Decentring foreign peace mediation in the case of Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis

Abstract The article decentres foreign peace mediation endeavours around the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon by foregrounding the domestic political environment into which such a mediation initiative is thrust. Recognizing mediation as but one site of political contestation, the article moves beyond the reductionist binary of either making or not making peace in the meanings of peace processes. Drawing on over 60 interviews, including those with Cameroonian ruling party members, opposition politicians, and individuals involved in the armed separatist movement and civil society activists, the article asks what the Swiss facilitation attempt between 2019 and 2022 meant for these different domestic actors and what this in turn meant for the peace process. It pays particular attention to how the mediation attempt interacted with the fragmentation of the Cameroonian state, a frequent feature of highly personalized authoritarian regimes, and how this manifested in the creation of competing processes under the banner of ‘peace’. The case has important implications for the scholarship on state behaviour vis-à-vis mediation, particularly in authoritarian settings, as well as debates around spoilers and devious objectives in the peace mediation literature.