Cameroon Creates, Trains Militias Against New Terrorism Ideology
Voice of America
MORA - Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has sent his top military officials and a governor to reactivate old militias and create new ones to combat terrorism on the central African state’s northern border with Nigeria. The militias are, for the first time, to tell people about what the government says is a new strategy by the Islamic State in West Africa Province, or ISWAP, to attract supporters away from rival Boko Haram through gifts of food and money, and attacking only military positions, unlike Boko Haram, which attacked schools and other civilian targets.
About 30 people, most of them youths, sing in Mora that Boko Haram is a capricious terrorist group. The singers call for caution in all villages on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria, where, they say, jihadist groups have relaunched activity. Abdoul Oumar is coordinator of nine militia groups fighting Boko Haram terrorism in Mora, a town on the border with Nigeria's Borno state. Nigeria says Borno is an epicenter of the jihadist group. Oumar saif the number of jihadists infiltrating villages in Mora within the past three months is increasing.A TV screen shows a file image of North Korea's rocket launch during a news program at a bus terminal in Seoul, South Korea, May 27, 2024. FILE - Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi speaks to reporters in Colombo, July 29, 2023. FILE - A TV screen shows a report of North Korea's spy satellite into orbit with its third launch attempt this year with an image of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023.
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.