TRAPPED in Mayhem

Civilians are trapped in Boko Haram insurgency in Cameroon’s Far North region and there is no end in sight. In July, investigative reporter Arison TAMFU spent close to a month in the region talking to the victims of the decade-long war.

By Arison Tamfu

It is 7:30 am and we are gathered at the main office of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Cameroon’s Far North regional chief town of Maroua for a briefing.

When I say we, I mean one photographer, one camera operator, ICRC workers and me.

We are about to embark on a chilling journey in remote parts of the region where villages are being swept up in violence as government forces and Boko Haram militants vie for control, spelling destruction for once peaceful farming communities.

The armed group, Boko Haram began operating in Nigeria in 2009 and then spread across the Lake Chad basin countries, including Cameroon.

The Cameroon army claims it has dismantled most cells of the terror group, which has become ostensibly weaker.

Since 2016, the attention of authorities, international media and international community has shifted to Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions where a separatist insurrection is in progress.

Local and international NGOs have warned that Boko Haram has taken advantage of the situation and continues to sow death in silence in Far North region.

The NGOs alleged that, since 2020, hundreds of families living in villages not far from the border with Nigeria have had to flee their homes due to an increase in violence.

I am joining the convoy because I want to fact-check these allegations and find out how people living there have been affected 10 years after the government started to clamp down on the insurgency, which has already killed over 36,000 people.

“No military escort. ICRC does not use military escort,” says ICRC’s chief security and safety officer.

“But why,” I ask, surprised and worried.

“As humanitarian workers, we must remain neutral, independent and impartial,” the officer explains.

So, without military escort, no helmet and no bullet-proof vest we climb into a land cruiser. Despite air conditioning, it is over 44 degrees Celsius inside. With perspiring faces, we look at each other, suddenly understanding, the physical challenges that humanitarian workers and soldiers patrolling the region experience each day.

Today, we are travelling to Ouzal, a remote locality that shares border with Nigeria and whose inhabitants have been subjected to the true horrors of war: killings, extortions, hostage-takings, rapes, and property confiscations.

The road from Maroua to nearest town of Mokolo is tarred but rutted and uneven. From Mokolo to Ouzal we rattle down a bumpy dirt track.

It is too risky to drive through the area whose broken tracks are sometimes sown with mines and improvised explosive devices laid by Boko Haram to block soldeirs’ way into the territory. More than 100 blasts have been recorded since 2014, with 45 of the mines killing at least 80 soldiers and wounding many more, according to security reports.

Civilian casualties are unclear.

For the moment, everything is ok, thank God.

After driving for close to two hours, we have arrived Ouzal. We are welcomed by Gilbert Teguele Gazawa, traditional leader of Mandoussa locality where Ouzal is located. It is raining and it seems that the village is wrapped up in a gray oilcloth, and the rays of the sun cannot break it.

Ouzal is surrounded by hills and down the valley, people sit in poverty, crowded into a handful of ramshackle huts. Despite numerous Boko Haram attacks in the village, there is no military outpost here.

About five years ago, there were just about 3,000 people in the village  but the population has almost tripled after persistent Boko Haram raids in neighbouring villages caused villagers to escape to Ouzal.

But they are not safe here either.

“Boko Haram continues to terrorize our lives. In fact, there was an attack last night. People are constantly moving from one place to another. We are like nomads now,” says Gazawa.

A soft-spoken and compassionate man, Gazawa walks me around the village, explaining and showing the destruction caused by Boko Haram.

In 2020, he says, gunshots and battle shouts interrupted the chill of the wind and the silence in the depth of night in Ouzal.

Boko Haram militants had just invaded the village, which also hosts internally displaced persons.

Terrified, Gazawa and his family made a dash for the mountain for safety. Other villagers followed.

When they returned after the raid, they found that the militants had looted and then set fire to several homes and a health center. They burned three people alive and abducted six children between three to five years of age.

“They (villagers) were traumatized. They did not know what to do,” says the 40-year-old.

“They burnt everything and stole all the material we had in stock (in the health center). Two of those who were kidnapped were children of the workers of the hospital. There is no trace of the six kidnapped children till today,” adds Samuel Baldena, chief of the Integrated Health Center of Ouzal, which was attacked. It was the third attack on the health center, which serves more than 11,000 people in six villages.

