War?

10-17-08

If you have been able to follow the news out of South-east Asia over the last few months, you will probably have heard that Cambodia and Thailand are in the midst of a border dispute at the moment. Over the last few days this dispute has grown to include shooting, and Thailand has urged all its citizens to leave Cambodia. While I'm not an expert on the dispute, and have been rather cut off from the world at large, I will do my best to explain.

The dispute is over an ancient temple complex on the border, named Preh Veher. The temple dates back to the Angkorian period of Cambodian history, the same period that saw the construction of the great temples at Angkor Wat. When the French, bless their hearts, drew out the border between Cambodia and Thailand, they arbitrarily set the border along a cliff face near the temple, but never actually determined which country the temple complex should belong to.

Cambodia took the case to the International Court of Justice, arguing that since it was the ancient Khmer empire that built the temple, it should be awarded to Cambodia. The ICJ agreed and decreed that the temple should belong to Cambodian. However, it said nothing about the land around the temple, leaving the sort of legal ambiguity that people wind up dying over. As some have, in this case.

There have always been some sensitivity about these issues between Cambodia and Thailand. And nationalism, a relatively new force in this part of the world, tends to be taken to extremes when the past is invoked. For example, a few years ago Cambodian media mistakenly reported that a Thai pop star made a statement to the effect that Angkor Wat was Thai. A Cambodian mob responded by burning down the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh. So emotions run a bit high at times.

Back in July, for whatever reason, Thailand decided to send troops into the disputed zone. They seized the temple complex and established a base there. The Cambodian military surrounded the temple and the standoff was on. Over the last few months, there have been instances where shooting almost began for one reason or another. The situation had seemed to calm down a bit when ASEAN stepped in to try and bring both sides to the negotiation table. However, over the last few weeks there were a few more incidents, culminating in the fire-fight on the night of the 15th.

Nobody knows what really happened that evening, nor what side started shooting. My guess is that some idiot on one side or the other didn't have his weapon properly safetied and tripped over a rock. That's usually how these things get kicked off in a situation like this. After about an hour of exchanging gun- and rocket fire, five Thai soldiers were wounded and two Cambodian soldiers were dead.

The Cambodians are pissed off about this. Even down here, about as far away from the Thai border as you can get, the police are suddenly more visible, and people are all wondering if war is coming. Some of the rhetoric out of Phnom Penh is a bit concerning too, with the Prime Minister stating that every single Cambodian citizen would fight Thailand if it came to war. The Thai, for their part, say that they will not back down or leave “their” territory. Of course, the Thai Prime Minister is currently facing massive popular demonstrations against his government and the possibility of being forced from office. So who knows how that will affect this?

I don't believe that either side actually wants a war, but I also believe that neither side wants to be the first one to back down. Fortunately, it seems that cooler heads have prevailed now that the shooting has stopped. The two on-site military commanders have agreed to conduct joint patrols of the area, in an attempt to keep anything like this from happening again. With luck, ASEAN or the UN will be able to get negotiations on resolving this thing going.

If it does come down to a shooting war, we will all probably have to leave. I really don't want that. Ironically enough, every single evacuation plan that the Peace Corps has, be it for political unrest or natural disasters, call for us to consolidate in Phnom Penh and then evacuate the country over land to Thailand. If Thailand and Cambodia are shooting at each other, that would probably not be the best way to go. So if we do have to evacuate, I'll probably just stay here and hop on the bus when they pass by on their way to Vietnam.

I highly doubt it will come to that, though. And I'm certainly not worried about my safety, being on the other side of the country from this whole thing. But it certainly has made these last few days a very interesting time to be in this region of the world.