‘I don’t dare go back’: BBC visits Cambodian villages caught in Thai border conflict

Rolls of razor wire now run through the middle of the village Cambodia calls Chouk Chey, and on through fields of sugar cane.

Behind them, just over the border, tall black screens rise up from the ground, concealing the Thai soldiers who put them up.

This is the new, hard border between the two countries, which was once open and easily crossed by people from both sides.

Then, at 15:20 local time on 13 August, that changed.

“The Thai soldiers came and asked us to leave,” said Huis Malis. “Then they rolled out the razor wire. I asked if I could go back to get my cooking pots. They gave me just 20 minutes.”

Hers is one of 13 families who have been cut off from houses and fields on the other side of the wire where they say they have been living and working for decades.

Signs have now been erected by the Thai authorities warning Cambodians that they have been illegally encroaching on Thai territory.

In Chouk Chey, they argue, the border should run in a straight line between two stone boundary markers which were agreed and installed more than a century ago.

Thailand says it is merely securing its territory, given the current state of conflict with Cambodia. That is not the way Cambodia sees it.

Months of tension along disputed parts of their border erupted into open conflict in July, leaving around 40 people dead. Since then a fragile ceasefire has held, although a war of words, fuelled by nationalist sentiments on social media, has kept both sides on edge.

The BBC has been to border areas of Cambodia, meeting people caught in the middle and seeing some of the damage left by the five days of shelling and bombing.

In Chouk Chey, Provincial Governor Oum Reatrey bemoaned the economic impact on the community of Thailand’s actions. He estimates they are losing one million dollars a day in customs revenue from the border closure.

No-one has yet come up with a figure for how much the conflict between Cambodia and Thailand has cost, but it is certainly high.

Billions of dollars in annual trade has slowed to a trickle. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian workers have left Thailand, and Thai tourists have stopped going the other way. The brand new Chinese-built airport terminal at Siem Reap, gateway to the famed temple complex of Angkor Wat, is deserted.

We were also shown videos of frustrated residents pulling down the razor wire in front of the Thai soldiers on one occasion.

The governor said they were now being told to avoid confrontations, but anger spilled over in another confrontation with Thai troops on 4 September.

In northern Cambodia there are other visible costs of the war.

The temple of Preah Vihear, perched on a forested cliff-top right next to the border, is at the heart of the dispute between the two countries, and the historic narratives each likes to tell about itself.

Thai nationalists still find it hard to accept the 1962 ruling at the International Court of Justice, which recognised the temple as Cambodian territory because previous Thai governments had failed to challenge the French-drawn map which put it there. But the ICJ did not rule on other contested areas of the border, leaving the seeds of today’s conflict.

Access to the magnificent 1,000-year-old temple has always been much easier from the Thai side. Our four-wheel drive vehicle struggled up the steep road the Cambodians have built to climb the cliff.

Once inside the temple complex it was clear it had suffered in the artillery exchanges of late July: two of the ancient stone stairways have been shattered while other parts of the temple were chipped or broken by shell-fire, the walls pockmarked by shrapnel, with dozens of rain-filled craters on the ground.

The Cambodians say they have recorded more than 140 blast sites in and around the complex, which they say are from Thai shelling on 24 and 25 July.

Officials from the Cambodian Mine Action Centre also pointed out unexploded cluster munitions, a weapon banned in much of the world but which the Thai military has acknowledged using.

The Thai military denies firing at the temple, which is recognised by Unesco as a World Heritage Site.

It does accuse Cambodia of putting soldiers and weapons inside the temple during the fighting, although we saw no evidence of that, and it was hard to imagine getting any large guns up the steep road and into the temple complex.

Both countries are now using issues like this to try to drum up international sympathy.

Cambodia has complained to Unesco about the damage to Preah Vihear, and describes 18 of its soldiers captured just after the ceasefire came into effect as hostages.

Thailand has shown evidence that Cambodian forces are still laying landmines along the border, injuring many Thai soldiers, which it argues shows bad faith in its commitment to honour the ceasefire.

But all the Cambodian officials we met stressed their eagerness to end the conflict and restore relations with their larger neighbour. Behind this though was another anxiety, one that pervades Cambodian history: that of being a smaller country surrounded by more powerful neighbours.

Both sides are suffering from the border closure, but it is likely that Cambodia, much poorer than Thailand, is suffering more.

“You cannot make an ant go up against an elephant,” says Suos Yara, spokesman for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. “We have to accept that we are a small country, not big like an elephant. So how could the smaller country ignite this problem?”

But that is precisely what Thailand accuses the Cambodian government of doing. Independent research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute shows a pattern of military reinforcement along the border many months before full-scale fighting broke out in July, most of it by Cambodian forces.

Then in June former Prime Minister Hun Sen, still the most powerful figure in Cambodia, leaked a conversation he had with then-Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, in which she appeared to offer him concessions and criticised her own military.

The embarrassment this caused resulted in the Thai Constitutional Court suspending, and then sacking her.

Thailand describes this as the first time the leader of a member of Asean (the South East Asian bloc both countries belong to) has intervened to cause a political crisis in a neighbouring country.

It unquestionably threw flames on the conflict, making it much harder for any Thai government now to adopt a conciliatory position on the border.

It is hard to know why a cunning and experienced politician like Hun Sen chose to destroy his old friendship with the Shinawatra family and escalate the border tension. The Cambodian government seems unready to address questions about the leak.

“The problem of the leak is only a small issue, compared to what was happening in Bangkok, with competing factions trying to gain power in the administration,” argues Suos Yara, who blamed the Thai military for using the conflict to boost its own influence.

Instead, he reiterated Cambodia’s long-standing call for Thailand to accept the disputed French map and the intervention of the ICJ.

While politicians and officials continue to tussle, many Cambodians displaced by the fighting have still not gone home, despite grim conditions in the temporary camps they were moved to.

Five thousand families were living under rudimentary tarpaulins in the camp we visited, surrounded by mud and with minimal sanitation.

A communal kitchen ladled out potato soup for their dinner.

Over on the Thai side, where conditions in the shelter were a lot better, all the displaced went home within days of the ceasefire.

“The authorities tell us the situation is not good yet,” said one woman in the Cambodian camp. “As I live close to the border I don’t dare go back.”

It is true there is still unexploded ordnance left by the five days of shelling.

But the flood of disinformation over the conflict in Cambodia, which has warned, without evidence, of imminent Thai attacks and of the use of poison gas, has created a climate of fear which is also stopping people from returning to their homes.

A large sign had been put across the main track running through the camp reading “Cambodia needs peace – final”.

That was a sentiment we heard from everyone we spoke to in Cambodia.

But for that to happen leaders, both civilian and military, in both countries need to tone down the uncompromising nationalist rhetoric which now characterises their dispute.