Roughly, 15 health facilities have been attacked in the region, according to security reports.

With support from ICRC, reconstruction of the health center began in 2021. Now, a refurbished and reequipped health facility stands in place of the rubble.

The health center is now structurally sound, much of the equipment and medical supplies reinstated and medications and consultations are provided free of charge.

“We are grateful for the reconstruction of the health center, but only insecurity threatens us now,” says Baldena, a stoic and respected figure in the village. “Nobody sleeps in this village at night. When evening approaches, we all, including patients escape to the bushes where we spend the night and then return in the morning to continue with our daily chores.We have been doing that in the past five years. Boko Haram attacks mostly at night,”

“Even as we speak, they (Boko Haram militants) are watching us from the mountain preparing to attack when night falls,” Gazawa says, complaining that a veil seems to have been cast over the tragic context of the rural areas in the region.

Between 2022 and March 2023, residents of Mayo-Tsanaga division where Ouzal is located organized series of protest demonstrations to denounce what they consider to be “indifference and negligence from the government and army”.

“No one cares about us. Sometimes, they (Boko Haram militants) follow, abduct and kill us right in the bushes where we escape to seek sanctuary. There is no family here that has not lost a relative in the war. We are on our own. What can we do? What…” he stops talking, looking low-spirited.

Gazawa wants me to go talk to internally displaced persons in the village but it is already 1:30pm and we must leave the village for our own safety.

In less than two hours, the entire village will shut down and we will be easy prey for Boko Haram.

So, we take off for Maroua. Along the way, we meet an army convoy of two vehicles driving towards Ouzal.

The following day, we take off for Kerawa, a locality that shares a porous and dangerous border with Nigeria.

Local reports suggest that it is one of the main entry points of Boko Haram militants from Nigeria into Cameroon.

At the peak of Boko Haram’s firepower in 2015, Kerawa was among the hardest hit places in Cameroon and the stage of long battles between the army and the insurgents.

Cameroon government has constructed a well-equipped military camp there.

Before the war came to Kerawa, it was a busy cross-border trade hub for Cameroon and Nigeria.

To get to Kerawa, we need to drive for roughly an hour to the town of Mora.

The road from Maroua to Mora has been freshly paved and is lined with plants and a pleasing sight of flat expanse of land.  After Mora, the roads become rough and then there are no roads at all. But the driver finds his way toward the north west.  We are confronted with the sight of ghost villages, abandoned by inhabitants fleeing Boko Haram atrocities.

After close to two hours of a scary ride, we arrive at Kerawa where hundreds of people live in a sprawling mass of shelter made of wood and tall grass.

We stop at a rocky plateau overlooking the vast sandy frontier area with Nigeria where the village elder, Gui Daidi, points at a small river and hill in the distance. “You see the river and hill over there?” he asks. “That’s the border between Cameroon and Nigeria. Attacks take place on this frontier almost daily. Even last night there were attacks. We cannot go into Nigeria, not here, it’s too dangerous,”

Daidi is one of over 100 Nigerians who have escaped Boko Haram atrocities across the border and now live in Kerawa.

In 2018, recall the 57-year-old, Boko Haram militants stopped him and his two friends by the side of the road and accused them of spying for the government.

“They made us lie down with two metres between us. Two motorcycles then edged forward, crushing my friends to death, one by one. When they were about to smash me, soldiers arrived and started shooting and they escaped. That is how I survived,” Daidi says.

Daidi takes me to his shelter, where I am welcomed by a big black dog that barks furiously when visitors arrive.

Once a wealthy businessman, he now shares two bedrooms with his two wives and 20 children.

“This is what has become of me,” he says pointing at the dilapidated home. “We don’t feed well and our children continue to die”.

Raids by the terror group have not only brought destruction and death to the region but also inflicted an indelible trauma on the survivors, especially women and children.

Official statistics are unavailable but local NGOs estimate that about 2 in 10 persons in conflict-affected communities are living with mental health conditions, ranging from mild depression to more intense symptoms such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

A mental and psychological support program by International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is now helping rebuild lives of people struggling to cope with the mental scars.

