As both the Thai Army Chief and the ‘popular’ Commander of the Second Army Region, Lt Gen Boonsin Padklang, announced yesterday that Thailand is making preparations for military retaliation against Cambodia for the injuries a ‘Cambodian’ landmine caused to three patrolling Thai soldiers along the border earlier this week, both nations inch closer towards a military confrontation.
In fact, since the landmine explosion incident on 16 July, with one officer losing his left lower leg, more Thai netizens are calling for the Thai military to launch a military offensive against Cambodia in order to punish the neighbouring state.
To make the situation more precarious, Boonsin stated yesterday that “there is no need to wait for government orders on tactical matters.” This suggests that either the civilian government of PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra is no longer in charge of the matter, or she, and acting PM Phumtham Wechayachai, have decided to let the army decide on the matter, which could affect the bilateral relations between the two nations for another decade, if not longer.
And the Pheu Thai government has been conspicuously silent on the possible military strike against Cambodia, hours after Boonsin said there’s no need to wait for the government’s orders.
Formal G2G, or government-to-government, relations aside (in which the two governments briefly marked what soon became a disastrous 75 years of formal diplomatic relations), the relations between some Thais and Cambodians have been at their lowest point in decades – partly due to the fact that wide access to social media enables them to post hate speech and derogatory remarks against one another’s nation, 24/7.
It’s unsurprising but depressing that some Cambodian netizens posted congratulatory messages upon learning about the news of the landmine explosion incident. (The Cambodian side insists it either didn’t belong to them or they were old landmines, and that it’s proof that Thai soldiers ventured into Cambodian territory, while the Thai army insists 80 per cent of the landmines in the Chong Bok area were newly planted and placed on the Thai side of the border.) Likewise, when Cambodian Deputy Defence Minister Gen Sok Peap died after cancer treatment in Thailand, hours after the landmine explosion, ultranationalist Thai netizens didn’t fail to express schadenfreude on social media.
It’s fair to say that nearly two months after the border conflicts flared up, where one Cambodian soldier was killed in the border fire exchanges, we have lost a generation of Thais and Cambodians to mutual hatred and animosity. More Thais are now literally impatient and want to see a punitive military strike launched against Cambodia. One must ask ‘to what end’ and ‘at what price’, however. More deaths and injuries on both sides will not solve anything because, in the end, both nations will have to meet and end the military conflict anyhow. War will only satisfies the base feeling in us.
It’s fair to say that many Thais and Cambodians can no longer sleep peacefully at night because we have a next-door neighbour who curses us, wishes us ill, and takes delight in seeing us fail and suffer.
Sensible Thais and Cambodians have failed to convince their respective societies to de-escalate the situation, to limit the border disagreement and confine it to appropriate channels. Instead, it has now been blown out of proportion and even some Thai and Cambodian media are playing ultranationalist propagandist roles, spreading hate, building walls instead of building bridges for peaceful and neighbourly co-existence.
Many Thais and Cambodians do not recognise that the current conflict is mutually counter-productive, destructive even, as they are now possessed by ultranationalist rhetoric. That’s a tragedy.
