1300 rebels heeded his call. This caused a split in UPC, with one faction turning to political life, and another faction continuing the armed struggle.
Prior to this split, the group had largely been made up of people from the Bassa ethnic group, both in terms of leadership and fighters. However, this changed after Um Nyobe’s death and the subsequent surrender of many Bassa. Those remaining in the bush were mainly from the Bamilike ethnic group, as was the new leader that emerged, Félix-Roland Moumié. From this followed logically that the next phase of the conflict was fought in areas in divisions neighbouring Nyong-et-Kélé heavily settled by Bamilike people, such as Wouri, Mungo, Mkam and Mbam.
On 1 January 1960 France left Cameroon and subsequently one of the main objectives set up by the UCP was reached: an independent Cameroon. However, the country was still divided between the independent, French-speaking north and the British south.
Cameroon's first government after independence was led by President Ahmadou Ahidjo, who had held important positions in the pre-independence government. UPC continued its struggle, as the new president moved to crush it. The new regime's main weapon was its good relationship with the former colonial power, and president Ahidjou used it to summon French troops support. On 16 February they commenced armed operations and the rest of the year saw heavy fighting with thousands of rebels killed.
On 1 October 1961, independent, French-speaking Cameroon was united with its southern half, forming the Cameroon we know today and with that UPC's second goals was met. However, intermittent rebel attacks persisted, and Ahidjo used the UPC-threat to concentrate power in the presidency. He continued with this strategy even after the rebellion had been all but defeated. UPC for its part was substantially weakened after the French intervention of 1960, but carried out sporadic attacks through the rest of the decade. After a long period of hiding, the UPC officially re-surfaced in 1991 with the return to multiparty politics in Cameroon.
Attempted coup 1984
In 1984 Cameroon was led by President Paul Biya, who had succeeded the country's founding president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, in 1982. On 6 April 1984, a coup attempt was carried out under the leadership of Colonel Ibrahim Saleh, the deputy commander of the Republican Guard. The latter was an independent faction of the Cameroonian armed forces that had as its sole purpose to protect the life of the President. Since the Republican Guard was a relatively small corps - it consisted of approximately 1000 troops - it was considered an elite regiment of the Cameroonian armed forces. Of these 1000 troops, about 500 participated in the uprising.
The attempted coup commenced one day after President Biya had announced the relocation of a number of officers, all from the northern part of the country, to other military units. This acted as a catalyst for the rebellious factions within the Republican Guard, and in the early hours of the morning on 6 April the rebels gained control of a radio station and voiced their grievances. The rebels announced that several high-ranking officers within the Army had been removed from their posts, that the constitution had been abrogated and urged the people of Cameroon to reject President Biya. In addition to the announcements over the radio, the presidential palace was shelled with artillery fire, the airport seized and telecommunications with the outside world cut. The rebels also managed to detain the Army Chief of Staff, General Pierre Semengue, in his home.
The government launched a counter-attack the same day and on the evening of 7 April President Biya announced to the nation that the rebels had been defeated. The president, who at the time of the coup attempt was in the coastal town of Kribi, stated that regular forces of the Army had regained control, and that calm had returned to the capital Yaoundé. Despite this, sporadic gunfire was heard until 9 April, with the government claiming that it was merely carrying out “mopping up” operations to eradicate the last pockets of resistance. During these raids, the alleged leader of the coup was arrested along with other high-ranking members of the Republican Guard that had been involved.
As a consequence of the attempted coup, the entire Republican Guard was disbanded and its remaining members were placed under the command of the chief of the National Gendarmerie. On 12 April the government stated that 70 people had been killed during the coup attempt, including four civilians. Unofficial estimates were, however, substantially higher, putting the figure between 500 and 2000. On 12 April all known organizers of the coup had been captured, with the exception of one Junior Officer.
The organizers of the coup were put before a military tribunal and President Biya pledged that the matter would be handled without delay. Between 27 and 30 April 1984, 35 people accused of involvement in the coup attempt were tried and found guilty. They were subsequently executed on 1 May. The executions took place in the town of Mbalmayo, 30 miles south of Yaoundé and no official confirmation of either the trial or the executions was presented. On 16 May it was announced that of the 1053 people arrested, 617 had been freed immediately, 46 had been sentenced to death (three in absentia), two had been sentenced to life imprisonment and 183 to prison terms of between two and 20 years, 183 had been released after their trial, and a further 22 cases were still being investigated. In parallel to the trials, accusations of secret executions carried out by the government began to surface. Critique was directed towards the Cameroonian government and Amnesty International appealed to President Biya to disclose the names of all those involved in the coup attempt trials, and to reveal details of charges, legal proceedings and executions. This plea fell on deaf ears, however, and the trials continued.
Regional unrest
In 2009, a then relatively unknown group - Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS) - launched an attack against a police station in Nigeria which marked the beginning of a new armed conflict in Nigeria. The violence that year culminated as the security forces lay siege to the group’s base in Maiduguri, and the rebel leader Mohammed Yussuf was captured and killed. With that, many members fled to Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The relative ease with which they appear to have been able to set up rear bases and obtain supplies in these neighboring countries can be explained by the strong linkages that exist between the four countries in the Lake Chad region, with languages, ethnicities, cultures, and patronage networks spanning the porous borders. Furthermore, some of the main factors behind the Nigerian conflict can also be found in the Far North region of Cameroon, where JAS has been most active. Northeastern Nigeria – the main theater of the conflict between the Nigerian government and JAS – is characterized by extreme poverty and marginalization. The same is true for the Far North region of Cameroon, where more than half of the population is poor and 76 percent are illiterate. JAS has skillfully used this poverty and other societal problems to recruit fighters.