As the sun shines from a cloudless sky in Kerawa, a group of women, men and children gather in an open space to share their stories and greet each other.

They talk about their traumatizing experiences and strategies that have helped them to cope.

The support group sessions were developed by ICRC as a response to the humanitarian consequences of the armed conflict, says Emerance Vanessa Mbia, a clinical psychologist with ICRC.

“They do not know if their family members are alive or not. The goal is to get them to live with the disappearance of their loved ones without ever forgetting them… and try to smile again as before, try to start life again,” says Mbia, adding that such sessions held eight times in two months have had “tremendous” impact on the victims.

“In the majority of cases, we see change, no matter the level of psychological stress,” adds Mbia who leads a team of mental health workers and facilitators in the region.

Fifty five-year-old Lados (she didn’t give her surname) is Daidi’s negihbour. She lost four members of her family when Boko Haram raided her village in neighbouring Nigeria.

“I had to escape to this place,” she says.

She is part of the support group session.

“Thanks to the psychological program by ICRC, my kids are releasing their stress and energy here with other kids. They stopped thinking about the attack, so this is a positive,” says the mother of 14.

While the program has increased the confidence and self-esteem of many displaced by the conflict in the region, they still live in perpetual fear of Boko Haram attack.

“We stay in the bushes at night because they (insurgents) will always attack when it is getting dark. Nobody cares. It’s like they have left us to death,” Daidi says.

Many people are eager to tell us how “we are suffering” but our time is up. It is a couple of minutes after 1:00 pm and it’s risky to wait any longer.

So we begin our journey back to Maroua.

Along the deserted road, we meet four young men struggling to repair a punctured truck.

We have just arrived Maroua and Daidi is calling probably to find out if we travelled safely.

“Did you see four young men along the way,” he ask me on the phone.

“Yes”, I respond.

“Those boys (Boko Haram) kidnapped two of them and shot one to death just like five minutes after you saw them. One of them who escaped is here with us. He is the one that told us the story. It seems they were in the bush monitoring your movement. You guys were very lucky. Thank God,” he says.

I thank him for the information and hang up, imagining how close we were to death but I am not discouraged. I will continue with the findings.

As part of my investigation, I want to visit Ganse locality. According to Cameroonian soldiers, they fought fierce battles in Ganse against sometimes hundreds heavily equipped Boko Haram fighters from mainly Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad.

I am especially curious to learn about local self-defence groups, the so-called “vigilantes”, that have gained a certain fame in this Cameroonian war on terror.

A motorcycle rider unwillingly and expensively has agreed to take my guide and me from Mora to Ganse.

We take off as early as 6:00 am, ride through ghost villages, and finally reach Ganse. People are out and about. There is a makeshift security checkpoint in the village. I can see about two or three soldiers from where we are standing.

The entire population of Ganse fled during the fighting and only about 40 per cent have come back to a village that is still in ruins.

The Far North is the poorest of Cameroon’s 10 regions, with 70 per cent of its people living on less than one dollar per day.

Children and youths are the most vulnerable in this war. Many are traumatized by the violence they see or experience at a young age.

Unemployment and poverty has made them easy prey for Boko Haram who can either recruit or force them into their ranks and use them for their purposes.

In Ganse, parents testify that many of their children were forcefully recruited.

Some of those who were recruited by force are back in the community and now join forces to form a vigilante group to assist the army to fight Boko Haram.

Across the region, community defence groups patrol their villages to make sure everyone is safe, especially at night.

In Ganse, I sit for a conversation under the shade of trees with four members  of the group. They wear assorted dresses looking shabby and some bare-footed. Their weapons include artisanal rifles, pistol, torches, machetes, knives and night vision pear which are mostly provided by the government.

“We never knew one day we will be soldiers fighting alongside the government forces. We could not stand by while they (Boko Haram) kill us and our family members,” says a poker-face man in his mid-30s who asks me to refer to him as Jaba. “We fight BH (in Cameroon’s Far North region, residents generally refer to Boko Haram as BH) in every corner in Ganse, Fotokol, Mora, Kerawa, Zeleved and other villages. I have no pity when I get them”.

