JOHANNESBURG—Cameroon, a key ally of the United States as it seeks to crush several global terrorist organizations that have declared jihad against it, could soon plunge into chaos on multiple fronts, endangering American interests in Africa, according to analysts.
In the former French colony’s far northern reaches, extremists with allegiance to ISIS are attacking state troops and villages, killing scores of people at a time, and abducting women and children.
Repeated failures by forces from the nation’s capital, Yaounde, to end the violence have sparked the rise of vigilante self-defense units, and ethnic clashes over water and land are also claiming casualties and forcing people to flee their homes near Cameroon’s border with Chad, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said….