Decentring foreign peace mediation in the case of Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis

Abstract

mediation has become a popular, standardized approach to addressing violent conflicts since the end of the Cold War, and the African continent has hosted the highest number of foreign mediation attempts in this period.¹ With the growth and professionalization of the mediation field, both academic and policy-oriented scholarship has increasingly examined how different elements related to mediators, such as their types and strategies, affect outcomes of peace processes.² What has been largely overlooked in the recent literature’s emphasis on mediators, however, are the perspectives, roles, and agency of the conflict parties themselves.³ Twenty-five years after Oliver Richmond noted the surprisingly scant attention paid to disputants compared to mediators,⁴ research that examines mediation from an external point of view continues to dominate debates on peacemaking.⁵

Against this backdrop, this article aims to shift discussions about peace mediation away from the perspectives of external mediators and towards those of the so-called ‘mediated’. Foregrounding the domestic political environment, the primary site from which conflict parties’ positions emerge, allows us to better understand the multifaceted meanings and purposes beyond the oft-assumed reductionist dichotomy of making or not making peace. The article pays particular attention to the role of regime types, particularly ones marked by authoritarian politics, in shaping state behaviour towards externally led conflict resolution endeavours. When thrust into pre-existing intra-regime political contestations and power games, foreign peace mediation takes on an additional dimension of meaning and becomes an avenue through which different actors bolster their positions and undermine those of their opponents. In demonstrating these dynamics, the article underscores the critical importance of the agency of conflict parties that have been paradoxically underemphasized in existing scholarship on mediation.

Through a case study of peace-related efforts around the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon between 2019 and 2022, the article shows how the facilitation efforts by Switzerland interacted with pertinent domestic political dynamics that long predated the mediation initiative.⁶ Focusing on a specific type of conflict party, the state, the article pays particular attention to how the dynamics of fragmentation and personalization that often characterize authoritarian regimes like Cameroon’s shape the state’s positioning(s) vis-à-vis foreign peace mediation activities. Instead of approaching the state as a unitary entity, the article takes seriously the political realities of Cameroon and highlights pertinent micro-level intra-state dynamics, perspectives, and drivers of behaviour. In so doing, it helps explain the acceptance-turned-intransigence attitude of the Cameroonian state towards the Swiss facilitation and puts forward a fuller explanation of the government’s position(s) beyond the often-invoked arguments around the desire to maintain stability, appease the international community, and continue reaping the benefits accrued through the war economy.

The analysis draws on over 60 semi-structured interviews, including those with Cameroonian ruling party members, government officials, opposition politicians, prominent individuals involved in the armed separatist movements, civil society activists, and members of the Swiss facilitation team in Cameroon (Yaoundé, Buea, Tiko, Limbe, Douala, Dschang, and Bafoussam), Switzerland (Bern, Geneva, Basel) and virtually between October 2021 and November 2023.⁷ There is currently limited scholarly research on the Anglophone Crisis, particularly since its escalation into a violent conflict in 2017, and the article responds to the urgent need for a more in-depth understanding based on original sources gathered in-country in both the Anglophone and Francophone regions of Cameroon.

It is worth reflecting on how the research design allows me to situate my analysis of foreign peace mediation into a domestic political landscape. The sequencing of my questions during interviews, for example, reflected such a consideration; while my research encompassed Cameroonian interlocutors’ perspectives of the Swiss process, broader questions about what the interlocutors perceived as the main political talk of the day almost always constituted over half of the interview times and yielded important insights. Furthermore, being aware that my own external gaze could overestimate the relevance of foreign peace mediation at the expense of domestic initiatives, my questions were formulated to inquire about the interlocutors’ views on ‘peace processes’ instead of the ‘Swiss process’. Indeed, refraining from asking specifically about the Swiss facilitation led to important insights about the different peace initiatives in Cameroon. Finally, while contemporary mediation practice remains a primarily elite-driven endeavour, deliberate efforts were made to ensure that interlocutors included not only those familiar to the international community as ‘key informants’ or ‘experts’ and primarily based in major urban centres but also those who may be more difficult to access yet more deeply embedded in the conflict-affected areas; these included teachers and humanitarian workers who interact with both sides of the conflict on a regular basis.⁸ To this end, several interviews were conducted over protected phone calls to incorporate the perspectives of individuals who, with good reasons, chose not to travel to urban areas for in-person interviews due to security considerations.

