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Cameroon - Military Personnel - Training

After several years of development, training requirements were eventually formalized in an April 1967 government decree. Although there was still a shortage of qualified Cameroonian instructors at that time, the decree provided for an eventual expansion of the training program. As developed during the late 1960s, the usual ground-training program for new recruits lasted six months. Eight weeks were devoted to training the individual soldier, and sixteen weeks to small-unit training. Some trainees were also sent to various small army or National Gendarmerie posts for on-the-job experience. After 1967 four-month courses in advanced individual instruction and in small-unit training were usually given at the Koutaba training center in Western Province. By 1970 many new recruits were being given some part of their individual training at a training center set up at Ngaoundere, in Northern Province.

Members of the parachute company also received some training at Koutaba and could be sent to the French base at Fort-Lamy, Chad, or to bases in France. Enlisted personnel assigned to communications or electronics specialties attended technical courses at the military training center near Yaounde, where they gained realistic experience by giving communications support to units in training for engineering and transportation duties. Combat and support training programs were given a broader scope after 1970. An early 1971 maneuver near Kribi in the coastal area of South Central Province involved several hundred infantrymen, some student officers, and two platoons of gendarmes.

A larger joint military and civilian defense maneuver, Project Barracuda, was held January 5-12, 1972, in difficult terrain — the humid, heavily forested region along the southern border near Gabon and the People's Republic of the Congo (formerly, Congo Brazzaville). The action involved ground, naval, and air units; gendarmerie, police, and other paramilitary forces; local authorities; and the local civilian population. In the classic pattern for such exercises, friendly forces opposed military attacks and subversion by other forces that acted as the enemy. As the first large-scale exercise of this kind scheduled by the armed forces, it served as a test of capabilities in a remote and difficult area and provided an opportunity to observe and encourage military-civilian cooperation. The extensive maneuver probably had other purposes. In closing ceremonies President Ahidjo stated that it had helped to assure Cameroonians — especially those living in areas remote from the capital — that their government would defend them if they were attacked.

The Cameroonian Joint Military School (Ecole Militaire Interarmes Camerounaises—EMIAC), the interforce academy for officers at Yaounde, was the educational center for future officers of the armed forces and the National Gendarmerie. It also provided refresher courses in military subjects for officers already in the various services. School policies were developed by a council of senior military and gendarmerie officers, assisted by a small but influential group of French advisers and instructors. President Ahidjo took a personal interest in the development of the curriculum.

The school was established in 1960, but it had not had annual graduating classes; new officers have been trained only as needed. Sixty graduates were assigned to duty in 1961 after only one year of training. In 1963 forty more officers were commissioned after completing two years of schoolwork. This apparently satisfied the need for officers in the force levels planned for the 1960s, and no more officers were graduated until 1970, when thirty more completed an educational program that had been expanded to three years.

The class of 1971 consisted of twenty-eight noncommissioned officers who had considerable military experience. Apparently because of this extensive background they were awarded commissioned status after one year of preparation at EMIAC. A class of fifty-nine officer candidates from various backgrounds graduated in 1972. Refresher training courses were established in 1970 in order to update the skills of selected military and gendarmerie officers. Such courses were considered especially useful to officers who had completed extensive assignments outside the usual military environment, such as tours of duty with the military courts. Small classes, reportedly of fifteen or twenty officers, spent about four months in this special program before returning to their usual military duties.

Usually, both commissioned and noncommissioned officers who were to receive advanced or highly specialized training were sent to various military schools in France. In 1969 the minister of state for the armed forces indicated that Cameroonian military personnel were receiving training in France, Greece, and the Soviet Union. The actual number of trainees sent overseas was small, and most were in French military training centers. A limited number of junior officers had completed specialized courses for officers in France. In 1972 four Cameroonian officers were in advanced courses at the Montpellier training center in France — two in advanced infantry courses and two in administration. Two other officers were in engineering training at Angers. Some communications officers and noncommissioned officers and a few other specialists were also trained in France. A few helicopter crewmen had been trained in the Soviet Union, but the total number of Cameroonian armed forces personnel who had received military training in any of the communist countries was very small.