Intensifying Conflict: The Thai-Cambodian Border Clash Resumes

Thu Dec 11 2025 04:13:30 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

Amidst ongoing tensions, Thailand and Cambodia resume hostilities despite a ceasefire agreement mediated by former President Trump. The recent outbreak of violence has led to mass evacuations and raised questions about the stability of the region.

After a brief ceasefire brokered by former President Trump, fighting has reignited along the Thai-Cambodian border. Triggered by a minor incident involving Thai engineering teams, the conflict has led to evacuations and highlighted deep-seated mistrust between the nations. Both sides continue to accuse each other of breaches in peace agreements, while military objectives drive the ongoing clashes.

Once again the boom of artillery, rockets and air strikes sounds along the Thai-Cambodian border. Villages in a corridor stretching for hundreds of kilometres have been evacuated for a second time in five months. Families and their pets sit on mats in temporary shelters, wondering when they can go home, and when they might be forced to flee yet again.

Why has this happened so soon after the ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump in July? It was ignited by a seemingly minor incident on Sunday, when a Thai engineering team working on an access road in the disputed area of the border was, according to the Thai army, fired on by Cambodian troops. Two Thai soldiers were injured, neither seriously.

In the past this might have been settled by some fleet-footed diplomacy. But there has been little of that this year. Instead, a yawning gulf of mistrust lies between these two neighbours, one that even Trump's deal-making prowess has failed to bridge. Despite his claim to have struck a historic peace deal, the ceasefire he forced on the two countries in July was always tenuous.

Thailand, especially, was very uneasy about internationalizing the border conflict and only agreed to the ceasefire because Trump held a tariff gun to its head; at the time both Thailand and Cambodia were just days away from a deadline to negotiate significantly lower tariff rates on their vital exports to the US.

Cambodia, by contrast, is only too happy to welcome outside intervention. As the smaller country, it feels at a disadvantage in bilateral negotiations with Thailand. But on the border, its troops have continued to engage in confrontations with the Thai army and, in a move guaranteed to anger the Thai public, to lay new land-mines which have caused seven Thai soldiers to lose limbs.

Since July, any restraint there was on the Thai armed forces has gone. The current prime minister Anutin Charvirakul heads a minority coalition and is beset with other challenges. He has given the military carte blanche to manage the border conflict as it sees fit.

The army has said its goal is to inflict sufficient damage on its Cambodian counterpart to ensure it can never again threaten border communities. Both sides have been maneuvering around these positions all year, trying to reinforce road access and fortifications around them.

The motivations at work in the Cambodian leadership are much harder to divine. Former Prime Minister Hun Sen is still the puppet-master pulling the strings of his son, current PM Hun Manet. Publicly he has appealed for restraint by his troops while portraying Cambodia as being bullied by a more powerful neighbour and in need of international support.

Can President Trump bang heads together again as he did in July? Perhaps. But if all he achieves is another ceasefire, it will only be a matter of time before fighting breaks out again. Thailand has said repeatedly that it is not yet ready for diplomacy. What that means exactly is not clear, but it would at the very least require a decisive and verified end to the use of land-mines on the border.