Following this introduction, the article reviews recent trends in mediation research that privilege the agency of third-party actors while examining existing literature on why conflict parties, especially state actors, may accept mediation. It then introduces the case study of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon by first contextualizing the current crisis within post-independent Cameroon society and the contestations over what it means to be an ‘Anglophone’, followed by an analysis of key contemporary issues in the domestic political scene. It then turns to how the Swiss facilitation attempt between 2019 and 2022 was received in the context of this political environment. It asks what else was happening in the domestic political arena that occupied the government’s attention in this period and highlights how the government’s behaviour vis-à-vis the Swiss process was shaped by these other priorities and considerations.

Peace mediation: Who pulls the strings and what’s in it for state actors?

The growth and standardization of the practice of mediation have been accompanied by a proliferation of scholarship with an underlying aim to make peacemaking more effective. While a welcome development, the rapid growth of the mediation literature has been characterized by a shift away from focusing on external factors to the mediation process towards those that are internal to the process to explain mediation outcomes. Earlier seminal works of mediation, for example, were heavily shaped by the ripeness debate,⁹ the concept of spoilers,¹⁰ the political marketplace,¹¹ as well as the role of regional and international actors, all of which point to aspects that are beyond the mediation table itself. In contrast, in recent years, following the professionalization of and competition within the field of mediation practice,¹² more research has been produced to implicitly answer the question of ‘how’ to mediate over the question of ‘whether’ to mediate in a particular case. As such, studies focused on the mediators themselves—their types, strategies, and sources of legitimacy¹³—as well as different aspects of process design, such as sequencing¹⁴ and inclusivity,¹⁵ that they are assumed to be able to control, have grown at a much higher rate compared to those with an exogenous orientation in the past 25 years of mediation research.¹⁶ The growth of research that takes mediators as their focus of analysis at the expense of the conflict parties has prompted critiques that the field of conflict resolution, still mostly located in the Global North, offers ‘off-the-peg solutions’ vis-à-vis the Global South, while remaining ‘curiously uninterested in the particulars – cultural, political, historical – of conflicts’.¹⁷

In light of such trends, this article intends to shift the gaze away from the mediators and amplify the perspectives and agency of the conflict parties, in particular state actors, in shaping the trajectories of peace processes in ways that are in line with their broader interests beyond the narrow prism of mediation. To this end, it builds on, and seeks to add to, the existing research on the conditions under which state actors decide to accept a mediation offer. This literature has shown that state actors have more reason to be cautious and reluctant to enter a mediation process, particularly when they perceive themselves as the stronger party on the battlefield. Governments often refuse to enter into talks with rebel groups due to concerns of conferring recognition and legitimacy to the latter and are only likely to accept mediation when they expect to accrue benefit from participation in what is essentially a ‘diplomatic effort’.¹⁸ In this regard, it is not surprising that there are many occasions of mediation rejections, although much less is written about these cases.¹⁹ There are always both incentives and costs to talking; disputants approach mediation opportunities strategically, considering the costs and benefits of mediation and only accept when the latter outweighs the former.²⁰ Such weighing of costs and benefits often involves more than the simple settlement of the dispute and what the peace talks rhetorically set out to address. In some cases, actors may consent to mediation as a simple stalling tactic; weak mediators are more likely to be selected in such cases.²¹ Similarly, parties may use negotiations to buy time to regroup and rearm for a subsequent phase on the battlefield, as was the case in Rwanda with the 1993 Arusha Accords before the 1994 genocide.²²

In other cases, whether or not conflict parties accept a mediation offer may be influenced by factors that are not on the official agenda of the peace talks but those that are nonetheless high on the priorities of the conflict parties. One clear example of this is how Khartoum’s desire for normalization of relations with the USA played a critical role in their participation in the peace process that ultimately resulted in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.²³ In some contexts, the individual priorities of conflict parties appear to have guided the onset and continuation of mediation processes; Jason Stearns, borrowing the words of a rebel-turned-human rights activist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, discusses how a seemingly unending series of peace talks has become ‘a source of business’.²⁴ Similarly, an affluent neighbourhood in Burundi’s capital is nicknamed ‘Arushaville’, said to have been built on the per diems of representatives flown into neighbouring Tanzania for peace talks.²⁵

Adding to such dynamics may be the fact that state actors, even those who believe they have an upper hand on the battlefield, could sometimes decide that rejecting a mediation offer could attract unnecessary controversy, both domestically and internationally. Navigating the current international environment that disapproves of violent conflict,²⁶ states may accept a mediation offer without a genuine commitment to resolve the conflict through non-military means. The difficulty in measuring or enforcing the sincerity of conflict parties towards a peace process further allows for such performative behaviour.²⁷ In this light, while much of the literature assumes that some level of commitment is involved in mediation acceptance, this may not necessarily be the case, particularly in today’s international environment that celebrates mediation onset yet has few tools for meaningful follow-up. With these potential motivations in mind, the following section considers the Cameroonian state’s behaviour towards a foreign-led peace mediation initiative, demonstrating how internal rivalries within authoritarian states interact with these factors.

