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'Silent Crisis' in Boko Haram-Hit Cameroon
[An Nahar] Unabated attacks by Boko Haram... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... in Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... have sparked soaring food insecurity and driven 190,000 people from their homes, creating fertile ground for recruitment by the jihadists, the U.N. warned. Nigeria-based Boko Haram fighters have in recent months carried out fewer spectacular attacks and suicide kabooms in neighboring Cameroon. But the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the country Najat Rochdi said the jihadists were attacking villages and burning homes and fields across northern Cameroon on a daily basis. "The impact of the violence by Boko Haram is not over, and we have to remain vigilant," she told AFP this week. While the current attacks are less eye-catching, they have a more devastating effect, Rochdi said. She said that in the last six months alone, the number of Cameroonians displaced within their own country had jumped from 60,000 to 190,000. In addition, Cameroon is hosting 60,000 refugees from Nigeria and another 312,000 from the Central African Republic, amounting to more than 500,000 displaced people in all. The number at risk of going hungry, she said, has meanwhile soared from 900,000 to 2.4 million since January, as Boko Haram fighters have continued to attack fields and food supply routes. Posted by: Fred 2016-06-11 |
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