Opinions of Wednesday, 8 October 2014

Auteur: Le Messager

Circulation of weapons of war: Trafficking or conspiracy against Cameroon?

Is Cameroon becoming a hub of arms trafficking or theatre of a serving network to support an internal rebellion in gestation? The discoveries of weapons caches have become recurrent.

In July 2014, weapons of war were captured at Moloundou, Cameroon border town with Congo. Still, October 5, weapons and hemp were found after a search by the forces of order at Ekounou, in the heart of Yaoundé. We remember that in 2013, five Cameroonian traffickers had been arrested in Chad while they were preparing to return to their country with weapons buried in bags of peanuts.

Last September, a local leader of Boko Haram was arrested in Kousseri where a large cache of weapons were discovered. Is Cameroon a hub of smuggling of weapons intended for Boko Haram or criminal activities or a rebellion army in gestation?

In a region where borders are porous and prone to all forms of smuggling, it is difficult to separate these two assumptions with regard to the recent news that reported an attempt to destabilise the country from the Central African Republic.

According to the international press citing Cameroonian security officials, "Cameroon, border country with Nigeria, has become in recent years a hub of international traffic weapons of war intended for the Nigerian armed Islamist group Boko Haram".

If "traffic happens between Chad and Nigeria, as there is no direct route between the two countries, traffickers pass through Cameroon. Certain weapons are stored in Cameroon, pending their use by the Nigerian Islamists or for other purposes.

It should be remembered that two police officers were detained in February 2014 in the cells of the mobile intervention group n ° 2 of Douala for a matter of import and escort of weapons of war. According to the newspaper the Equation, "it is not superfluous to understand the counts that overwhelm some senior officers of the army's passage in military courts.

And in the Police, those are complicities which are woven between importers of weapons and police commissioners who serve as their blankets to convey weapons to their destinations.

In April 2014, a Sri Lankan who was preparing to embark on Royal air Morocco (Ram) flight bound for Casablanca, was caught as a result of the fact that, in one of his suitcases, he had buried explosives. Military sources revealed, June 14, 2014, a large amount of weapons and ammunition were seized in the vicinity of Blangoua, not far from the village Larisky. It's 34 AK47 rifles, 61 loaders, a machine gun 12.7 Chinese manufacturing with 440 ammunition, 778 7.62 mm ammunition.

A few months ago, CRTV announced, repeatedly, that the defence forces seized some 5,400 firearms in the Extreme North of the country.