Politics
(Reuters) - Boko Haram militants have slit the throats of 12 people in northeast Nigeria as the army was trying to evacuate civilians from the area, a military source and a witness said on Friday.
The Islamist group has been driven out of much of the huge swathe of territory they controlled at the start of the year, thanks to a concerted push by troops from Nigeria and neighbours Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
The town of Gwoza, in mountainous terrain, was one of the last places to fall, on March 27, and there remain pockets of Boko Haram activity in the area, security sources say.
"Just as troops were trying to evacuate some civilians from the hills so as to safeguard them from a planned air strike ... some Boko Haram attacked them and slit the throats of 12 people," a military source said of Wednesday's attack.
A witness, Jonas Musa, told Reuters his parents were both among the victims. He said soldiers had moved one wave of people from the hills around Gwoza, but before they could go back for the second, the attackers struck.
Failure to crush Boko Haram or protect civilians was one reason President Goodluck Jonathan lost an election on March 28 to Muhammadu Buhari. Boko Haram, fighting to establish an Islamic state, has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds during its six-year-old insurgency in Africa's biggest economy and top oil producer.
Buhari has pledged to spare no effort in crushing the militants after he is sworn in on May 29. He said on Tuesday he would do everything he can to rescue more than 200 girls abducted by the group a year ago from a school in the village of Chibok, but that he could not promise to find them.
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How do you vaccinate women and children against polio in remote areas prey to attack from Boko Haram militants? Arm the soldiers with vaccine.
This is exactly what has happened with great success in northern Cameroon.
Following a series of abductions last year by Boko Haram groups, military escorts have been joining vaccination drives in Cameroon’s Far North Region to protect both local and international humanitarian workers.
In addition to acting as a security presence, officers, who normally patrol the frontlines and at-risk border communities, are also trained to administer polio vaccines – a tactic UNICEF says has been key to the successful campaign.
It allowed children in even the most dangerous areas to be vaccinated, as well as refugees the moment their families crossed the border.
“It is our role to protect the population and prevent them from whatever danger, including health threats,” a Cameroonian commander, who wished to remain anonymous, told IRIN. “So we are simply adding more value to the work that we are already doing.”
Military personnel also engaged with community leaders and radio stations to spread word of the importance of the vaccinations.
“In my locality, I make sure that my people get excited and look for the vaccinators,” said a chief called Lamido from Guidiguis in far northern Cameroon.
Turning the corner after 18 months
As a result of the military involvement, the polio vaccination drive in the Far North Region has surpassed this year’s goals in spite of the challenges posed by Boko Haram and the massive influx of refugees from Nigeria.
The latest campaign, which took place 27-29 March, reached 1.4 million children under the age of five – nearly 100,000 more than initially targeted, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“Despite the security challenges, polio vaccination campaigns have been registering better results over the past months as a result of increased military presence and [military] participation in the vaccination process,” said regional health ministry official Flaubert Danbe.
Recent progress comes after more than 18 difficult months trying to contain polio, which broke out again in Cameroon in October 2013.
At least 13 previous immunization campaigns were at least partially thwarted by Boko Haram-related violence, or resistance from refugees from neighbouring Nigeria, where polio is endemic.
In 2014, childhood immunization rates in Cameroon stood at just 60 percent, according to the Ministry of Health – a figure well below the 90 percent minimum needed to eradicate the disease.
Cameroon has had no new cases of polio in more than six months and was downgraded from a polio-exporting country on 31 March, but the World Health Organization (WHO) still considers it to be at “high risk” due to the challenges in administering the vaccination and the ongoing refugee problem.
The number of Nigerian children not vaccinated against polio increased from 778,000 in November 2014 to 1.1 million in January 2015, according to UNICEF. Just one cross-border case could restart an outbreak in Cameroon, authorities say.
Overcoming the challenges
Immunization campaigns in the region have been plagued by insecurity since the beginning of 2014, when Boko Haram began to extend its attacks from Nigeria into Cameroon.