Local governments for a long time regarded JAS as a solely Nigerian problem, even though the groups’ fighters had a presence and increasingly entrenched themselves in northern Cameroon. However, in 2013 events started to take a new turn when the Islamists began military operations within Cameroonian territory for the first time. Initially, the focus was on carrying out the kidnapping of foreigners, which garnered several million dollars in ransom money.
Nonetheless, it was not until 2014 that the Cameroonian government became more militarily involved against JAS, and then initially in the context of the conflict in Nigeria. Even though relationships between the states in the region have historically been tense and complicated, neighboring Niger and Chad had by then contributed troops to the so-called Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) – tasked with fighting transnational terrorism in the Lake Chad region – for several years, and as such had assisted the Nigerian government against JAS. Cameroon had refrained from such commitments, but in March 2014, Cameroonian President Paul Biya expressed its support for the Nigerian government and pledged to send a further 1000 troops to its border with Nigeria in order to fight JAS. President Biya, furthermore assured that Cameroon was committed to cooperating fully with Nigeria “to combat all forms of terrorism and cross-border criminality.” During the second half of 2014, the Cameroonian army subsequently found itself locked in heavy fighting with JAS, as the latter repeatedly attacked towns and villages along the Cameroonian/Nigerian border.
January 2015: A new phase in the conflict
In 2015, a new phase of the conflict erupted, with the Cameroonian government being challenged by the originally Nigerian Islamist rebel group Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (JAS).
Even though there was fierce fighting between Cameroonian forces and JAS, on Cameroonian soil, through 2014, this was in the context of the conflict between Nigeria and the Islamists, with Cameroon supporting the former as a secondary warring party. There was no separate incompatibility between the regime in Yaoundé and JAS. This changed on 5 January 2015, when the Islamists released a video called “Message to President Biya of Cameroon”, in which the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, demanded that Cameroon scrap its constitution and embrace Islam, else the country would “taste what had befallen Nigeria”. With this, a new phase of the conflict over governmental power in Cameroon commenced.
The northern part of the country saw several large-scale battles over the following two months, with troops from Chad supporting the government. JAS acted as both a guerrilla force, attacking in small numbers, and as a conventional army, deploying hundreds – at times even thousands – of fighters. On some occasions, the group even temporarily occupied towns captured from the army. In March 2015, JAS pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS). This was accepted, whereby the group was integrated into the former, becoming Wilayat West Africa, its West African wing (ISWAP). With that, the conflict over government power in Cameroon was terminated, and a new one commenced; a territorial conflict over the so-called Islamic State.
The resurgence of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad
Having fought under the banner of IS for a year, cracks started to show in the organization. There were intermittent reports of problems within the group already during the first months of 2016, but it was not until 3 August that something concrete materialized. On that day, IS central announced that Habib Yusuf – also known as Abu Musab al-Barnawi – son of the founder of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, was the new emir of its West Africa province, in effect dethroning Abubakar Shekau. This led to a battle of words between Shekau and Barnawi, with the former responding to the news by lashing out in a video, claiming that Barnawi and his followers – which control the line of communication with IS central – had manipulated the latter by preventing Shekau from sending messages. He then went on to accuse Barnawi of apostasy. Barnawi, in turn, denounced Shekau as a hypocrite and coward, criticizing him for the indiscriminate and excessive killing of Muslim civilians. IS' West Africa wing under the new leadership of al-Barnawi thus attempt to shift the behavior of the group away from the indiscriminate killing of Muslim civilians, to focus more exclusively on Christians as well as on military targets.
The group thus split in two, with one faction under Barnwai remaining under the banner of IS, and the other, under Shekau, re-forming Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS). Analysts agree that in the Cameroonian context, JAS mainly operated in the Mayo Tsanaga and Mayo Sava departments, but also had some cells in Logone et Chari department and around Lake Chad. The Cameroonian contingent of the organization appears to have seen an influx of fighters from neighboring Borno state in Nigeria; as Nigerian security forces increased their pressure on Shekau’s fighters in especially Sambisa forest (see Nigeria: Government) many fled across the border into northern Cameroon.
In contrast to the group’s behavior in 2015, neither the second half of 2016 nor 2017 saw any conventional fighting. Having adapted after sustaining substantial setbacks and losses in 2015, JAS instead relied almost completely on ambushes, suicide bombers, and IEDs. This pattern continued in 2018 and 2019 but on an even lesser scale. As the violence de-escalated, fatalities fell just below the 25 battle-related deaths threshold and the conflict was not recorded as active in UCDP data in those years. The conflict became active again in 2020. While 2020 saw JAS attempting to expand their influence in the conflict with Nigeria, these ambitions were not exhibited in Cameroon. During 2020 JAS attacks on government forces were mostly limited to raids and ambushes, mainly along the border with Nigeria in the Mayo Tsanaga and Mayo Sava departments. While the spring of 2021 saw these attacks continue, they were interrupted by the death of Abubakar Shekau amid fighting with IS West Africa Province (ISWAP) in May 2021. The remaining part of 2021 saw JAS activity in Cameroon diminish, resulting in fatalities from state-based violence dropping just below the threshold of 25 battle-related deaths.