Contextualizing the ‘Anglophone’ Crisis

To adequately understand the Anglophone Crisis, it is critical to contextualize the ongoing conflict within Cameroon’s complex colonial history, as well as the role of Anglophones in post-independent Cameroonian society. History, and different narratives of the past, is an extremely pertinent dimension of the current conflict, the roots of which can be traced to Cameroon’s colonial experience. First a German colony between 1884 and 1919, after Germany was defeated in the First World War, the territory was partitioned between France and Britain under separate mandates by the League of Nations and then the United Nations (UN). French Cameroun amounted to 80 percent of the territory, while the British administered the other 20 percent. The latter was further divided into Northern and Southern Cameroons and were governed as part of Nigeria until the contested UN plebiscite in February 1961, which allowed Southern Cameroons to ‘achieve independence by joining’ the ex-French Cameroun, while Northern Cameroons joined Nigeria.²⁸ Southern Cameroons was then ‘reunified’ with French Cameroun on 1 October 1961, and together they were renamed ‘United Republic of Cameroon’, following the contested Foumban Conference.²⁹ The controversies surrounding both the UN plebiscite and the Foumban Conference have meant that the origin of the current conflict is often traced back to 1961,³⁰ captured by the words of a teacher based in the North West, ‘the problem started at the dialogue table [in Foumban]’.³¹

In 1972, Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, abolished the federal arrangement, accelerating the shift towards centralization and the ‘path of “Francophonization”’. This has since been termed the ‘hidden agenda’ of Ahidjo, but one that has also been closely followed by the current president of Cameroon, Paul Biya.³² The abolishing of the federal system was accompanied by the creation of two separate provinces in former West Cameroon, the North West and South West provinces. This formalized and entrenched the ethno-regional and political divide between the two Anglophone regions that has been a perennial feature of post-independent Cameroon³³ and one that continues to be divisive in the ongoing Anglophone Crisis.³⁴

A long series of state actions throughout post-independent Cameroon has led to a widely shared perception among those in the two Anglophone regions that the state is bent on systematically denying a distinct Anglophone identity based on its British colonial heritage. Biya’s unilateral decision in 1984 to revert the country’s name to the ‘Republic of Cameroon’, which was the name of French Cameroun before the unification with Southern Cameroons, exacerbated the Anglophone population’s fear of forced assimilation.³⁵ Over time, Francophone culture seeped into all areas of society—from legal to educational to administrative—and ‘harmonization policies’ and ‘integration programs’ have been equated with a denial of Anglophone identity, as ‘integration meant Anglophones had to learn French … [and] become Francophones for their own good and survival’.³⁶ When articulating the experiences of the Anglophone population, the language of colonization is frequently invoked to depict the ‘brutal militarization … [and] forceful assimilation’ of Anglophone Cameroon under both the Ahidjo and Biya regimes.³⁷

While decades of real and perceived treatment as second-class citizens have led to a strengthening of Anglophone nationalism ‘built on the premise that Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians differ linguistically, culturally, politically and socially’,³⁸ who and what constitutes an Anglophone in the Cameroonian context is fluid and contested. While the term ‘Anglophone’ is generally understood to refer to people native to the South West and North West regions, when deployed politically, its meanings vary considerably depending on the audience.³⁹ Furthermore, views sharply diverge concerning who is considered ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ to the land,⁴⁰ with contestations over the sizeable Bamileke population, who are originally from the West region but have been present in the North West and South West for generations, as well as those of Bassa and Beti origin.⁴¹ Recent scholarship has added much-needed nuance to the concept of Anglophone identity, unpacking the ways in which the state has consistently used the term for purposes of control and separation,⁴² and showing that the categories of ‘Anglophone’ and ‘Francophone’ are less stable and homogeneous than suggested by the today’s polarizing rhetoric.⁴³ The ongoing Anglophone Crisis unfolds against this background where the terms ‘Anglophone’ and ‘the Anglophone Problem’ have come to mean different things to different people, even among the so-called Anglophones themselves, with significant implications for both the conflict and the political future of the regions.⁴⁴

