BANGKOK – Less than two months after President Donald Trump convinced US-backed Thailand and China-assisted Cambodia to sign a peace agreement stopping their deadly border war, the two Buddhist-majority neighbors have exchanged hostile rocket and gunfire for the first time.
“If President Trump can help persuade Cambodia to comply with these [peace agreement] terms, that would be welcome, it would ensure Thailand faces no further encroachments,” Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on October 8.
On October 6, the border feud spread from the battlefield to the economy when Cambodia’s de facto leader, Senate President Hun Sen, told his countrymen to boycott Thailand’s goods and currency, use Cambodian currency or US dollars, or else “you may face heavy losses.”
Hun Sen ended his X post saying: “I would like to attach a video in which a Thai national displayed my photo to shoot at, in order to win prizes.”
The video showed a uniformed man shooting at a carnival contest’s targets, all of which displayed Hun Sen’s face, life-sized, already shot in the forehead by other players. He urged Cambodians not to target Thai leaders in such a way.
“I urge all Cambodian compatriots not to engage in such disgraceful acts, which are inhumane and even worse than those of animals,” Hun Sen said.
Militarily superior Thailand still holds 18 Cambodians from their five-day July border war, which killed more than 40 soldiers and villagers on both sides. Several Thai soldiers lost legs from landmines hidden on jungle paths.
The Thailand Mine Action Center said it uncovered 2,470 unexploded ordnance, including artillery shells, plus anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines buried or abandoned along the border after clashes escalated in July.
The 500-mile-long border remains shut, resulting in complaints by Japan and other investors over millions of dollars in lost revenue.
During the past few weeks, angry Cambodians confronted Thai troops at scattered border sites, claiming ownership of disputed land they were living on. “This is not about forced expulsions,” Anutin said on October 3.
“We will use lawful measures while seeking to avoid unnecessary hardship.”
Meanwhile, on October 3, China and Thailand both denied a September 29 New York Times report that claimed China supplied Cambodia with weapons used during the July border war.
The New York Times report quoted “Thai military intelligence reports” that said China sent Cambodia rockets for Soviet-era BM-21 ground-to-ground launchers, plus howitzer artillery shells and artillery for Soviet-era anti-aircraft machine guns.
The Chinese Embassy in Bangkok and Thailand’s Defense Minister General Nattapol Nakpanit both said the Chinese weapons were known to have been delivered before the clashes, as part of a scheduled annual Chinese military exercise with Cambodia last May.
“China did not send any military equipment to Cambodia for use in the Thai-Cambodian border clashes,” the Chinese Embassy’s spokesman said, according to Khaosod English news.
“The military equipment from China that Cambodia currently possesses all comes from pre-existing China-Cambodia cooperation projects,” it said.
Bangkok, which has good relations with both Washington and Beijing, trusted China not to weaponize Cambodia against Thailand, General Nattaphol said.
China did deliver weapons to Cambodia for the military exercise and “at that time, there was no conflict between Thailand and Cambodia,” Nattaphon said. “But if there are tensions like we see now, I’m confident China would handle the matter carefully.”
Cambodian and Thai troops briefly exchanged gunfire on September 27, the first time since inking their August 7 peace deal.
Cambodia blamed Thailand for initiating the hostilities. Thailand, a US treaty ally in Southeast Asia, said its forces only retaliated.
“Thai military forces launched a pre-emptive attack, firing mortars and multiple small arms at a Cambodian army base…located within Cambodian sovereign territory,” Cambodia’s Agence Kampuchea Press reported.
Bangkok claimed Cambodians shot machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at hilltop positions on Thai territory around noon in the Chong Bok border area in northeast Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani province.
Thailand insisted that Cambodia scripted the clash to blame Bangkok on the international stage.
“It was not a natural border skirmish but a planned provocation intended to produce footage and reports accusing Thailand of breaking the truce,” said Royal Thai Army spokesman Major General Winthai Suvaree on September 28.
“Currently, the Suranaree Task Force is prepared and has ordered retaliatory fire as needed,” Winthai posted on X.
Border “checkpoints will stay closed until Cambodia poses no threat to Thailand,” Anutin said on September 26.
More than 1,400 Thai riot police reinforced a border site in Sa Kaeo province on September 17, after local police shot rubber bullets and tear gas at about 200 Cambodians removing barbed wire coils in the forest.
“Ultimately, it became necessary to deploy riot police to suppress the incident according to international principles, using tear gas and rubber bullets to prevent the situation from escalating into civil disorder,” Winthai said.
“Some personnel sustained injuries from being struck by thrown wooden sticks, stones, and slingshot projectiles.”
Bangkok said it generously allowed Cambodian refugees to squat on the Thai side of the relatively unpopulated frontier during Cambodian dictator Pol Pot’s 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge “killing fields” regime.
“The villages referred to by my Cambodian colleague are in Thai territory, full stop,” Thailand’s Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told the United Nations General Assembly on September 29.
“In fact, they exist because Thailand made the humanitarian decision to open up our borders in the late 1970s for hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fleeing the civil war.
“As a young diplomat, I witnessed that scene myself. We know who are the real victims, they are Thai soldiers who have lost their legs to landmines, children whose schools were shelled, and innocent civilians who were shopping that day at the grocery store that came under attack from Cambodian rocket fire,” Sihasak said.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, meanwhile, wrote in a communique to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that Thailand’s “barbed wire and barricades” were “potentially affecting hundreds of households, comprised of about a thousand inhabitants.”
Residents on both sides evacuated several border zones. Terrified villagers, with no cash to flee, built bunkers with chopped-down trees, rubber tires, sandbags and bricks next to their homes.
Daily harassment by drones flown along the frontier has increased tensions.
Bangkok and Phnom Penh, meanwhile, accuse each other of whipping up xenophobic hysteria among their populations, and lying about confrontations along the troubled, monsoon-muddied, mountainous frontier.
Phnom Penh’s reluctance to allow or provide detailed reporting about the war’s casualties is perceived by some as an attempt by Hun Manet to maintain public support during the conflict.
Thailand’s politically-minded military, meanwhile, has consolidated its control over decision-making on the frontier, including when and where to open border crossings.
Phnom Penh said it will open its border gates five hours after Thailand does.
Cambodia rejected wealthier, more populous Thailand’s suggestion that both countries open their gates simultaneously. Thailand must move first, because it unilaterally shut the frontier when the conflict started in July, Hun Sen argued.
“Cambodia will not lower itself to beg Thailand to reopen the border. Even if Thailand decides to keep it closed for another 100 years, Cambodia will not perish,” Hun Sen said on September 23.
The border conflict is not expected to end anytime soon because it is rooted in 100-year-old French colonial maps, which have been argued over for decades.
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia since 1978, and winner of Columbia University’s Foreign Correspondents’ Award. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books, “Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. — Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York” and “Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers & Freaks” are available here.
