Dr Peter Mbile
By Dr. Peter Mbile
In the face of persistent insecurity across the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon, it has become clear that our traditional approaches to security, largely inherited from colonial-era governance models, are no longer fit for purpose.
The ongoing crisis, driven by the Ambazonian Project of Replacement demands a sober reassessment of our national security architecture.
We must now, with urgency and clarity, pivot from a purely national defense model to a hybrid, community-based security blueprint that recognizes new threats and empowers local resilience.
The Limits of the National Security Model
For decades, our security forces were designed to protect the integrity of the national territory, focusing on preventing external invasion and maintaining central authority.
This national security mindset—rooted in Cold War logic and colonial institutional frameworks—has remained largely unchanged even as the nature of conflict has evolved.
Yet, if there is one lesson to be drawn from nearly half a decade of the excuse by the Ambazonians to perpertuate violence on communities, hiding behind a refusal by President Paul Biya to re-litigate a decision by our own parents in 1961, it is that today’s most pressing threats are internal, decentralized, and ideologically erratic.
The Ambazonian project has revealed that a small, disenchanted group, armed with little more than grievance and an irrational vision, can disrupt entire communities, sow fear, and dismantle decades of social trust.
These actors do not seek military victory over the national army; their success lies in localized terror, cultural erosion, and the psychological colonization of vulnerable populations.
This is not political dissent. It is violent imposition
Terror from Within: A New Kind of Invasion
For years, Cameroonians—especially Anglophone communities—have tried to parse the Ambazonian crisis through political lenses: marginalization, unaddressed historical grievances, or unmet federalist aspirations.
But over time, it has become apparent that the nature of the crisis has mutated, revealing it’s evil side.
Today, what we are confronting is not a political movement seeking fair dialogue—it is a mindset of coercion that thrives on fear and punishes dissent.
Communities are no longer disrupted because they resist unification with La République du Cameroun; they are terrorized simply for disagreeing with a radical, exclusionary ideology.
Traditional leaders, community elites, women, and even farmers have become targets for choosing peace over propaganda.
This is no longer a question of national unity or constitutional reform. It is survival.
And what makes this crisis particularly insidious is that the perpetrators emerge from within. They often come from the very communities they now terrorize.
Neighbours yesterday, executioners today.
They operate not to achieve compromise, but to enforce dominance, exploiting the weak spots in our overstretched and under-adapted security apparatus.
The Case for Community-Based Security apparatuses
It is time we acknowledged that the defense of the nation and communities cannot rest solely on a centralized military—especially in conflicts where villages, cultures, families and our minds are the battlefield.
While our defense forces remain vital for national integrity, they were not designed to contain ideological insurgency and grassroots terror that manifests sporadically and invisibly within local settings.
By contrast, community-based psycho-security models offer a viable path forward.
They recognize the agency of communities to participate in their own protection, build local intelligence networks, and develop trust-based mechanisms for rapid response and early warning.
This must begin urgently.
Other sectors—health, education, local governance—have already undergone partial decentralization.
Despite operational challenges, these sectors have demonstrated greater adaptability than our rigid national security model. It is high time security followed suit.
We are not suggesting vigilante justice. We are advocating for structured, lawful, and state-supported community resilience mechanisms—trained local auxiliaries, neighborhood watch systems, coordinated partnerships between civilians and gendarmes, and the strategic inclusion of traditional rulers and civil society in early-warning systems.
The Price of Inaction
Let us be clear: if the state does not empower communities to protect themselves within a legal framework, it risks pushing them toward doing so unilaterally—often with desperate, uncoordinated, and potentially destabilizing results.
Already, some communities have tried, with mixed results, to resist incursions by Ambazonian militants. Others have simply given up, allowing themselves to be ruled by fear.
This cannot continue.
And if we fail to act now, we risk losing more than lives and livelihoods—we risk losing cultures, identities, and intergenerational continuity, as entire communities are uprooted from ancestral lands.
The slow disruptions of customs, such as the Bobombi Wa Batanga unable to enjoy it’s Moboko , Diyalla is not just cultural disruptions—it is a form of social decay that the state can no longer afford to ignore.
Our ancestors fought over that land and culture, we as the descendants have the duty and responsibility to defend and protect it; from adversaries, foreign and domestic, willing and determined to dispossess us.
Toward Strategic Humility and Reform
We must stop pretending that a blunt frontal military solution alone can end this crisis.
We must develop strategic humility— and tactical agility as a society and government and as a nation.
That means listening more carefully to those living in the conflict zones.
It also means empowering Anglophone voices within civil society and government to simultaneously lead dialogue efforts without fear of political retribution while remaining strong in security at local and national level.
You cannot dialogue with an assailant carrying a gun or who has seized your cocoa farm!
And yes, it may mean giving up some symbolic control, so that a genuine process of community-driven peace can begin, from strength in the community.
Let us also be honest: many decision-makers at the heart of national security have not fully grasped the psychological dimensions of the Ambazonian mindset.
Nor should we expect them to.
That is precisely why locally co-led processes must be allowed to unfold—one where divergent voices can confront, negotiate, and heal amongst themselves first, before broader national dialogue can be meaningful.
This must be done from strength.
In conclusion: Defending Communities Is Defending the Nation
The Ambazonian project is no longer a movement—it is a menace of mindset, a self-sustaining complex of alienation, entitlement, and vengeance that seeks relevance through disruption.
It cannot be reasoned with in its current form, nor defeated by conventional force.
But it can be neutralized—by returning to our communities the power to defend their cultures, their people, and their futures.
A successful nation is not one that clings to obsolete models out of fear of appearing weak. It is one that evolves in the face of new challenges, adapts its institutions, and restores dignity where it has been violated.
Cameroon must now choose to be that nation.