The Anglophone Crisis and conflict resolution efforts, 2016–present

The current conflict between the Francophone-dominated central government and separatist armed groups in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, the so-called ‘Anglophone Crisis’,⁴⁵ began in October 2016 when state forces brutally suppressed peaceful protests by lawyers and teachers in the Anglophone regions against the ever-increasing Francophone influence on their legal and educational systems. The political crisis had morphed into an armed conflict by October 2017, following the arrest of key leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium in January 2017, an internet shutdown of the two regions from January to April 2017, and a series of repressive state action against non-violent protests. The government crackdown and the perceived disproportionate unleashing of violence on the Anglophone population, together with the arrest of Consortium leaders who had espoused more moderate views, gave weight and legitimacy to the secessionist movement that declared the independence of the Republic of Ambazonia on 1 October 2017.⁴⁶ The conflict further escalated on 30 November 2017 when President Biya, upon his return from the 5th African Union-European Union Summit in Côte d’Ivoire, made his first public remarks about the crisis, saying ‘I’d like to assure Cameroonians that measures have been taken to eliminate these criminals and bring back peace throughout the national territory.'⁴⁷ This statement was widely interpreted as a declaration of war against the Anglophones, with media bluntly reporting that ‘Paul Biya has declared war on these terrorists who seek secession.’⁴⁸ One separatist group issued a statement saying that Yaoundé had expressed its plan to ‘prioritize war and to seek military victory over a negotiated political settlement’⁴⁹ and a representative of the primarily Anglophone-supported opposition Social Democratic Front party lamented that Yaoundé is ‘bent at using force’ as opposed to engaging in peaceful dialogue.⁵⁰

The conflict between state security forces and the now deeply fragmented separatist groups has entered its seventh year, resulting in over 6,000 deaths, at least 600,000 internally displaced people, and over 85,900 refugees in neighbouring Nigeria.⁵¹ Abuse, seizure, and humiliation at security checkpoints by both state security forces and separatist militants painfully characterize the everyday lives of the Anglophone population in the ongoing war.⁵² While there has been no systematic study of the changing levels of support for the separatist movement by the Anglophone population, a heavy sense of war fatigue exists among much of the population as violence against civilians is perpetuated by both sides. Increasing reports of local populations inviting the state military to protect them from separatist groups also suggest declining support.⁵³

From 2019 to the summer of 2022, Switzerland assumed the role of a mediator in the Anglophone Crisis and devoted much effort to this end. Aiming to help resolve the situation, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) worked to facilitate a process between Yaoundé and the pro-independence armed groups. Following preparatory meetings with both parties, the FDFA announced in June 2019 what became known as the ‘Swiss facilitation process in Cameroon’ and continued its efforts until September 2022, when it became public that the Cameroonian government officially withdrew itself from the process.⁵⁴ Between 2019 and 2022, the facilitation team organized multiple meetings with the various deeply fragmented rebel groups in an attempt to enhance their cohesion and prepare them for potential peace talks. They also offered capacity-building training for civil society actors in the conflict-stricken regions with a vision to embed inclusivity into a potential peace process.

Throughout this period, the Cameroonian government’s intransigence and aloofness towards the process proved to be one of the most significant obstacles to launching an official mediation process. Senior members of the facilitation team were not granted meaningful access to key decision-makers of the state, and although the mandate is believed to have been granted during a phone call at the highest level of both governments, an acknowledgement of the Swiss facilitation process was conspicuously absent from public government statements. ‘Why did they [the Cameroonian government] say yes, if they weren’t going to cooperate?’ was a recurrent question and frustration raised about the Swiss facilitation.⁵⁵

The puzzle was compounded by the fact that there were potentially high costs for the Cameroonian state to accept the mediation offer. One significant aspect relates to the question of legitimation. Since the beginning of the crisis, and stretching further back into its history, Yaoundé has been consistently bent on denying and delegitimizing Anglophone identity and their advocacy for greater autonomy.⁵⁶ Accepting an international mediator, which invariably gives the conflict more international exposure, risked transferring legitimacy to the armed groups that were seeking independence on the basis of an identity that the state had so aggressively denied for decades. It also went against the state’s efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the armed groups by framing them as terrorists. For example, when President Biya officially declared war on the armed groups, he said ‘it is now clear that Cameroon was at war and under attack by terrorists masking as secessionists.’⁵⁷ The extent of Yaoundé’s determination for such a framing is also illustrated by international actors in the country being questioned by senior government officials: ‘Why do you call them non-state armed groups? They are terrorists.’⁵⁸ Diplomats and international organization personnel also recall their government counterparts equating Anglophone armed groups to Boko Haram fighters in the Far North of Cameroon in hopes that the international community would approach the Anglophone Crisis within the same framework of the global war of terror.⁵⁹

