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ABSTRACT
After years of peaceful demonstrations, the Cameroonian Anglophone conflict escalated in 2017. Since the outbreak, over 3,000 people have died and a further thousand Anglophones fled from clashes between state forces and separatist fighters. While activists in the diaspora bid for international support, organizational belonging on the ground changes quickly. The paper investigates the transnationalization of the conflict by looking at the complex set of actors involved. Overall, it is interested in the political sociology of transnational rebel governance. The paper highlights the effects of transnational conflict dynamics on the unity and fragmentation of the self-determination movement and its relation to violence.
Acknowledgment
I thank Mariam Salehi, Jana Hönke, Jan Sändig, Yifan Mia Yang, Anne Menzel, Regine Schwab and Hanna Pfeifer, and all participants of the workshop “Fractures and Continuities of Changing Rule in (Post-)Conflict Settings “and the anonymous reviewers for their fruitful feedback, questions, and comments. Furthermore, I thank Lisa Skender for her support in organizing footnotes and endnotes, and Stephen Foose for his language edits.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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8. For more insights into the local’s perception, I recommend Julius Amin’s article ‘President Paul Biya and Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis: A Catalog of Miscalculations,’ where he shares his results from questionnaires and interviews. Furthermore, publications by the Cameroon Conflict Research Group at the University of Oxford, which was founded by Roxana Willis. Among others: “’We Remain Their Slaves’ Voices from the Cameroonian Conflict”.
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99. Information is taken from the Website of the IGA: https://www.ambazoniagov.org/
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. Guardian Post, https://theguardianpostcameroon.com/index.php/2020/11/06/military-in-manhunt-of-mamfe-resident-accused-of-participating-in-peaceful-protest/
103. See note 7 above.
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106. Amin: Im Kreislauf der Gewalt.
107. Sayner, Cameroon: Conflict Continues in Lead-up to Elections.
108. Okereke, Analysing Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis. Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, 8–12.
109. Bone, M. 2021: Cameroon’s elusive peace: Rivals, rifts, and secret talks.
110. Amnesty International, Cameroon: Arrests and Civil Society Bans Risk Inflaming Tensions in English-Speaking Regions; Human Rights Watch. These Killings Can Be Stopped; International Crisis Group. a. Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads.
111. Human. Rights Watch, 2020.
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113. Bone, M. 2020. Ahead of Peace Talks, a Who’s Who of Cameroon’s Separatist Movements.
114. Ibid.
115. Jeune Afrique, Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis: Rivalries hamper peace talks.
116. See note 112 above.
117. UN. Cameroon: Authorities Urged to Seek Justice for Recent Deadly Attacks.
118. Bang, Balgah.
119. Coni-Zimmer and Peez, Germany on the UN Security Council: Arria-formula meetings as a tool for crisis management and conflict prevention.
120. AGOA info, 2019.
121. Blinken, Announcement of Visa Restrictions on Those Undermining the Peaceful Resolution of the Crisis in the Anglophone Regions of Cameroon; AfricaNews, U.S. imposes visa restrictions on perpetrators of violence in Cameroon.
122. Mughe, Mua Patrick, 2020: After boasting he ordered him to free Kamto: Macron vows to give Biya marching orders to resolve crisis in NW, SW. The Guardian Post.
123. Kemedjio, The Anglophone question: between a ‘regime-made disaster’ and the ethnic politics of a fragmented nation, 198–215.
124. See note 117 above.
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126. Martin de Almagro, Lost Boomerangs, the Rebound Effect and Transnational Advocacy Networks, 672–693.
127. Craig, Separatist Movements in Nigeria and Cameroon Are Joining Forces.
128. LonNfi and Musah, British Southern Cameroon (Anglophone) Crisis in Cameroon and British (Western) Togoland Movement in Ghana: Comparing two Post-Independence separatist conflicts in Africa.
129. Michael W. Doyle, ‘the new interventionism.,’ Metaphilosophy, 32 (2001), 212–235.
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Maria Ketzmerick
Maria Ketzmerick is Assistant Professor at the Chair for Sociology of Africa at the University of Bayreuth and Principal Investigator in the Network ”Postcolonial Hierarchies” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and lecturer at the Chair for Sociology of Africa at the University of Bayreuth. Her research focuses on topics within post/decolonial security research, Central Africa (especially Cameroon) in a regional, transnational and global context as well as approaches of (sociological) peace and conflict research. In doing so, she wants to contribute to an understanding of the ambivalent and complex interrelationships between locally rooted social dynamics, transnational politics and global change, and is particularly interested in the (politically loaded and power shaped) relationship between state and society and the associated dynamics of (in)security. Empirically, she is interested in situations in which (social) orders are subject to constant (re)negotiation and the question of how these orders are embedded in historical and geographical interdependencies in a globalized context. After studying Political Science, International Law, and Global Studies, she worked as a researcher at the collaborative research center ‘Dynamics of Security’ at the University of Marburg, before joining the chair group in April 2020.