At least nine of the 30 health districts in the Far North Region have been affected, with women and children the ones most likely to miss out.
“Access to health care systems by the local population is difficult as some clinics have been closed as a result of the [insecurity],” UNICEF’s Antoine Ntapli told IRIN.
The influx of Nigerian refugees into northern Cameroon has also put a strain on local health care services, which are not well enough equipped or staffed to handle large caseloads. Many local health workers have fled the area, further straining already limited resources.
“The exodus of Nigerian refugees across communities and the internal displacement of the population are among the challenges… coupled with the inaccessibility of population still living in risky areas,” Ntapli said.
More than 74,000 Nigerians have taken refuge in Cameroon due to Boko Haram attacks, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Eastern Cameroon is also host to the largest number of refugees from the Central African Republic – around 200,000 people, according to the latest figures from UNHCR.
An estimated 117,000 Cameroonians living in border communities have also been displaced within the country’s Far North Region, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.
This constant movement of people makes administering the vaccination to children particularly difficult. The oral vaccine requires three two-drop doses, usually given four weeks apart, in order to be fully effective. As people flee one attack to the next, it is challenging for health workers to keep track of their whereabouts and follow up on the booster doses.
Cultural resistance from Nigerian refugees
For Nigerian newcomers not vaccinated upon arrival in Cameroon, campaigns are conducted on a near constant basis in the refugee camps.
“The vaccination of the displaced is an ongoing process and vaccines must be available to be given to every new arrival,” Ntapli said.
Each refugee who enters a camp is vaccinated against both polio and yellow fever, among other diseases.
But polio vaccination has faced strong resistance within conservative Islamic communities in northern Nigeria due to a deep distrust of the West, persistent rumours that the vaccine is harmful, and the house-to-house approach taken by immunization campaigners, which many see as intrusive.
Garba Dauda, a vaccination agent at the Minawao refugee camp, said many Nigerians there originate from places where polio immunization has a bad name.
“Some refugees used to oppose vaccination at first, but we have managed [with education campaigns] to change people’s mentality and now they are more receptive,” Dauda said.
UNICEF and Cameroon’s health ministry say they now plan to extend this type of vaccination campaign to the east of the country.
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(BBC)More than 50 of the girls abducted by militant Islamists in Nigeria last year were seen alive three weeks ago, a woman has told the BBC.
She saw the girls in the north-eastern Gwoza town before the Boko Haram militants were driven out of there by regional forces.
Boko Haram sparked global outrage when it seized more than 219 girls from Chibok town a year ago.
The US, China and other foreign powers promised to help find the girls.
However, the girls have never been traced, and little has been heard of them since they were taken from their boarding school.
The whereabouts of the remaining girls is not clear.
'Big house'
Campaign group Bring Back Our Girls organised a silent march in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, on Wednesday to raise public awareness about the abductions.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has said the girls have been converted to Islam and married off, fuelling concern that the militants had treated them as war booty and sex-slaves.
Mr Shekau has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), which is also notorious for carrying out abductions in Iraq and Syria.
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Central and West African leaders will hold a summit Wednesday to fine tune their campaign to crush Boko Haram, who appear to be losing ground in the face of a regional military offensive.
The April 8 talks will be the first since Nigeria’s election a week ago, which was won by Muhammadu Buhari, a former military leader who has vowed to rid his country of the “terror” the Islamist militants have sown.
Boko Haram, whose rampage through northeastern Nigeria has left more than 15,000 people dead since 2009, is the region’s most pressing security problem, having sent refugees fleeing across borders and displaced tens of thousands within Nigeria.
The West African regional bloc ECOWAS said in a statement Sunday that the meeting in the Equatorial Guinea capital Malabo came “in the face of the mounting and increasingly bloody attacks by the fundamentalists against Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.”
The Malabo summit is being jointly organized by ECOWAS and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).
Experts from both groups held preliminary meetings in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala to prepare ground for the summit, ECOWAS said.
They tried to fine tune strategy to “eradicate” the group, the statement added, and discussed regional coordination of military strategy and other matters.
