Neither country seems ready to de-escalate – for nowpublished at 05:13 British Summer Time
05:13 BST
Jonathan Head
BBC South East Asia Correspondent
According to
the Thai military, their troops fired after confronting a group of
heavily-armed Cambodian soldiers right on the disputed border. The Cambodians said
it was the Thais who fired their weapons first.
Now,
villagers in the area on the Thai side of the border have been ordered to evacuate.
This follows Thailand’s decision to expel the Cambodian ambassador and recall
its own from Phnom Penh.
For now,
neither country seems ready to de-escalate. But this conflict really took off
last month, after the wiley old Cambodian strongman Hun Sen deeply embarrassed
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra by leaking a phone conversation
between them about the disputed border.
Nobody knows
why he chose to do this. In fact, he has burned a close relationship between their
two families that goes back decades. Paetongtarn Shinawatra was then suspended
as prime minister by the constitutional court in Thailand and her unpopular government
cannot afford to show any weakness now in standing up to Cambodia.
The result has
been an escalating war of words between the two countries, the collapse of
border trade that’s worth billions of dollars, and the heightened risk of more
serious clashes between their two armies.