Civil-Military Cooperation in the Fight against Terrorism; Case of Vigilante Groups in the Far North Region of Cameroon

This paper examines the impacts of the collaboration and cooperation between the Cameroonian defense forces and the civilian population organized into Auto-Defense groups in the fight against the Boko Haram terrorist group. Since 2013, the Far North region of Cameroon has suffered attacks from the Boko haram terrorist group it's based in neighboring northern Nigeria territory. Given the geographical and cultural proximity between Far North Cameroon and Northern Nigeria, Boko haram has frequently carried out attacks in some remote communities, kidnapping for ransom, killing villagers, rustling cattle, destroying farms with crops, and burning down villages. In response, the government of Cameroon supported by a multi-regional force under the supervision of the African Union waged an offensive against Boko haram, thus reducing its capacity of the nuisance. However, if the capacity of the nuisance of Boko haram has significantly reduced in the Far North region in the past years, it is thanks to the collaboration between the local population and the defense forces. This paper adopts the historical approach anchored on a critical analysis of secondary and primary sources in the form of previous publications and field investigation to explore the nature and strategy of collaboration between the local population organized in Auto-defense groups and the government in the fight against Boko haram. It examines the achievements and weakness of the Auto-defense groups in combatting radicalism in the Far North region of Cameroon.