JOHANNESBURG—Cameroon, a key ally of the United States as it seeks to crush several global terrorist organizations that have declared jihad against it, could soon plunge into chaos on multiple fronts, endangering American interests in Africa, according to analysts.
In the former French colony’s far northern reaches, extremists with allegiance to ISIS are attacking state troops and villages, killing scores of people at a time, and abducting women and children.
Repeated failures by forces from the nation’s capital, Yaounde, to end the violence have sparked the rise of vigilante self-defense units, and ethnic clashes over water and land are also claiming casualties and forcing people to flee their homes near Cameroon’s border with Chad, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.
Then, there’s the ongoing Ambazonian War of Independence, which the conflict monitoring organization calls one of the most underreported conflicts in history.
Since 2017, according to the ICG, more than 6,500 people have been killed and at least 610,000 displaced as separatist militants fight for self-determination in a linguistic-cultural conflict that’s becoming increasingly brutal.
In 2016, English-speaking lawyers, students, and teachers in Cameroon began protesting their cultural marginalization by the Francophone-dominated government, according to the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, based in New York and Geneva
When the Anglophone separatists proclaimed independence and declared a new state of “Ambazonia” in the north-west and south-west regions of Cameroon, state security forces launched a violent crackdown.
“During the conflict, security forces have perpetrated extrajudicial killings and widespread sexual and gender-based violence, burned Anglophone villages and subjected individuals with suspected separatist ties to arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment,” the center wrote in a report on the conflict.
“Armed separatists have also killed, kidnapped, and terrorized populations while steadily asserting control over large parts of the Anglophone regions. Separatists and government forces have both perpetrated targeted attacks on health facilities and humanitarian workers, restricting the delivery of and access to vital aid, and forcing various international humanitarian organizations to suspend their operations. Separatists have also banned government education and frequently attack, threaten and abduct students and teachers, as well as burn, destroy and loot schools.”
President Paul Biya, who is 92 years old and has ruled over Cameroon since 1982, refuses to follow advice and surrender power and is determined to contest elections scheduled for October.
Jasmine Opperman, global conflict and terrorism expert at Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a nonprofit organization that collects information on insurgencies worldwide, says a “perfect storm of problems,” including rapidly deteriorating security and Biya’s “stubbornness,” mean Cameroon is “now in danger of total meltdown.”
“There are powerful figures in the Cameroonian military who are very disenchanted and angry,” the former South African military intelligence officer told The Epoch Times. “The Biya government isn’t giving them the resources they need to effectively counter the separatists and terrorists, and doesn’t seem to have any strategies to confront the multiple nodes of violence in Cameroon. The frustration is fuelling talks of a coup attempt.”
Benjamin Mossberg, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, has warned that Cameroon “may soon lurch into crisis” and is convinced that the United States should help steer it away from this.
In a report published in late February, the analyst wrote: “Cameroon is currently not high on the U.S. foreign policy agenda—but it should be.
“The country, at the crossroads of Central and West Africa, faces uncertainty across political, social, economic, and security environments. This is happening at a time when the United States’ global competitors are opportunistically seeking engagement in Cameroon and the region, boxing out the United States as it looks to protect its interests there.”
Opperman agreed it would “not be good” for the United States for Cameroon to slide into “complete chaos.”
She said the United States had been invested in the country for decades, its interest being primarily of a “military–strategic nature” because of the presence of a wide range of terrorist groups in the Sahel, of which Cameroon is an integral part.
“It has several drone bases in Cameroon, and work done at these facilities is resulting in very successful attacks by American and African forces on terrorist targets,” Opperman said. “It is vital that Washington holds onto these drone capabilities because they’re essential to the global counterterrorism effort and because it recently lost its biggest drone base in Africa, in nearby Niger. That base was providing intelligence about activities and movements of many Islamist terrorists; this gap is currently being plugged by U.S. drone capabilities stationed in Cameroon.”
Niger’s ruling military junta ordered U.S. troops to leave its country after a coup in 2023. Washington completed the withdrawal of 1,000 soldiers and tons of military equipment, including drones and surveillance tools, in early August 2024.
Niger, like its neighbors Burkina Faso and Mali, which are also led by military governments, has turned away from the West and signed political, economic, and military cooperation agreements with Russia and China.