Similarly, accepting the Swiss offer to mediate was also in tension with the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention that are central to Cameroon’s foreign policy. Defending its sovereignty has been a cornerstone guiding Cameroon’s engagement with external actors since independence.⁶⁰ Protecting national sovereignty was a paramount consideration in Ahidjo’s carefully designed Cameroon–US relations,⁶¹ while strong adherence to the policy of non-interference guided Ahidjo’s approach towards the Nigerian Civil War.⁶² Similar rhetoric continues to be forcefully repeated in Yaoundé’s interactions with the international community regarding the Anglophone Crisis today. In his speech to the diplomatic corps in Yaoundé in October 2021, for example, Cameroon’s Minister of External Relations stressed that:

the Government of Cameroon is resolutely firm to safeguard its independence, territorial integrity, its willingness to find an endogenous solution … the Government of Cameroon will defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity COME WHAT MAY. Throughout the history of our young nation, we, as a people, have sought to preserve our independence and will not accept interferences. (Capital letters original)⁶³

It is, therefore, surprising that the central government would agree to an external mediation, which would, by its very nature, begin by recognizing the armed groups as worthy of dialogue. This is all the more puzzling given that, by 2019, it was clear to Yaoundé that although the crisis was not showing signs of de-escalation, it had reached somewhat of an equilibrium and did not pose an existential threat to the regime.⁶⁴ The flourishing war economy, benefitting all sides, including state officials at multiple levels of the government also did little to create incentives for resolving the situation through talks.⁶⁵ Similarly, Yaoundé’s diplomatic efforts had been successful in deflecting international attention away from the ongoing secessionist conflict, and President Biya’s handling of the Boko Haram crisis had gained him stature from the global community.⁶⁶ Yaoundé has also successfully diversified its foreign partners, which today include states as wide-ranging as France, the USA, the UK, Russia, China, and Israel.⁶⁷ This has ensured that key international actors remain divided over their preferred approach to the Anglophone Crisis and have failed to form a united front in advocating for a mediated solution to the crisis.⁶⁸ By paying attention to pertinent dynamics in Cameroonian authoritarian domestic politics, the following section explains the state’s somewhat enigmatic behaviour, particularly its initial consent to the mediation process, despite substantial risks, and its retraction of that consent after 3 years of silence and non-cooperation.

Understanding mediation vis-à-vis domestic power tussles: Falling victim to deliberate chaos

Cameroon is a highly centralized country, often termed ‘hypercentralized’,⁶⁹ with powers concentrated in the executive branch of the central government. As a result, it is said that ‘all roads lead to Yaoundé, both literally and figuratively.'⁷⁰ President Paul Biya has been in power since 1982, and dividing the Cameroonian people and their elites has been an important means of regime survival and ‘superficial stability’ in the past 40 years.⁷¹ Conservation of power, through his ‘politics of personalism, centralisation and control’, has been the guiding principle of Biya’s decisions and actions,⁷² and the divide and rule strategy permeates all levels of Cameroonian politics. The policy of ‘regional balance’ that Ahidjo first instituted to divide and undermine any viable potential challengers has been closely followed by Biya, including tactical ministerial appointments through which ‘the president, like a master juggler, plays the regional and ethnic elites against one another.'⁷³

It is widely known in political circles that the Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic (SGPR), Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, and the Prime Minister, Joseph Ngute, ‘do not see eye to eye’; ‘the President prefers to work that way, because it means that they don’t bind together.'⁷⁴ Intense power competition at the highest echelons of the state extends beyond these two figures and also includes factions led by the current Minister of Justice.⁷⁵

This has perpetuated a stable system of ‘deliberate chaos’ where the senior figures can be relied upon to ‘fight each other’, and the President, with his priority being self-preservation, ‘is very happy that in his small team, there are conflicting groups … He just lets it happen.’⁷⁶ Some observers speak of the competition between the ‘hawks and doves’ within the government, who hold markedly different positions on how the Anglophone Crisis should be addressed, to the extent that an analyst notes that one should speak of three main conflict parties in the current conflict: The Secretary General’s camp, the Prime Minister’s camp, and the armed groups, which are themselves deeply fragmented.⁷⁷ The SGPR Ngoh Ngoh, who is among the leading figures of the hardliners, has been the de facto acting president in recent years, stepping in for President Biya, who turned 90 in February 2023. In fact, the President is said to have delegated his signature to the SGPR since 2019, and most official statements from the Presidency carry Ngoh Ngoh’s name.⁷⁸ The Prime Minister, on the other hand, is seen to be the main ‘dove’ figure with a disposition for a more peaceful approach to resolving the crisis. Yet, the Prime Minister’s post, which has historically been reserved for an Anglophone, has little power under the current Constitution and is largely seen as ceremonial, ‘just like a figurehead.'⁷⁹