Buhari’s historic election win was partly due to departing President Goodluck Jonathan’s failure to tackle the insurgency, which has sparked worldwide concern.
“I assure you that Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our collective will and commitment to rid this nation of terror and bring back peace,” Buhari said last week.
He later told the BBC: “With the cooperation of our neighbors, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and the international community, and the commitment we are going to get from the military, I think it will take us a much shorter time to deal with them.”
A coalition involving troops from the four countries has been battling the Islamists in a bid to crush the insurgency, which has now spread across borders from Boko Haram’s stronghold in northern Nigeria.
The general staff of the Chadian army last week said the nuisance capacity of Boko Haram has been severely reduced by the offensive, although their Nigerien colleagues believe the group still has the ability to wage an “asymmetric war” through suicide attacks and hit-and-run raids.
According to some experts, a major stumbling block in the fight against the group had hitherto been poor intelligence sharing between Nigeria and its neighbors, although this appears to have improved after a joint military force involving the four countries was launched.
It was not immediately clear if Buhari would be attending the summit, as he will not be sworn in as president to succeed Jonathan until May 29.
U.N. rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein last week led an appeal for stronger international support in the fight against the group after the U.N. Human Rights Council unanimously adopted a resolution to this effect.
“Countless more children, women and men have been abducted, abused and forcibly recruited, and women and girls have been targeted for particularly horrific abuse, including sexual enslavement,” Zeid said.
“This despicable and wanton carnage, which constitutes a clear and urgent menace for development, peace and security, must be stopped,” Zeid said.
The group recently pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State group of jihadis fighting in Iraq and Syria.
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(Reuters)Islamist Boko Haram militants disguised as preachers killed at least 24 people and wounded several others in an attack near a mosque in northeast Nigeria's Borno state, a military source and witness said on Monday.
The attackers arrived in cars late on Sunday and gathered people at a mosque in the remote village of Kwajafa, pretending to preach Islam. They then opened fire on them, witness Simeon Buba said.
The group's six-year insurgency, and President Goodluck Jonathan's failure to end it or protect civilians, were factors in the victory of opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari in last week's election.
The group fighting for an Islamic state has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds, although a military operation against them by Nigeria and neighbors Chad, Cameroon and Niger in the past two months has wrested back much of the territory it controlled.
"People didn't know the Boko Haram men came for attack because they lied to our people that they came for preaching," said Buba in a telephone conversation.
"They opened fire on them and killed many people," he said, adding that houses were set on fire.
Some people were being treated for gunshot wounds and burns at a hospital in the Borno state town of Biu on Monday, a source there said.
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"There are three signs of a hypocrite. When he speaks, he lies. When he makes a promise, he breaks it. And when he is trusted, he betrays his trust."Holy Prophet of Islam Muhammad (PBUH).
We just saw a major political and military shift take place this week in the Mideast. It was not in Syria, Lebanon, or Israel -- but Yemen, a poor country of 26 million people and some say with 35 million guns, which were historically used in tribal and personal disputes, and then civil wars in that order.
Over the weekend, we are told the Houthi revolutionaries are such a threat to all the countries in the Arab League that they have triggered the formation of a coalition to reinstall deposed Yemeni president Hadi.
The Saudis began bombing Houthi positions in what we are told is the beginning of the restoring security to the country. But if you think the goal is to pursue a negotiated political settlement, think again. At the Arab conference on Saturday, Hadi called for the intervention to end only when the Houthis have surrendered.
He must know how much death the destruction that would cause, and does not care. Before he arrived at the summit he announced he would be seeking a Marshall-type plan for his country, so it seems he is planning to destroy it…so he can rebuild it. Maybe that is why so many want him gone.
Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon made his usual Arab League conference remarks to encourage a peaceful resolution of the Yemen conflict, but many did not seem interested in that. Surprisingly, the Secretary General then savaged the Arab League attendees for doing nothing to stop the five-year-long slaughter going on in a fellow Arab country, Syria.