Jaba was not always like that. Villagers testify that he was a gentle, good man, well-thought-of in the area before the war started but one incident radicalised him.

Everybody else fled one night in January 2015 when Boko Haram militants moved speedily through the darkness burning houses and shooting indiscriminately in Zeleved village where Jaba used to live. Many escaped to the bush, but some weren’t quick or lucky enough to follow.

“I saw how they were killing people and raping girls. They burned my mother alive in the house. She was laying in her sick bed and could not escape,” Jaba says.

Everything of value was taken and the rest was burnt. The insurgents then kidnapped Jaba and other young people with the intention of recruiting them in their ranks. Along the way, Jaba escaped with five others who are also part of the vigilante.

Jaba has come to a radical conclusion.

“This war will only come to an end when we kill all the BH. There are no two ways,” he says.

“Look around, you will see how people are suffering. We lack food and other basic things in life. And you think we will not fight to the end to ensure our people are free from this suffering?” asks a man in his 20s who is squatting beside Jaba.

“All we ask is for the government and international community to support us. This war is far from over. Even as we speak, BH is surely watching us and preparing to attack,” adds Abba who is standing behind Jaba.

The armed conflict and worsening humanitarian crises have left the region’s agriculture sector struggling as more than half of the displaced persons come from agricultural backgrounds. In Ganse, some of them have one meal a day with children and women suffering the most.

Thirty-year-old Falta Modou, mother of six has lost her two children for want of food.

Jaba takes me to her hut.

About eight years ago, gunmen invaded Amchide locality where she was living and abducted her three brothers and husband.

“There is no news of them to this day. I have been struggling with the children alone. No one helps us and to go the farm is very dangerous now because BH sometimes hide in the farm to attack and kill us,” she says. “It is so difficult. Humanitarian workers sometimes come here and provide some assistance but that’s never enough”.

“What will you like me to tell the world about what you are going through,” I ask her.

“What can I say? We are trapped here, in this misery and death. I hope that everything soon comes to an end,” Modou responds softly and without much hope in her voice, she raises her eyes.

Her eyes are saying more than words.

Modou’s story reflects that of the majority in Ganse where people say they are surviving “by the grace of God”.

The sun is about to set and we must leave Ganse. Jaba and his boys opt to escort us.

As we drive, Jaba beckons our rider to ride faster.

“BH has spotted us and they are following us. Hurry,” he shouts from his motorcycle.

Our rider accelerates and in less than five minutes we hear gunshots and battle shouts of “allahu Akbar” (God is great).

The gunshots continue as we ride more quickly.

After 20 minutes of a horrifying riding experience, we reach a place where Jaba considers safe. They ask us to continue our journey and return to “face these terrorists”.

I arrive Maroua as the sky dusked.

Up in my hotel room, I open a bottle of beer and drink a glass in one gulp and then another and the third. I then settle down on the sofa and call the guide to find out what happened to Jaba and the rest of the boys.

“There was serious fighting and Jaba was killed but the other boys survived thanks to the timely intervention of the military. It seems, five BH were killed by the military. We were lucky,” shocked, I hang up without asking further questions.

For Jaba and his boys it was just a bad day at work in this inhospitable and perilous part of the country.

I drink three more bottles of beer while I’m getting asleep with a disturbing dream of a Boko Haram attack on our convoy.

I planned to go to Kousseri, another hostile town to talk to victims of the war. But I am not going again. The trauma of Jaba’s death still frightens and haunts me.

The last stop of my three weeks’ investigation is Minawao refugee camp, where approximately 70,000 Nigerians have sought shelter from violence in their homeland. I want to learn more about an afforestation project in the camp.

It’s an hour and half drive from Maroua to Minawao. It is relatively safe.

When the camp was built in 2011, living conditions were extremely poor, but that changed, thanks to combined efforts by the Cameroonian government, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian agencies. Refugees live is simple houses and receive three meals per day, which is more than many ordinary Cameroonians get to eat. They also go to school. However, there is still much room for improvement.

