[Marxism] Cambodian and Thai troops face off at Temple on often-tense border

[Anon Anon]

Well, I would take a pox on all their houses position, but for the fact that this is being driven by crypto-fascist and royalist elements in Thailand.  The present Thai government is under attack by the forces which conducted the last coup and are using this spurious issue of borders of the Khao Phra Vihar (spelling from memory) temple complex as a means to bring down the democratically elected government.  (That the present Thai government is nothing but a facade for the country's chief crony capitalist is not in question, but when the choice is a crony capitalist who is semi-democratic or the military/royalists who are aren't...)

Khao Phra Vihar is actually a truly fascinating and wonderful complex.  Historically as significant as Angkor Wat but much smaller, the only way to access the complex is from Thailand, up the side of a mountain.

At the time I visited about 8 years you could still see evidence (in more ways than one) of the Khmer Rouge who had occupied the strategically important location.  Being on top of a mountain with the foothills of Cambodia below, the Khmer Rouge spent a good part of the 1980s firing off artillery into the fields below.  There were still working artillery pieces when I visited.  The KR also mined the entire complex....evidence of which was clear from the UN helicopter which landed on a mine and exploded during the peace negotiations with the Khmer Rouge (from memory as late as 1994 in this area actually)....teh rusting hulk of which was still there six years later...but the enduring Khmer Rouge presence was amongst all the "guards" at the complex...part of the deal was that the local Khmer Rouge were given control of the complex (collecting the US$20 entrance fee for foreigners like me) and jobs were provided to all the soldiers.

So the real irony of all this is that the soldiers who are being mobilised now may well have been on the same side just a few years ago (ie the Khmer Rouge being supported by the Thais)....


Fred Feldman wrote:
The Thai-Cambodian border area was a hot spot from 1979 till 1991, when
Thaiand ran a string of refugee camps along the border that were basically
handed over to the forces of the ousted Pol Pot regime, which they were
supporting against the Vietnamese and Cambodian forces who had ousted Pol
Pot in 1979.-

An international agreement in 1991 led to the withdrawal of most foreign
troops and to a UN peacekeeping presence, which subsequently ended.

The government, now headed by Hun Sen, which Vietnam had supported and
Thailand had sought to oust remains in power in Cambodia. Despite occasional strains with Washington, the government is very much capitalist and neoliberal in orientation. I see no sign of US involvement in what seems to me to be a threat of aggression against Cambodia.

But by instinct and force of habit, I tilt toward Cambodia on this one.
Fred Feldman