Boko Haram is increasingly a regional
threat and the battle against the Nigerian Islamist
sect is meant to be a regional campaign, but
that's not the way it feels for Cameroon's
soldiers on a desperate frontline.
"We are fed up with fighting this war all alone," a
Cameroonian officer said as he described his
army's resistance against Boko Haram and the
lack of military support from neighbouring
governments.
"The attacks against our territory come from a
neighbouring country, which calls itself sovereign
and does nothing," said a defence ministry official
who asked not to be named.
The official complained that Cameroon had been
drawn into a "proxy war" against Boko Haram,
which has stepped up massacres of villagers in
Cameroon's far north at the same time as killing
and maiming in Nigeria
Last Friday alone, suspected Boko Haram fighters
slaughtered at least 120 people in a suicide bomb
and gun attack on the central mosque in the
north Nigerian city of Kano.
Cameroon's army has been stretched in its
attempt to check cross-border incursions by the
group, whose name loosely translates as "Western
education is a sin".
And that task has become harder as Boko Haram
fighters grow in strength and ambition.
"Each time Boko Haram captures a town in
Nigeria, it recovers all the military equipment
there. So now they really have heavy weaponry,"
a source in the intelligence services said.
On our own
In mid-October, Islamist fighters equipped with a
tank and a booby-trapped car bomb laid siege to
an army position in Amchide, a town that
straddles the frontier, while also attacking Limani
in the north.
"Fighting of rare violence" left 107 Boko Haram
members and eight Cameroonian soldiers dead,
the defence ministry said, while a police officer
told AFP that before the battle, the militants "cut
the throat of many civilians, 30 at least".
"We're on our own at the front," said a
commander of the elite Israeli-trained Rapid
Intervention Brigade (BIR).
Across the border in northeastern Nigeria, Boko
Haram controls swathes of territory abandoned
by the authorities, leaving the local population to
its fate.
In Amchide, Cameroon's army faces enemy forces
dug in around the far end of a bridge marking the
border. Boko Haram routed local Nigerian troops
and now is only separated from Cameroonian
soldiers by a dusty and deserted no man's land.
When 500 Nigerian troops crossed into Cameroon
in early August, the army command said the
soldiers were "charging through the borders in a
tactical manoeuvre".
But Cameroon is getting used to seeing Nigerian
soldiers arriving for a quite different reason,
fleeing Boko Haram, which is estimated to have
killed more than 13,000 people since 2009.
At the same time, Cameroon has come under
criticism from neighbouring countries and former
colonial power France for not doing enough to
stop Boko Haram from using its territory as a
rear base for its war in Nigeria.
Operation Alpha
The 2013 abduction within Cameroon of French
national Tanguy Moulin-Fournier and his family
by Boko Haram led to a change in strategy.
The hostages were freed, as were two Italian
priests and a Canadian nun seized early this year.
But Cameroon's President Paul Biya ordered
substantial military reinforcements to the far
north to tackle the armed fundamentalists in
"Operation Alpha".
Some 2,000 men were deployed, but security
officials stress that more troops are needed to
control the long, porous border.
"We hope that aid from here and there, from the
international community, will enable us to bring
the swiftest possible end to this aggression,"
government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary
said recently.
During talks in Paris in May, Nigeria and three
neighbouring countries, Cameroon, Chad and
Niger, came up with a battle plan.
They agreed to share information and coordinate
their intelligence work, to keep joint watch over
their borders and to develop the capacity to
intervene swiftly in response to threats.
Each of the four countries pledged to send 700
troops to the Lake Chad region, where their
borders all come close together. However, that
promise has yet to be fully honoured.
"Cameroon has already sent 300 men from the
navy. Chad and Niger are well disposed to
provide troops, but it's less certain where Nigeria
is concerned," a Cameroonian military source
said.