Cameroon Creates, Trains Militias Against New Terrorism Ideology

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.