In recent months, Thais living near the border with Cambodia have been reminded of a man-made danger that many thought had long receded.
Both sides of the boundary — large parts of which are undefined — were once dotted with land mines, a legacy of the Cambodian civil war. Both countries ran demining operations for decades.
But this year, 18 Thai soldiers have been injured by mines, with seven losing a limb, according to the Thai military. One such episode occurred a month ago in a contested area in Sisaket province, prompting Thailand to break off peace talks with Cambodia that were backed by President Trump.
Now the fighting between the neighbors has resumed, leaving at least 12 dead and displacing hundreds of thousands this week. Mr. Trump has said that he would intervene again.
On Wednesday, Thailand’s military, which is more modern than Cambodia’s, said it had again conducted airstrikes across the border. The fighting has expanded to seven Thai border provinces.
Each side accuses the other of firing the first shot and the issue of the mines remains central to the conflict. As signatories of the Ottawa Treaty, which bans anti-personnel land mines, both Thailand and Cambodia have said they have destroyed their stockpiles of these weapons and cleared most ordnance from the ground.
“Now, the question is, where did they come from, and who put them there?” said Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan of Landmine Monitor, a group that is part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Cambodia’s northwest border with Thailand came to be known as the K5 mine belt during the 1980s. It was laid by the Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh to prevent the ousted Khmer Rouge from re-infiltrating Cambodia. The mines were originally supplied by the Soviet Union to Vietnam.
Mr. Moser-Puangsuwan said he traveled to two sites where Thai soldiers were injured and examined 16 mines that the Thai military said it had found near these sites. All of them, he said, were made in the Soviet Union.
Thailand says the mines were freshly planted by Cambodia, a claim Phnom Penh has rejected repeatedly, saying Thai troops stepped on ordnance that came from “legacy minefields.”
Last Friday in Geneva, Thailand’s foreign minister accused Cambodia of violating the treaty. He shared video footage there that he said showed Cambodian personnel training to plant these land mines.
And he shared a report from an observer team from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that concluded that the mines were newly planted.
Thailand has asked the United Nations to conduct an inquiry. In an interview, the Thai foreign minister, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, said his call for an independent investigation also addressed what he said was Cambodia’s disinformation campaign.
“They’ve always been evasive, having a kind of false narrative that Thailand is an aggressor and they are the victims,” Mr. Sihasak said. “But what about the Thai soldiers? Aren’t they the victims too because of the land mines?”
In July, Thailand said one of its soldiers lost a leg after stepping on one, prompting it to order F-16 jets to strike targets in Cambodia. That fighting raged for five days, killing at least 40 people. The two sides reached a cease-fire but tensions continued to simmer, spilling over this week.
Ly Thuch is the first vice president of the Cambodia Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, a governmental agency that oversees demining activities. He said the new mines that Thailand claims to have discovered were all in Thai territory, to which Cambodian forces do not have access.
He suggested that it was Thailand that placed those mines. But when asked why Thailand would injure its own soldiers with land mines, he pointed to the July conflict when Thailand accused Cambodia of wounding soldiers with a land mine.That triggered a military confrontation the next day.
“It means they had prepared their military assets and their troops ready to attack us,” he said. “They fabricated this mine incident as a motive to attack the Cambodian military.”
Thailand says the investigation is pressing because the mines have also maimed unsuspecting civilians, including a Chinese national last month along a contested area in the Thai province of Sa Kaeo.
On the Thai border, villagers tell of how the military has warned them to keep out of the forest.
“They are the ones patrolling, the one sweeping the border for land mines,” said Thongchai Thongmon, 47, a local government employee who lives in Chong Sa-ngam, about 1.5 miles from the Cambodian border, referring to the Thai soldiers. “So when they say do not enter the forest, everybody listens and no one dares to go in.”
Last month, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited the soldier who was maimed in Sisaket at a provincial hospital. He got teary-eyed and said, “I won’t let their sacrifices go unhonored.”
The Thai army said that the soldier, Therdsak Samaphong, is now convalescing at a hospital in Bangkok.
Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting from Sisaket, Phuriphat Dejsuphong from Buriram and Sun Narin from Banteay Meanchey in Cambodia.
Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region.
The post Khmer Rouge-Era Land Mines Have a Big Role in Thailand-Cambodia Conflict appeared first on New York Times.