In the camp, I meet Luka Isaac Batakwa. He recalls a scary night when he lost his four relatives when gunmen belonging to Boko Haram raided his village in Nigeria.

He had seen and had enough and made up his mind to flee to neighbouring Cameroon. There, he joined thousands of other refugees who had fled to seek sanctuary in Minawao, about 64 km east of the Nigerian border.

He says he was finally beginning to feel he had found peace when, again, life became unbearable.

“We were looking for shade everywhere, and our houses were blown off by the winds. I (used to go to) the neighbouring villages to seek shelter. At times in the daytime, this place was very hot,” says the 46-year-old man.

The new arrivals accelerated the desertification process in the semi-arid region, ripping up the few surrounding trees for firewood and leaving nothing but sand and rocks.

There is hope now. Since 2018, trees, including neem, acacia and moringa, dot the over 600-hectare landscape of the refugee camp.

The land is sandy, dry and scorched by the searing sun of the African Sahel, but that has not stopped refugees from planting nearly half a million trees, which has turned an extensive area of desert into forest and changed people’s lives.

“Now we have enough trees in the camp, our houses are not blown off like before, and we have good air to breathe,” Batakwa, now the president of Nigerian refugees in the Minawao camp, tells me standing in front of his mud-walled house roofed with white tarpaulins and surrounded by trees.

Shouck Ali, another refugee, was one of the first to begin planting trees when he arrived at the camp in 2013.

“I decided to plant the trees simply because I know it will give me shade where I can have some fresh air during the dry season because, in my country, where I come from, I have a lot of trees surrounding my house,” says Ali, 45, who regularly left the camp in search of firewood, a dangerous and exhausting task. “When I look at the trees and the wind that blows on the trees, I feel at home. So that at least gives me a rest of mind sometimes when I am upset.”

Sponsored by UNHCR and partner organizations, the project, dubbed “Make Minawao Green Again,” is working to make a difference for everyone and reverse deforestation both in the camp and surrounding villages, says Kimberly Roberson, head of the UNHCR sub-office in Maroua, capital of Far North region.

“Some of the trees that are planted have roots that have different types of nutrients. And so, the trees not only provide wood, not only provide shade, not only provide shelter and building materials, they also provide food,” Roberson says.

The project is expanding, and more seedlings are being grown in a tree nursery.

The project is contributing to the Great Green Wall, an African-led initiative that aims to grow an 8,000-km continent-wide barrier to stop the ongoing desertification of the Sahel, a territory on the border of the Sahara and the Sudanian savanna, according to environmentalists.

“We are happy with the project but our hope is to return home to Nigeria eventually,” says Batakwa who found love, got married and had children in the camp.

“There is no possible turning back for me and my children for now. We have been chased from our village, our house was burnt; we have to make our life here. We are trapped here,” this declaration by Malu who has been staying in the camp since 2016 ends my research in Far North region.

After three weeks in the region, my understanding is that despite some progress, the battle against Boko Haram is ongoing and it is far from won. At the same time, some of the civilians I spoke to accused the military of human rights violations against the population, including arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, and forced disappearances – allegations which the military mostly denies.

“Boko Haram is waging a war on the people of Cameroon at a shocking human cost,” says Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Central African researcher at Human Rights Watch. “As Cameroon’s Far North region increasingly becomes the epicenter of Boko Haram’s violence, Cameroon should urgently adopt and carry out a new, rights-respecting strategy to protect civilians at risk in the Far North.”

During my investigation, over 70 attacks were reported in villages in just three weeks with some resulting in death.

The conflict bears the hallmarks of asymmetric warfare. The government has the greater firepower and controls the towns, while the terrain gives the rebels the edge in the rural areas and bush. Areas of control shift through the ebb and flow of battle, with civilians paying the greatest price.

The civilian population feels trapped and neglected by the government and the international community.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, an international aid organisation, Cameroon is currently the second most neglected crisis in the world. “The interest of the major stakeholders especially the West is not really Cameroon as a priority,” says Felix Agbor Nkongho, Human Rights Lawyer. “But people are dieing daily and need urgent help. The Cameroonian government and the world need to rethink, re-strategize and help these people in need”.