A War on Two Fronts: How France Fought Nationalists Before and After 1960

France’s admission of a war in Cameroon highlights a crucial detail: the war was fought on two fronts, both before and after the country’s official independence in 1960. This reveals a sustained French strategy to control Cameroon’s destiny by eliminating nationalist opposition.
The first front was the classic colonial war, where French forces directly suppressed the independence movement, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), and assassinated its leader Ruben Um Nyobè in 1958. This was a war of a colonizer against the colonized.
The second front, after 1960, was a post-colonial proxy war. France granted nominal independence to a handpicked successor, Ahmadou Ahidjo, and then provided military, intelligence, and political support for his new government to hunt down and destroy the remaining UPC fighters.
By acknowledging its role in the violence that “continued beyond 1960,” France admits to this neo-colonial strategy. It confesses not only to the sins of colonialism but also to the sin of strangling a truly independent Cameroon in its cradle, ensuring a pro-French regime remained in power at any cost.