While we’re all waiting for President Trump to start the process of ousting Biya, Cameroon Concord News Group have spotted that the Biya Southern Cameroons war map has substantially and bloodily changed.  The Ambazonia Self-Defense Council Restoration Forces have been steadily advancing on French Cameroun government positions in both the Northern and the Southern Zones.

Two years ago, our senior correspondent Kingsley Betek met with one of the Manyu Odeshi leader, who was commanding a few Southern Cameroons self-defense soldiers in a small suburb of Mamfe.  At the time, he showed Betek his map saying we will get to Buea in less than 5 years.

And then this year, Kingsley Betek met him again in Egbekaw and he said the Ambazonian fighters are going to enter Buea any time before the end of October 2018. Betek reminded him of the presence of Cameroon government forces in all the major towns and villages in Southern Cameroons. That should not bother you, he said. “In the early days of the resistance, we were using the ghost town operations and the Francophone army was executing our women and children. Now we are engaging them to fight in a guerrilla war. The French Cameroun army was trained to kill innocent civilians and protect Biya. Now they are fighting their first real war.”

Indeed they are. The Odeshi commander turned out to be almost dead on target. With the support of the powerful Lebialem Dragons, the Ambazonian Self-Defense Council Restoration Forces are heading towards Buea. Biya regime forces are abandoning the rural areas and what has always been unthinkable in Yaounde is now happening: The forces of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia look to be winning the war.

The Americans already seem to have gotten the message and have appealed to President Biya to step down. The Americans are also playing up war crimes in Southern Cameroons and condemning Biya’s pointless attacks on Southern Cameroonian towns and villages.

And what about the French? Here is a European and world power which truly counted on Biya crushing Southern Cameroonians in less than a month.  No wonder French President Emmanuel Macron was instrumental in the arrest and extradition of the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Ayuk Julius from Abuja to Yaounde. Following Ambassador Peter Barlerin’s  Biya declaration, the French government is  so agitated and emotional. The French now know that the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is by extrapolation the United States in Southern Cameroons.

The repeated victories of the Ambazonian Self-Defense Council Restoration Forces mean that the Southern Cameroons resistance army is among the most battle-hardened in Sub Sahara Africa. Biya clearly never imagined that Southern Cameroonians might win, and that a more powerful Southern Cameroons army might also emerge from the rubble of Manyu, Lebialem, Belo and Muyenge.

The French still support Biya, but neither the US nor UK nor Germany nor Buhari of Nigeria has any interest in supporting Biya’s continued stay in power.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai