Anglophone Crisis

Anglophone Crisis
Part of the Anglophone problem
Separatist presence      Government presence      Contested
Date 9 September 2017[1] – present (6 years, 8 months, 2 weeks and 5 days) Location Northwest Region and Southwest Region (former Southern Cameroons), Cameroon (Spillover in Cameroon's Littoral Region and West Region and Nigeria's Cross River State)[2] Status Ongoing
Belligerents
Cameroon	Ambazonia
Commanders and leaders
Paul Biya Philémon Yang Joseph Ngute René Claude Meka Valere Nka	Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe Samuel Ikome Sako Ayaba Cho Lucas Ebenezer Akwanga ... and others
Units involved
FAC Vigilante groups[3] Militias of local chiefs[4]	ADF SOCADEF ASC ... and others
Strength
12,500 troops, 9,000 militia (total size of army)[5]	2,000–4,000 fighters (as of May 2019)[6]
Casualties and losses
800–1,000 killed (as of February 2020)[7]	~1,000 killed (as of June 2019)[8]
6,000+ civilians killed (as of January 2023)[9] 700,000 internally displaced 63,800 refugees in Nigeria (as of March 2021)[10]

The Anglophone Crisis (French: Crise anglophone), also known as the Ambazonia War^[11] or the Cameroonian Civil War,^[12] is an ongoing armed conflict between Cameroon and self-proclaimed Ambazonia in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions of the country, part of the long-standing Anglophone problem.^[13] Following the suppression of 2016–17 protests by Cameroonian authorities, separatists in the Anglophone regions (formerly collectively known as the Southern Cameroons) launched a guerrilla campaign and later proclaimed independence. Within two months, the government of Cameroon declared war on the separatists and sent its army into the Anglophone regions.^[14]

Starting as a low-scale insurgency, the conflict spread to most parts of the Anglophone regions within a year.^[15] By the summer of 2019, the government controlled the major cities and parts of the countryside, while the Ambazonian nationalists held parts of the countryside and regularly appeared in the major cities.^[6] Separatists have occasionally carried out raids into the neighboring Francophone regions of Littoral and West.^[16] Thousands of people have been killed in the war, and more than half a million have been forced to flee their homes.^[6] The Cameroonian government was supported by the Buhari administration in Nigeria,^[17] while at least one Ambazonian group is allied to Biafran separatists.^[18]

Talks mediated by Switzerland in 2019 ultimately failed, and the Ambazonian leadership crisis has complicated any diplomatic process.^[19] Separatist leaders who were extradited from Nigeria in 2018 were in 2019 handed life sentences by a military tribunal. Facing mounting international pressure for a global ceasefire, in July 2020 Cameroon began negotiating with these imprisoned leaders.^[20] The talks were held between Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe and other imprisoned leaders and representatives of the Cameroonian government. The talks outlined a series of conditions for the Cameroonian government to accept that Ayuk Tabe said would create an "enabling environment" for substantial negotiations to occur.^[21] These talks ultimately failed, and fighting continued.^[22]