instructions attached below with a sample paper as an example. no citation page is needed, ONLY footnotes in chicago style please! Notes are attached as well to pick a theory from class.

Professor Hakizimana

CONF 340 – Memo I

Implications of Civil Conflict in Cameroon: The Anglophone Crisis

Introduction

This paper attempt to analyze the Cameroonian conflict between Anglophone and Francophone conflict utilizing

Gurr’s theory, frustration aggression as a cause of civil conflict.

Historical Context

In October 2016, Anglophone leaders from the North and Southwest regions of Cameroon demanded the

restoration of a two -state federat ion of the central African country 1 in discourse that can be traced back to 1961 and

the country’s independence from British and French colonialism. In February 1961, British leaders from the League

of Nations territory of Southern Cameroon in the west, v oted to form a federation with the French territory in the

east called the Republic of Cameroon which had claimed independence from France in the prior year, to form the

Federal Republic of Cameroon. By 1972, former president Ahmadou Ahidjo transformed the country into a unitary

state called the United Republic of Cameroon, which was then once again changed to the Republic of Cameroon (La

Republique du Cameroon) by President Paul Biya in 1984 2. This reversal of the country’s name worked to fuel

sentiments that would promote the marginalization of the Anglophone regions of the country for decades to come,

and ultimately retaliation from those regions against a primarily French government.

In the early 1990s, in an effort to protect the interests of Anglopho ne Cameroonians following the control

the French had garnered over the political and educational sectors, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), the first

oppositional political party to the “francophonisation” of Anglophone regions 3 was formed. Despite Anglo phone

efforts, the centralized French governing powers maintained their power over the government and virtually all other

aspects of Cameroonian society. In late 2016, lawyers and teachers engaged in non -violent protests across the

Northwest and Southwest, decrying the long -standing infiltration of Francophone policies and guidelines into the

Anglophone judicial system and schools. French had become the language used in courtrooms in English regions,

and French teachers had been assigned to English schools which led to a decline in student performance due to

language barriers 4. Peaceful protests were met with aggressive responses from the state’s military, including the

arrest and torture of teachers and students from major university and high school campus es in Anglophone regions.

By December 2016, the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium was formed by activist Agbor

Balla. The organization called for an end to Anglophone marginalization, a return to the two -state federation

established in 1961, th e preservation of the Anglophone legal and education systems, the release of more than 100

arrested protesters, and the restoration of internet services which had been shut down by the government to limit

communication in the protesting regions 5. In Janua ry 2017, Balla declared the movement’s first act of civil

disobedience by in Operation Ghost Town Resistance, recognized every Monday and Tuesday in a sit -at-home

ritual, virtually pausing all economic and education activities in the region. Multiple other groups were formed in

resistance to the government, with the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF) led by

Sisku Julius Ayuktebe overseeing them all. On October 1 st 2017, SCACUF declared Anglophone independence

from French rulershi p, with the Anglophone Southern region now referred to as the Federal Republic of

Ambazonia 6.

Tensions escalated in late 2017 when Anglophone separatists clashed with government military forces

deployed by the Biya administration in an effort to staunch opposition to the unofficial separation of the Anglophone

regions from the French. In an effort to ease and abate conflict, the Biya administration deployed bilingual teachers

to English regions. To exercise more power over the people, however, multiple in filtrations of the government’s

Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) to both Anglophone regions (North West and South West) were organized , with

both state and civilian fighters exercising brute force on each other and on innocent civilians caught in the cr ossfire.

With the displacement of almost half a million civilians and numerous separatist, military, and civilian casualties,

the Cameroonian government has developed questionable justifications for their initial reaction to protests with

1 Nna -Emeka Okereke, “Analysing Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis,” International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research , Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, 10, no. 3 (March 201 8): 8 –12, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26380430. 2 Okereke. 3 Roxana Mates, “CAMEROON’S ANGLOPHONE CRISIS: ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICAL, SOCIO ‐CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT,” December 30, 2021, 261 –78, https://doi.org/10.24193/subbeuropaea.2019.2.12. 4 Morgan Tebei Nwati, “The Anglophone Crisis: The Rise of Arms Trafficking and Smuggling, Its Effects on the Two English Region s of Cameroon” (Scientific Research Publishing Inc., January 26, 2021), https://doi.org/10.4236/aasoci.2021.111001. 5 Okereke, “Analysing Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis.” 6 Okereke. force by referrin g to the opposition as terrorists 7. This raises the question of democracy in the country, and of the