In this context, said Djiby Sow, senior West African and Sahel researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, it’s “very important” that the United States maintains a “strong presence and interest” in Cameroon.
“[U.S. President Donald] Trump may think he has bigger fish to fry but should his government not pay attention to what’s happening in Cameroon, America will lose further ground to Russia and China in a part of the world that is very well-endowed with critical minerals,” he told The Epoch Times.
The Sahel region is rich in natural resources such as gold, oil, uranium, natural gas, and lithium. Chinese state-owned enterprises operate in Niger, Chad, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
Shortly after Trump re-entered the White House on Jan. 20, the U.S. State Department described Cameroon as Washington’s “strongest regional partner in countering terrorism in the Lake Chad Basin.”
Several international terrorist groups that have declared “Holy War” against America and its allies, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, have a major presence in this part of Africa, which also forms part of the Sahel Region.
The Sahel stretches for almost 2,500 miles across a belt of grasslands south of the Sahara Desert, from Senegal in the west of Africa to Sudan in the east.
“The importance of Cameroon as a buffer against terrorism and its expansion cannot be overstated. This is also because it is the junction between West and Central Africa, so it’s of extreme strategic value,” Opperman said.
Olayinka Ajala, international relations expert and Sahel specialist at Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom, said the United States should be interested in Cameroon simply because its main rivals are.
“The Trump administration has often said that this is an era of great power competition. Should Europe and America, as the strongest examples of democracy, be weak in the Sahel, China and Russia will fill the void,” he told The Epoch Times.
Economically, this will hurt America because China and Russia will win access to the minerals needed by America to ensure that it advances economically. And if China and Russia run the show in the Sahel, as is happening more and more, that threatens the safety of Americans everywhere because, let’s face it, they won’t care if terrorists use the Sahel to plan operations to kill Americans.”
Mossberg said the outcome of the October polls would set the tone for future U.S.–Cameroon relations.
“Navigating the aftermath of Biya’s presidency will require a coordinated and elevated strategic approach by senior U.S. officials. If a crisis breaks out in Cameroon, U.S. missteps could play a part in thrusting the country and the region into significant upheaval and instability,” he said.
This, said Mossberg, would “provide oxygen” to militants across West and Central Africa.
The analyst suggested that the U.S. government protect U.S. interests by reviewing the foreign policy tools available to assist Cameroon with its development, security, and governance challenges.
Mossberg said the U.S. State Department should intensify engagement and meetings with all parties involved in the upcoming presidential elections and focus on creating stronger economic ties with Cameroon, while also supporting human rights and good governance.
He said U.S. intelligence agencies should assess the political, economic, social, and security situation in Cameroon.
“This assessment should outline critical public messaging themes that can help unify Cameroon in a potential crisis, the key players in the country’s future, and potential successors among the political, economic, and military elites,” Mossberg wrote. “The assessment should include listings of monetary assets, real estate, and commercial holdings, and any U.S. dollar-denominated bank accounts. The intelligence assessment should also shed light on money laundering and terrorist financing vulnerabilities for this regional banking hub, and it should map and analyze the relationships key Cameroonians have with Russia, China, and Israel for potential leverage points during a crisis.”
He said Washington shouldn’t wait on traditional allies such as the United Kingdom, France, or others to act regarding events in Cameroon.
“U.S. and ally interests in Cameroon often do not align,” Mossberg said. “France, now on the back foot in several African countries, may not be able to help. Russia and China are in Cameroon for themselves. Global competitors are already aggressively pursuing their political, economic, and security goals in Cameroon.”
Should Cameroon’s future bring wider violence, he said, “the potential for the country to fracture around ethnic, linguistic, religious, or other lines could look similar to, or potentially worse than, the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in southern Europe” in the 1990s.
Mossberg said the United States should take advantage of an opportunity to help stabilize “the heart of Central Africa,” which would keep Washington’s global adversaries at bay in an increasingly important part of the world.
Recent communications about Africa by senior U.S. officials have said the Trump administration’s approach to the continent, including Cameroon, will reflect the president’s “America First” agenda.
Trump’s senior adviser for Africa, Massad Boulos, told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that the U.S. government’s “job is to promote the U.S. interests and promote our strategic partnerships.”