We know the Arab League has not stood by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, even while several [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council members have financed the destruction of Syria with now five million refugees. With the US help, they have paved the way for introducing terrorist operations into Syria with brigade-sized units. So are we to believe their sincere motives? Let’s take a closer look.
The ex-General and new president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is promoting his army as the cornerstone of this Arab NATO. Yes, he has had problems with militants in the Sinai, but they do not represent a strategic threat to Egypt.
On the contrary, after cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood by banning it and imprisoning most of its leaders, old-time Intel hands feel Sisi has not done the same with the Sinai militants, as they are worth more to him with their continued guerrilla attacks, by blooding his army and keeping the public “security conscious”.
Many Americans feel that one of the goals of 9/11 for the real perpetrators who did it was to pave the way for the Patriot Act and kick off the ‘War on Terror’, which has drenched several countries in blood and destruction and buried the American people in a red ink ocean of debt.
So Sisi tells the Arab League gathering that militants are a danger to its existence -- this is pretty strong language. Egypt has already launched some airstrikes in Libya to blunt the offensive of the militants there who were intent on seizing as much of the country's wealth and key infrastructure prior to any political negotiations.
But Sisi did not offer the elected Libyan government this assistance much earlier in the game, when it could have prevented getting into the terrible state that it is now. Was that by design by Sisi, again to watch the crisis develop and to then take advantage of it?
He had sought the UN backing for intervention in Libya, but no attempt was made in the Yemen situation. And when the Assad government did not fall as expected, and the Saudis and Qataris launched their terror attacks on northern Syria to gain physical control over gas and oil pipeline routes to Europe, we did not hear any calls for an Arab League intervention to save Syria.
On the contrary, with Egypt’s economy in a coma, the Saudis and Qataris have kept it afloat as Egypt’s sugar daddies and de facto co-owners of the country now. So no, we did not hear much from Sisi about Takfiri terror when he approved using them against the Syrian people. The entire Arab League did not. Money speaks louder that Arab blood or even being fellow Muslims, it seems. We have a wonderful American term to describe this maneuver: “hypocrisy on steroids”.
But let’s take a closer look at the history of the Yemen conflict. It was once a fertile country in ancient times, known in Latin as “Arabia Felix”, the happy or fortunate country. In modern times, it has swapped European colonialism for the Arab version. North Yemen became a Republic in 1970, with its civil war between the royalists and the rebel republicans of the time.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt were intimately involved in Yemen back then, with Saudi Arabia not surprisingly supporting the royalists, and Egypt the republicans, via former president Gamal Abdel Nasser who had overthrown the monarchy there. Now Egypt has joined the side of its banker, despite the threat of the Saudis and their Wahhabi extremists being a major exporter of terror whenever it suits them.
We saw the usual economic-based internal disputes after North and South Yemen united in 1990. This resulted in another civil war, which ended in semi-autonomy for the northern tribal areas and the old hostilities continuing to simmer beneath the surface.
There is also the case of religious make-up in Yemen, but tribal ties trump that ten times over, as do economic issues, since the coastal Yemeni tribes were not prone to sharing the commercial trade of the country. The Saudis backed former president Saleh in the south, as containment of the Houthi tribes in the north.
So I will close now with the old adage that things are often not as they appear, and sadly you have to dig down deep to know what is really going on and why, and overcome the many dead ends and diversions to confuse your path.
But color me suspicious. I think that if the Saudis wanted to, they would have intervened with the Houthis before president Hadi was deposed and thereby avoided the bigger challenge of now having to retake the country if they refuse a political settlement. And yes, I think they let Hadi be deposed…to use him for the staging what they and others needed to kick off; their planned Arab NATO force.
A bombing campaign is one thing, but if the new Arab NATO goes into Yemen with its 26 million people and 35 million guns, a lot of them will never be returning home.
I fear for innocent lives as people will die along the way. And I don’t think the Arab League is going to care very much, as long as it gets what it wants. A negotiated political settlement is the wiser path.
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# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
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Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
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