Nearly a millennium ago, the patch of mountainous jungle in what is now northwestern Cambodia was a thriving center of the Khmer civilization, then one of the world’s most advanced and artistic empires. Today, Oddar Meanchey Province, on the forested border with Thailand, is home to some of the poorest people in a poor country.
It is also a battlefield, as soldiers from the two Southeast Asian nations skirmish over disputed land that cuts through ancient temple complexes carved by the Khmer Empire. Clashes in recent days have claimed lives of civilians and soldiers in both countries.
Jingoism is flaring. And at the center of the conflict, largely unnoticed by the prime ministers and generals directing the border war, are a people and a shared cultural heritage that predates modern notions of nation-states. Some residents of the area have relatives on the other side of the border.
On Friday, with rocket attacks intensifying and military drones flying overhead, Chhin Sochulsa, his wife and their four children fled their home near Ta Moan Thom temple (known in Thailand as Ta Muen Thom) for an emergency encampment sheltering thousands of displaced Cambodians.
Their home is now a piece of tarp hitched to their tractor, hammocks slung for sleep. One son is sick, and there is not enough food, he said. Already in debt, as many Cambodians are because of a microfinance crisis, Mr. Chhin Sochulsa worries about the farm animals he left behind in the war zone.
“I don’t know exactly why the clash is happening,” he said. “The situation is miserable.”
The dispute over the border has simmered for decades, and control over the area has shifted through the centuries. The Khmer Empire extended over parts of what are now the countries of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Its influence reached southern China, too.
After the decline of the Khmer Empire, parts of present-day northwestern Cambodia ended up under the sway of Siam, as Thailand was then known. But during the colonial period, the area was ceded to French-ruled Indochina. Later, the exact border was never demarcated to the full satisfaction of Cambodia and Thailand.
From the 1970s, the jungle became a stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, the radical communist force that oversaw the deaths of about one-fifth of Cambodia’s population through its agrarian totalitarianism. Land mines from those years still litter the countryside.
While questions over who should control the region’s Khmer-era temple complexes remain unanswered, outright armed conflict has been rare. The latest escalation follows a political crisis in Thailand in which the leader of a fragile coalition was seen as kowtowing to Hun Sen, the de facto leader of Cambodia, who has dominated the country’s political scene since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Mr. Hun Sen released a recording of a call he had with Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of Thailand, in which she spoke critically of her nation’s military and appeared to pay obeisance to the Cambodian leader. She has since been suspended by Thailand’s Constitutional Court.
“Hun Sen miscalculated,” said Sophal Ear, an expert on Cambodian politics at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. “His intention was likely domestic political gain, but by publicly humiliating the Thai prime minister, he unintentionally gave Thailand’s military leaders a rationale for escalation.”
Mr. Hun Sen has used nationalism before to cement his popularity. In 2003, a false rumor spread that a Thai actress had said that Angkor Wat, the Khmer architectural wonder emblazoned on the Cambodian flag, belonged to Thailand. State-sanctioned riots struck the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. The Thai Embassy was burned.
As verbal jousting between the two nations increased in June, Mr. Hun Sen’s party, which rules unopposed after kneecapping all political opposition in the country, began stoking nationalist sentiment. His office announced it had collected millions of dollars in donations for the war effort from businesses and tycoons close to the leader’s family.
Mr. Hun Sen’s oldest son, Hun Manet, is now prime minister of Cambodia. His wife oversaw a national blood drive to prepare for soldiers’ injuries.
At a hospital in Samraong, the capital of Oddar Meanchey Province, a Cambodian soldier was being treated for shell fragments lodged in his left leg and right arm after a firefight on Friday near another disputed ancient Khmer temple.
The soldier, who was not authorized to speak with reporters and did not disclose his name, said he hadn’t fired a single shot when Thai artillery hit his position. His only weapon, he said, was an AK-47, a workhorse assault rifle of Soviet design. He wore a T-shirt with “KH-Army” printed on it.
Khmer is the name of the main ethnic group of Cambodia, as well as the ancient civilization whose water management and carving prowess astonished explorers who came upon the ruins centuries later.
Mr. Hun Manet is scheduled to attend peace talks on Monday in Malaysia, bringing hopes of a resolution to the crisis. (On Saturday, President Trump said he was overseeing an effort to work out a cease-fire between the two countries, which are trying to ward off the imminent imposition of American tariffs, but fighting has continued.)
Mr. Hun Manet, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and of New York University, has continued his father’s embrace of China. Unlike the U.S. government, Beijing has declined to criticize the family’s evisceration of political rights in Cambodia, which has taken place alongside rapid improvement in individual Cambodians’ economic prospects.
In 2021, the Cambodian military announced that it was destroying or sidelining American-made weaponry in its inventory on Mr. Hun Sen’s orders, after the U.S. Commerce Department placed an arms embargo on Cambodia. This spring, Cambodia unveiled a naval base refurbished by China. American-built facilities at the base were razed.
Every day in Oddar Meanchey Province, more displaced Cambodians, at least 135,000 as of Monday morning, arrive at emergency shelters set up around 40 miles from the site of the military clashes, dusty from the dirt road ride on motorcycles or three-wheeled tractors heaped with their belongings.
Heading in the opposite direction are Cambodian military vehicles, some heavy with rocket launchers. While most of Cambodia’s weaponry is Chinese, Soviet-era arms remain in its arsenal. Thailand, by contrast, can rely on American-made F-16 fighter jets, which targeted Cambodian positions late last week.
On Sunday, Lt. Gen. Maly Socheata, a spokeswoman for Cambodia’s Defense Ministry, accused “Thai invaders” of having attacked civilian targets and of having caused “extensive destruction” to Preah Vihear temple, another Khmer masterpiece of intricately carved stone in the disputed border zone.
The International Court of Justice ruled that the ancient temple was in Cambodian territory, a decision rejected by Thailand. When Cambodia successfully applied in 2008 for the ruins to be listed as a World Heritage Site under United Nations protection, Thailand protested, setting off a border row between the two countries that lasted for years.
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories.
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