Thailand and Cambodia step back from war, but their temple fight remains

It took days of cajoling and pressure from the United States, China and Malaysia -- and a threat from President Donald Trump -- to get Thailand and Cambodia to come together to work out their two nations' deadliest border conflict in decades.

That was the easy part.

On Tuesday, the Thai and Cambodian militaries agreed to implement a ceasefire. Both sides said that they would not deploy more troops to their contested border, bringing a tenuous peace after rocket launches, airstrikes and shelling that killed dozens and forced more than 300,000 people to flee their homes.

But questions remain about how long the lull can last. A key issue that brought the two neighbors to arms is their most intractable dispute: who can lay claim to the centuries-old Hindu temples along the border, dating back to the ancient Khmer Empire.

Trust has seldom been in evidence between the two neighbors, and it has in no way been repaired after this latest violence. A personal feud between their de facto leaders has only added to the tensions.

On Wednesday and late on Tuesday, the Thai army continued to accuse the Cambodian forces of starting gunfights. Cambodia rejected the accusations as false, saying that they "dangerously threaten the fragile trust and dialogue essential for lasting peace."

"The problem in that area is that almost anything could provoke hostilities," said Charles A. Ray, who was the US ambassador to Cambodia from 2003 to 2005. "No one has really gotten the two sides in a rooms, have them sit down and really discuss: 'What do both sides gain by fighting over a temple on a mountain?'"

Officials will next meet Monday to work out how to maintain a ceasefire, including by having Malaysian observers monitor it. That step is seen as crucial: A plan to introduce Indonesian observers after the last major deadly border clash in 2011 never panned out.

The mood remained resigned and uncertain in evacuation centers in Thailand and Cambodia on Tuesday. In Thailand, the authorities have told more than 180,000 evacuees to stay put just in case.

In Surin, Pa Srakaeo, 58, a rice farmer, said that she was not hopeful about returning home soon. "It's probably 50-50."

For there to be an enduring peace, both countries need to resolve the dispute over how their 500-mile-long border should be demarcated.

One major sticking point is Thailand's insistence that all discussions must to be done bilaterally. It has refused to recognize the 1962 ruling by the International Court of Justice that the Preah Vihear temple falls within the sovereignty of Cambodia. It argues that both countries should stick to a 2000 memorandum of understanding that states that both sides agreed to jointly survey and define the areas together.

But they have been talking for years with little progress. Notably, they can't even agree on what maps they should use.

Cambodia uses a 1:200,000-scale map, which is equivalent to giving someone a small and simple drawing of an area that gives a general layout but is not very precise. This map was drawn by French surveyors when Cambodia was a French colony and was used by the ICJ in its 1962 ruling.

Thailand uses a 1:50,000-scale map -- like the US military -- like a much bigger and highly detailed blueprint of a street in which every house and tree can be seen. Thailand says this map reflects the actual terrain.

This issue is such an inflammatory one that the Thai government spokesperson, Jirayu Houngsub, took pains to reject Thai media reports that Thailand would agree to use Cambodia's 1:200,000-scale map in the ceasefire talks.

"No government or individual would ever sell out their own country," Houngsub said.

Ray said he had once suggested to someone in Cambodia that both sides should come up with a joint commission that monitors the comings and goings in these areas, like the Demilitarized Zone, the strip of land that divides the Korean Peninsula.

"It didn't exactly go over big," he said. "You have a hard time getting through to them. It's almost an irrationally emotional issue."

Cambodia argues that temples like Preah Vihear, known as Phra Viharn in Thailand, and Prasat Ta Moan Thom, known as Prasat Ta Muen Thom in Thailand, are deeply significant to Cambodian identity as the descendants of the Khmer kings who built them.

Thailand sees the Phra Viharn /Preah Vihear temple complex as theirs because it is more easily accessible from the Thai side of the border. More broadly, the temples have been seized on by the country's ultranationalists as "lost territories," ceded by Siam to French Indochina during the French colonial era. The border dispute has also been a convenient way for Thai political factions to target each other under the guise of nationalism.

"The problem is, once the conflict started, then nationalism became much more extreme," said Ou Virak, president of Future Forum, a think tank in Phnom Penh dedicated to public policy issues. "And then people made out that these zones were worth dying for."