Such a backdrop of deliberately crafted intra-state fragmentation had a critical bearing on the Swiss facilitation process. The main government counterpoint for the Swiss process was Felix Mbayu, the Minister Delegate to the Minister of External Relations, an individual closely aligned with the SGPR, Ngoh Ngoh.⁸⁰ This is particularly noteworthy, given that both individuals are generally seen as leading figures of the ‘hawks’ or the ‘hardliners’ camp that advocates for a military approach as opposed to a mediated one. The infighting within the government meant that any external initiative risked ‘fall[ing] victim to this chaos … [and] to all kinds of disparagement and sabotaging.'⁸¹ In the case of the Swiss facilitation, the Prime Minister saw the initiative as ‘Ngoh Ngoh’s thing’ and hence not something he could substantively contribute towards or support.⁸² This proved to be a significant impediment since the Prime Minister was one of the few senior figures in the government with some access to Anglophone activists and diaspora leaders, and to whom many in Cameroon, even some of his political rivals, attribute any progress on the mediation front.⁸³ Similarly, the internal political dynamics help account for the timing at which Yaoundé withdrew from the Swiss process after 3 years of little progress. The phone call during which President Biya informed his Swiss counterpart that Switzerland should instead support national efforts closely coincided with SGPR Ngoh Ngoh’s entanglement in a scandal. On 22 August 2022, Ngoh Ngoh was summoned by the Judicial Police as part of its investigations into the mismanagement and embezzlement of COVID-19 funds, popularly known as the ‘CovidGate’ scandal. With this, Ngoh Ngoh became the first SGPR to be summoned while in active service in 40 years of Biya’s rule, with observers raising questions over his political future.

What made the Swiss process an easy target for those who wanted to undermine ‘Ngoh Ngoh’s thing’ is the widespread suspicion of any Western activities on Cameroonian soil. Though rarely explicitly acknowledged by the Swiss facilitation team or Western embassies in Yaoundé, the government, opposition, and ordinary citizens alike have long held an ambiguous relationship with the Western world. This has often translated into a fraught and tense relationship between the Cameroonian state and various international actors, with foreign donors warned to ‘refrain from the temptation of a new form of civilising mission.'⁸⁴ An analysis piece on the challenges of a foreign-mediated process⁸⁵ by a prominent Cameroonian scholar begins by reminding international actors that the partition of Cameroon was an external act that involved Germany, France, and Britain. The consequences of this ‘artificial separation’ include ‘deep suspicion of external actors, especially “Western” ones, as to Cameroon’s Anglophone-Francophone coexistence’ and ‘there is a national scar to “foreigners” (especially “Western” ones) saying anything over Cameroon’s unity—or brokering peace between Cameroonians.' To many domestic observers, the involvement of European actors under the banner of ‘peace’ appears to be a little different to colonial masters in different hats.

Given this general temperature of the public vis-à-vis the West, the fact that many of the key leaders of the pro-independence armed groups are currently in the diaspora, mostly in the USA and Europe, meant that those who sought to undermine the Swiss initiative had little difficulty in framing it as a Western intervention that violated state sovereignty, interfered with internal affairs, and aimed to destabilize the country.⁸⁶ Such efforts to undermine the process, including by drawing tenuous links to the diasporic leadership of the separatist movement, were successful to the extent that some within ‘the government saw it with suspicion that the Swiss process wanted to overthrow the government.'⁸⁷ Although sovereignty concerns enjoy wide resonance across Cameroonian popular and intellectual spheres, long serving as powerful constraints against international pressures,⁸⁸ the Swiss process failed to sufficiently decouple their efforts from the perception that mediation constitutes a potential threat to national sovereignty.