state of limited social debate. This poses an even greater question of the validity of the state in this case, as Mates

writes, “the discontent of the Ang lophone minority regarding their marginalization and constant discrimination does

not represent a novel situation for the Cameroonian authorities, which could have tackled the diversity issue in a

more inclusive way 8.” Overall, despite the atrocious turn of events and the scale of conflict in the Anglophone crisis,

this instance of civil conflict can be linked to multiple aspects of Ted Gurr’s frustration aggression -theory, as

analyzed in the following section.

Analysis : Gurr’s Frustration -Aggression

In Gurr’s “Psychological Theories of Aggression,” motives behind civil violence are explored, Gurr

attributes violent responses or reactions to external cues, and the scale of aggression depends on how wide -spread

frustration or discontent is in the correspo nding environment. In the case of the civil response(s) in Cameroon’s

Anglophone crisis, the relative deprivation aspect of the frustration -aggression theory applies best. According to

Gurr’s relative deprivation theory, value expectations or the “goods an d conditions of life to which people believe

they are justifiably entitled,” and value capabilities or the conditions that determine people’s chances of getting and

keeping said values encompasses the level at which participants feel deprived of their enti tle goods and conditions 9.

Cameroon’s Anglophones experienced group deprivation and collective frustration through their gradual and

prolonged marginalization of the Francophone government as their right to comprehensive legal and education

systems were c ompromised by the imposition of French policies.

Gurr’s concept of relative deprivation also suggests that anger as a result of relative deprivation expressed

through civil violence can be satiated through inflicting immediate and severe damage or throug h prolonged “but

less severe aggression. 10” This also directly applies to the civil conflict in Cameroon. While Anglophone retaliation

to state military was almost immediate, the violent conflict has been going on for almost five years now with no

possible end in sight. Violence has also remained contained in Anglophone regions, so casualties have arguable not

been as severe as they would have if the conflict was state -wide.

The previous point also touches on the variables that suggest the magnitude of ci vil violence as explained

by Gurr. These variables include the degree of participation in the affected population, the destruction aggression

yields, and the length of time violence persists 11. So far, actors of violence on the civilians’ part have been li mited to

a small group of local men funded by members of the Cameroonian diaspora. Destruction has included the

displacement of locals, civilian, military, and separatist deaths, and the destruction of property including homes,

business, schools, and hospi tals 12. Lastly, violence has persisted for almost five years with intermittent periods of

wide and small -scale killings, kidnappings, and property destruction. Gurr also states that discontent is “highest

when misery is bearable,” which also accurately por trays the events in Cameroon. Clashes between the military and

the opposition have abated in recent months. However, since the government continues to fail to meet the requests

and demands of Anglophone Cameroonians, discontent remains at a constant high w hile violence reduces.

Evidently, the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon mirrors key elements of Gurr’s frustration -aggression theory, as the

occurrence of civil conflict resulted from years of marginalization and ensued in relative deprivation.

Conclusion

Civil violence in Cameroon at the scale of the Anglophone crisis has been a result of systematic grievances

against citizens in the Anglophone regions of the country. Decades of French infringement upon Anglophone legal

systems and schools have created sen timents of discontent and dissatisfaction with the Biya administration, which

has been in power for over 4 0 years. The government’s failure to adequately address the needs of the entire country

have resulted in the isolation and marginalization of the Anglophone majority. Their continued failure to meet these

requests, and their violent response to peaceful pro test have created an air of tension that now pervades the nation,

questions the integrity of national security, and resulted in the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of

Cameroonians. Reluctance on both sides to secede has resulted in a prolon ged state of unrest that shows no promise

of abating, and relative deprivation is likely to stay intact until government and separatist forces come to a

compromise that appeases both parties.

7 Mates, “CAMEROON’S ANGLOPHONE CRISIS: ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICAL, SOCIO ‐CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT.” 8 Mates. 9 Ted Gurr, “Psychological Factors in Civil Violence” 20, no. 2 (January 1968): 245 –78, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2009798. 10 Gurr. 11 Gurr. 12 Mates, “CAMEROON’S ANGLOPHONE CRISIS: ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICAL, SOCIO ‐CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT.”