FILE PHOTO: Then Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (R) talks to former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra (L) in Siem Reap province, some 314 kilometres north-west of Phnom Penh on November 14, 2009 before Thaksin was due to leave Cambodia. Personal and political rifts sparked the worst fighting between the South-East Asian neighbours in several decades. - AFP
PHNOM PENH: Thailand and Cambodia on Thursday (Aug 7) agreed to a set of measures to help maintain peace along their border after clashes last month killed more than 40 people and displaced 300,000.
But left unresolved is a clutch of personal and political rifts that sparked the worst fighting between the South-East Asian neighbours in several decades.
Officially, the tipping point for the deadly clashes lay in border disputes over colonial-era maps and contested temples. But a deeper cause was the unraveling of a long-standing alliance between Thaksin Shinawatra - the power behind Thailand’s ruling party - and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s former prime minister and enduring power broker.
During good times, they called each other "godbrothers.”
Analysts have pointed to a combination of factors rather than a single turning point for the sudden flare-up in border clashes, which saw the use of fighter jets, rockets and heavy artillery.
One key driver of the Hun Sen-Thaksin rift has been Thailand’s crackdown on the so-called "scam compounds” in Cambodia - industrial-scale operations that researchers say benefit some officials within Phnom Penh’s government and that both the US and China have pushed Bangkok to rein in.
The eruption in border violence last month had its origins at least as far back as February, when Thailand began cracking down on cybercrime operations in neighbouring Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.
Thai authorities had been building a case against sprawling operations based in Cambodian border towns, particularly Poipet, months before a skirmish on May 28 killed a Cambodian soldier. Around the same time, a Thai bill to legalise casinos, which was later shelved, posed a threat to Cambodia’s casino-dependent frontier economy.
Lim Menghour, director general of the National Assembly of Cambodia, cited the border closures and threats of cutting off electricity and internet access during a weeks-long border standoff after the May incident as stoking tensions.
Further straining ties between the two countries - and their ruling families - is a failed bid to develop oil and gas projects in offshore waters claimed by both. The venture has long been a goal for Cambodia but remains politically untenable for any Thai leader.
"There’s definitely a lot of financial interests at play,” said Ou Virak, president of Phnom Penh-based thinktank Future Forum. "It’s not just purely nationalism, borders and temples. I would say it’s a combination of things.”
Thai-Cambodia tensions trace back to the colonial-era treaties that defined their boundaries and the resulting maps that laid them out differently. The sovereignty of several areas remains points of contention decades later, and various efforts to demarcate the boundary have yet to yield results.
The latest clash was an attempt to drag the boundary dispute to the International Court of Justice, according to Russ Jalichandra, Thailand’s vice minister for foreign affairs. Bangkok doesn’t recognise the court’s jurisdiction, since it ruled in 1962 that the contested temple of Preah Vihear belonged to Cambodia.
"They needed to create an incident to draw the world’s attention. That’s their motive: to manufacture a situation,” Russ said, adding that a mix of other underlying grievances likely angered Phnom Penh. "The policy to crack down on online scams in Cambodia surely affects them directly. And frankly if we go ahead with the entertainment complex project, it will be hard for them to compete with us.”
Cambodian government spokesman Pen Bona did not immediately respond to a request seeking comments.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thai prime minister and Thaksin’s daughter, specifically called out the crackdowns as the reason the fighting started.
"I took serious action against call centre scams, and it produced real results,” she said at an event in Bangkok July 26, two days after the border clashes fully erupted. "The number of scam calls targeting the public dropped significantly, and the estimated financial damage was immense.”
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has identified Cambodia as a key hub in a South-East Asian scam network generating US$37 billion annually. Cambodia’s cyber scams alone produce up to US$19 billion - about 60 per cent of its GDP, according to UK-based Humanity Research Consultancy.
UN investigators have flagged several major scam compounds operating near the Thai border, particularly around Poipet in Banteay Meanchey province, a key crossing point. Thai police have traced illicit financial flows from that area to the Huione Group. A cousin of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, Hun To, was listed as a director of the group’s online banking arm. Hun To has denied his business has been involved in cybercrime.
The reports also highlight the role of Cambodian elites in enabling the scam industry. Among them is Ly Yong Phat, a tycoon and US-sanctioned adviser to Hun Sen. In July, Thai authorities issued an arrest warrant for another of Hun Sen’s longtime allies, Kok An, accusing him of backing scam centres in Poipet and earning him the nickname "Godfather of Poipet.”
The relationship frayed further this year. After the May 28 tussle, a leaked phone call between Hun Sen and Paetongtarn - in which she seemed disparage her own army and defer to the Cambodian leader - triggered her suspension and exposed the fragility of the Shinawatra family’s political return.
Days after the phone leak, during a three-hour Facebook livestream, Hun Sen accused Paetongtarn and her father Thaksin of "betrayal,” insulting his son, the current prime minister, and of using the crackdown on cybercrime call centres as a pretext for "aggression” along the border and closing it.
That was in contrast to warmth between the two families that was on display early last year when Hun Sen beamed alongside Thaksin for photos in Bangkok - a symbolic reunion after the former Thai leader returned from 15 years in exile.
Paetongtarn’s political opponents seized on the closeness between the two leaders as a sign that Thaksin might have cut a deal with Hun Sen behind closed doors that involved the loss of Thai territory, including the island of Ko Kut near the overlapping claim area in the Gulf of Thailand, said Sebastian Strangio, author of the book Hun Sen’s Cambodia.
The tensions over maritime boundaries "then migrated to the land border in the early part of this year, creating the conditions for last month’s outbreak of fighting,” he said. - Bloomberg