In addition to the more general suspicions towards the West, Switzerland also holds a particular reputation in Cameroon that challenges their role as a mediator. The Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva is a preferred location for President Biya’s ‘private visits to Europe’, and conservative calculations estimate that the hotel costs alone of the president’s private trips would amount to approximately $65 million.⁸⁹ While not necessarily true, rumours that the Swiss had committed 5 billion XAF (approximately $8.6 million) to the mediation process suggest that financial prospects may have been a factor in Yaoundé’s initial entertainment of the idea. Together with the ‘conventional wisdom’ among Cameroonians that Switzerland is a rich country ‘where all our money is … a place where you go and hide your stolen money’,⁹⁰ this may have made the choice of Switzerland—perceived as weak but rich—as a mediator initially attractive to the Cameroonian state.⁹¹

Competing peace processes: Ngoh Ngoh’s Swiss talks and Ngute’s Major National Dialogue

The pertinence of authoritarian politics, marked by fragmentation and internal rivalry, on the dynamics of peacemaking is made clear by the emergence of two competing peace processes in Cameroon. Less than 3 months after the Swiss facilitation process became publicly known, on 10 September 2019, President Biya announced that there would be a Major National Dialogue (MND) held under the leadership of the Prime Minister, John Ngute. This immediately created two separate, parallel, and competing processes under the ‘peace’ banner, championed by rival senior government figures. While the Swiss facilitation team explained to their interlocutors in Cameroon that the two processes were ‘complementary’, this largely fell on deaf ears: ‘There was now an internal conflict. What should fly now, the Prime Minister’s national dialogue or the Swiss talks?’⁹²

The MND was convened over five days from 30 September to 4 October 2019, hastily organized in less than 3 weeks since the President’s announcement. Approximately 600 participants, invited according to ‘obscure criteria’, attended the Dialogue, with the majority being representatives of political parties, civil society, religious leaders, and traditional authorities.⁹³ No leaders of the armed groups, however, attended the MND. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, an important leader who was in prison in Yaoundé and not invited to the dialogue, dismissed the participants as having been ‘handpicked’ by the government, with the event being ‘nothing more than a meeting of Paul Biya’s friends … it was a masquerade and a monologue and, for us, a non-event.'⁹⁴ Leaders of other armed groups also criticized the dialogue for being a ‘circus … to lure the international community’,⁹⁵ a view that is broadly shared given that the fact it was timed to coincide with UN High-Level General Debate in New York, where the MND was a significant part of the Cameroonian Foreign Minister’s speech. The perception that the Dialogue was a ‘monologue’ with preconceived outcomes is also widely shared, not least given that the President publicly laid down his red lines prior to the dialogue, stating that ‘Cameroon will remain one and indivisible’, a phrasing that signals that neither federalism nor separation would be on the table.⁹⁶ A lawyer who attended the MND recounts a deadlock during the discussion on the Commission on ‘Decentralisation and Local Development’ when there was ‘essentially a walkout’ by those who wanted to discuss federalism when the chair of the committee gave a firm no.⁹⁷

Despite all the criticisms surrounding the MND, it has nonetheless occupied a central space and consumed much of the oxygen in the political discourse in Cameroon around ‘peace’ since late 2019. In fact, differences between external—particularly Western—and Cameroonian actors regarding what constitutes a ‘peace process’ in Cameroon are stark: while interlocutors working in Western embassies often spoke first of the Swiss facilitation process when asked about the different peace efforts surrounding the Anglophone Crisis, none of the Cameroonian interlocutors mentioned the Swiss process unless they were explicitly asked. For Cameroonians, the MND was the primary peace process for the crisis however much they may have viewed it as insufficient and flawed.⁹⁸ The role of intra-regime rivalry in undermining the prospect of peace in the case of Cameroon suggests that external actors seeking to mediate in other countries avoid approaching the state as a unitary actor and instead pay greater attention to internal state dynamics. The ways in which the Swiss process fell victim to the deliberate chaos that had been carefully cultivated as a strategy of regime survival highlight that mediation may suffer not only from problems of sincerity, as noted by existing literature, but also those of internal rivalry particularly in personalistic and fragmented authoritarian settings.

Discussions and implications: When peace mediation meets authoritarian politics

While there is growing research on the internal structures of rebel movements and their relationships with peace processes, there has not yet been a commensurate level of attention paid to how similar dynamics affect the state party, which has largely been approached as a unified entity.⁹⁹ This article, by demonstrating the pertinence of intra-state rivalry vis-à-vis the Swiss facilitation process, shows that more attention should be given to dynamics within states. A greater understanding of intra-state political dynamics would enrich analyses of conflict resolution efforts across Africa and beyond. The case of Cameroon illustrates that the nature of authoritarian politics, underpinned by deliberate factionalism, may pose additional challenges for foreign peace mediation, as the latter becomes yet another site for intra-state rivalries and competition to unfold. Fragmentation, however, is a feature that is certainly not limited to authoritarian states, and further research into how mediation endeavours become mapped onto various types of existing political cleavages may yield important insights for peace process outcomes.

