NEWS ANALYSIS by Hilary Matfess @ Mail & Guardian (South Africa), Aug. 10

With elections just a few months away, the political situation in Cameroon looks bleak. There is the escalating conflict in the Anglophone region, there is the Boko Haram-linked instability in the north and then there is the president who is determined to extend his decades-long stay in power.

It is the Anglophone crisis that is currently making international headlines, although it has been brewing for several years. The conflict between state security forces and armed separatist groups appears to have intensified in recent weeks. The separatists believe that English-speakers in Cameroon — about 20% of the population of 24-million — have been marginalised and discriminated against by the predominantly Francophone government.

“If you see a civil war as a war between the government and its citizens, then I think it is headed towards a civil war, if it’s not a civil war yet,” Emmanuel Freudenthal, one of the few journalists to have reported from the affected region, told the Mail & Guardian.

Fighting on both sides has been characterised by extreme violence [....]