Cameroon's fight against Boko Haram is paying off

President Paul Biya visibly inflamed by the Nigerian terrorist incursions ordered aerial bombardments on the attackers sources said numbered about 1000 men. Eyewitness accounts report that Boko Haram paid a heavy price following the air force action.
What nobody understands is how Nigeria with its immense resources is unable to annihilate Boko Haram and them seizing territories up Northern Nigeria virtually unchallenged.

Sources from the ministry of defense say Cameroonian soldiers have killed 1 000 Boko Haram militants in the past six months. The minister of Communication Issa Tchiroma Bakary, in a press release last month, confirming the actions put in place by the government to combat the terrorists and the results said “we have no choice than to win the war, which we shall prevail”.

On the 11th of October 2014, a military diplomacy of the Cameroonian forces based in the Far North led to the liberation of 10 Chinese expatriates plus the wife of the Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali and some civilians who has been under captivity for more than 2 months. The hostages were received at the presidency by the president of the republic, Paul Biya. He sounded a heavy warning to the Islamic terror group in his welcome address to the hostages and thanked the military for a job well done.

The war is fought on several fronts; the military have today close to 45 000 soldiers at the different units in the Far North region of Cameroon; there have been more than 20 press outings and releases by the President, the minister of Communications and some top military and government officials on the Boko Haram issue in the past 6 months.

However, the most interesting front of the war is the judicial front. Cameroon’s parliament applauded on the 2nd of December, 2014 to a law against terrorism proposed to them by the president of the republic. "The draft law provides the ultimate penalty, the death penalty, for anyone who personally, in complicity or under coercion commits a terrorist act," Cameroons House of Parliament Speaker Cavaye Yeguie Djibril said.

But all is not a bed of roses for Cameroon in the fight. Cameroon officials feel sorry for the loss of 34 soldiers (Official number) since the launch of the war, two of them who lost their lives in the recent attack, a sergeant and a lieutenant. The country is the most affected in the crisis and now hosts 40 000 Nigerian refugees who escaped abduction and remorseless killings from the Northern region of Nigeria where there is a great influence of the Salafists leading terrorist group in charge of all the operations. “Hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in the hands of these Islamic extremists this year” said a chief in Far North region of Cameroon.

The perimeter between Nigeria and Cameroon border, some 900 kilometers is almost a no trade zone and there have been property lost worth thousands of US dollars in the area (Houses, farms and crops, administrative buildings, hospitals and cars).