Cambodian-Thai Border Clashes Hurt Both Nations' Poor

A Cambodian monk looks out from the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on Tuesday. Six Cambodian monks, living in a pagoda that was attacked by Thailand over the weekend, are taking shelter inside the ancient temple near the military for protection. (Paula Bronstein, Getty Images)

Feb 10, 2011
AOL News

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- To call the fighting over the Preah Vihear temple on the Cambodian-Thai border a war is misleading. The fact remains, however, that it is a spasm of violence that no one really needs except for nationalist politicians who find it easier to sound the trumpets of war than tackle their own stubborn domestic problems.

On one side is Cambodia, one of the world's poorest countries, where corruption is rife, poverty and disease are rampant, and a facade of democracy has been erected by a strongman prime minister. On the other side is Thailand, one of Southeast Asia's largest economies, a stalwart U.S. ally that has been roiled in recent years by political turmoil and growing inequality between rich and poor.

In the middle is a 1,000-year-old stone Hindu and Buddhist temple perched on a remote, towering cliff, offering majestic views and intense symbolism on both sides of the border.

Thousands of nearby Thai and Cambodian residents, many of whom survive by hawking goods and services to tourists, have already taken refuge in schools and temples amid the shelling, which erupted last week. The Associated Press reports that at least eight people have been killed and about 15,000 displaced by the fighting.

Several dozen soldiers and civilians have been wounded, and shrapnel has reportedly scarred some of the temple's ancient walls.

"This is a real war. It is not a clash," Cambodia's longtime ruler, Hun Sen, was quoted as saying in a speech Wednesday.

A tense cease-fire held for a third day today, as foreign diplomats pressured both sides for restraint. Cambodia has demanded the United Nations intervene; Thailand says the issue should be settled by the two countries themselves.

Built by a succession of rulers during the Khmer empire in the first half of the 11th century, the temple -- known as Khao Phra Viharn in Thai -- has seen skirmishing, rhetorical and physical, between the two sides for years, dating back to 1962 when the World Court ruled that it belonged to Cambodia. The area saw thousands of refugees forcibly pushed out of Thailand in 1979 as the murderous Khmer Rouge regime fell to invading Vietnamese forces. In 1998, the temple complex saw the last stand by Khmer Rouge fighters before they surrendered to the Cambodian government.

In 2008, after the United Nations designated the temple complex a World Heritage Site, the question of who controlled about two square miles of land surrounding the temple -- and even the temple itself -- became a new rallying cry for Thai nationalists. Since then, officials in both Bangkok and Phnom Penh have regularly traded insults, claims and counterclaims about Preah Vihear, with the occasional exchange of gunfire. Ominously, this week's fighting appears to be the first time mortars and artillery have been used.

This latest outbreak of violence appears to have been sparked by Thai outrage over a Cambodian court ruling that convicted two Thai activists of espionage for crossing the border in December. But the underlying causes are complicated.

Hun Sen has been building up his armed forces in recent years; last year the country imported dozens of Soviet-designed tanks and armored personnel carriers from Eastern Europe and China, which has poured investment into Cambodia and presented it with hundreds of military vehicles and other equipment in June. But Hun Sen has an iron grip on his country's political system, with the beleaguered opposition all but squeezed out of government by the ruling Cambodian People's Party.

Domestic politics in Thailand may also be a driving force in the dispute. The country's political scene has been unsettled for years amid struggles between the "Red Shirts" -- the mainly rural poor supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra -- and the "Yellow Shirts" -- the royalists, business elite and others who helped drive Thaksin from power in 2006.

The current prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, is under increasing pressure from critics, particularly from ultranationalists who say he hasn't been assertive enough with the border regions. Some observers have even speculated that the fighting has been sparked by Thai military officers who are unhappy with Abhisit and who may be plotting to remove him. Abhisit also faces a new election this year.

Sponsored Links "That (the border issue) is bubbling up again now has more to do with Thailand's internal politics than any nation-to-nation dispute per se," Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a researcher at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, wrote in a commentary published today in The Wall Street Journal Asian edition.

Politics aside, what the violence means in the short-term is that the meager livelihood of thousands of poor, often landless families has been reduced still further to the shelter of humanitarian aid, government handouts and a destitute existence.

"There is no good war, and there is no bad peace," the Nation, an English-language Thai newspaper, said in an editorial earlier this week. "Everyone involved must take a long hard look at the innocent faces at the border and themselves and decide what it is that they want."