That different figures within the state were compelled to adopt certain positions towards the foreign-led mediation endeavour due to domestic political considerations also enriches the influential debates on ‘spoilers’¹⁰⁰ and ‘devious objectives’¹⁰¹ in the peace and conflict literature. Instead of labelling the state, assumed to be a unified entity, as intransigent or engaging in spoiling behaviour, the case of Cameroon shows that when individuals within a conflict party oppose a particular peace process, it does not necessarily indicate that they oppose all peace processes, or peace, per se. Rather, enmeshed within high-stake power constellations, other priorities may shape their positions towards a particular process, which could change with shifts in the domestic political environment.

Foregrounding the domestic political landscape and the nature of the state also challenges the widely used term ‘devious objectives’ when speaking of the diverse motivations of conflict parties.¹⁰² It brings to light the basic premise that disputants of any given war have priorities and pressing issues beyond peacemaking that compete for their attention. The assumption that one endeavours to either making or not making peace and that anything beyond these efforts are ‘devious’ interests is very much a reflection of an external gaze; it fails to recognize that all actors in peace processes—conflict parties and mediators alike—enter peace talks with multifaceted objectives, some of which would lie somewhere on the spectrum of ‘devious’ objectives. Understanding peace processes within their political landscape, thus, allows us to de-pathologize these motivations and view them as strategic decision-making. Such a lens may even lead to surprising entry points for peace mediation by understanding a given party’s interests instead of seeing them as non-amenable.

Conclusion

The case of Cameroon demonstrates the importance of anchoring our understanding of foreign mediation attempts within the pre-existing political contestations and power relations of the context. Decentring mediators in explaining the outcomes of the Swiss facilitation process, this article highlights how the strategic state fragmentation that underpinned the survival of both Ahidjo and Biya’s authoritarian regimes powerfully shaped internal actors’ positionings vis-à-vis the Swiss process. Once perceived as ‘Ngoh Ngoh’s thing’, the SGPR’s political rivals within the government actively undermined its legitimacy, including by launching a competing national peace process. The President’s disposition to let the competition play out, in line with his divide-and-rule approach to control, meant that the Swiss process fell victim to this deliberate chaos carefully sustained at the upper echelons of government.

Recent news around Canada’s efforts to mediate between Yaoundé and the diverse factions of pro-independence armed groups adds weight to the argument that external peace mediation is at risk of becoming a tool for internal power plays and, in turn, being profoundly undermined by intra-state rivalries. Closely coinciding with the end of the Swiss process in September 2022, Canada started exploring possibilities to play a peacemaking role around the Anglophone Crisis. Following several preparatory talks between delegations from the government, this time sent by Prime Minister Ngute, and an impressive majority of separatist armed groups, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, after apparent consent of all parties at the pre-talks, issued a statement on 20 January 2023 that ‘Canada has accepted the mandate to facilitate this process.'¹⁰³ Three days afterwards, however, the Cameroonian government spokesperson released a communiqué, outright rejecting Canada’s statement and stating that the government ‘has not entrusted any foreign country or external entity with any role of mediator or facilitator to settle the crisis in the North West and South West Regions.'¹⁰⁴ Not only is this repeated pattern indicative of the high-level divide within the government, but it also reinforces the notion that the meaning of an external peace mediation transcends the binary of making or not making peace. Instead, it significantly affects delicate, high-stake power relations in Yaoundé and triggers reactions by those who feel their positions threatened by such an initiative.

The perspectival shift advocated in this article—to foreground the perspectives of African actors in understanding their behaviour in foreign peace mediation endeavours—is aligned with broader efforts in the African Studies scholarship to transform the politics of knowledge production about Africa. Instead of applying an external, often Western, yardstick to explain the behaviour of African actors, this article calls for anchoring their decisions and actions in pertinent domestic priorities and considerations. Not only does this counter the over-estimation of the capacity of foreign mediation actors, but it also allows us to resist pathologizing forms of African agency that do not conform to Western expectations.¹⁰⁵ By disrupting persistent imaginings of Africa as exceptional, ‘other-worldly’ and an ‘incomplete example of something else’,¹⁰⁶ it contributes to broader efforts to challenge epistemological imperialism.

Footnotes

Author notes