Thailand and Cambodia fight for the world’s ear over deadly border feud
Last Updated on February 19, 2026 11:27 pm
By Aidan Jones
Thailand and Cambodia are battling for narrative control over their border dispute, with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet alleging truce violations during a Washington trip – and Bangkok accusing its neighbour of spreading “distorted” information to the international community.
The two nations intermittently clashed over demarcation points along their 817km (508-mile) border from last July until December 27, when a second ceasefire was reached.
The fighting killed 149 people and displaced hundreds of thousands on both sides, choking off billions of dollars in cross-border trade. The land border remains closed.
Although an uneasy truce has held for two months, both countries continue to portray the other as the aggressor in a dispute that stems from a colonial-era boundary drawn by the French that has been a source of periodic conflict for decades.
In a sign of the enduring damage done by the recent clashes, Bangkok has even floated plans to build a border wall. Trade worth several billion US dollars is unlikely to resume in the near term, while remittances from Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand have slowed to a trickle as nearly 1 million have returned home.
Source :SCMP