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Cameroon's Mbororos Abandoning Cattle Ranches

Moki Edwin Kindzeka

   BAMENDA, CAMEROON - More than a thousand Mbororos, indigenous people in
   Cameroon, have fled their cattle ranches following repeated attacks and
   seizure of their herds by separatist forces in the central African
   nation. The Mbororos say they are being targeted because they refuse to
   join or assist the fighters.

   Forty-five-year-old Mbororo rancher Laye Shaidou visited the Mbororo
   community in the town of Bamenda on Tuesday to ask for help.

   He said separatist fighters seized more than 160 of his cows and 50
   from his brother after they refused to pay $1,000 to help the fighters
   in their war to create an English-speaking state called Ambazonia.

   "We refused to give the money," Shaidou said of himself and his
   brother. "Those Amba guys [separatist fighters] collected the cattle
   and kept it up there at one hill. They have a camp there."

   Shaidou said he escaped a separatist camp with the help of the
   military, which said it recovered some of the cows and was working to
   return them to their rightful owners.

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