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sovereign Cambodian territory and were promptly arrested. While the entire
Thai press is now heaping scorn on the «seven clumsy Thais», government
hardliners stand by their threat to take the temple by force. Meanwhile,
thousands of their yellow-shirted supporters are out on the streets in
Bangkok, demonstrating for a harder stance against the country’s southern
neighbors – and against the 50 year-old resolution by the International
Court of Justice in The Hague that awarded the border region disputed by
both countries to Cambodia in 1962. As long as the border province was
controlled by Khmer Rouge militia, no-one in Thailand seemed unduly
concerned. This was the case until well into the 1990s, during which time
Khieu Sampan, the former foreign minister of one Pol Pot, held the reins –
for fully 20 years after the Vietnamese army had invaded what was then
Kampuchea and forcibly evicted Pol Pot and his reign of terror from the
capital Phnom Penh. (Nearly two million people, including virtually the
whole of the country’s intelligentsia, were brutally sacrificed to this merciless
regime.) At last, Khieu Sampan has gone on trial in Phnom Penh. Thai
indignity was indeed not rekindled until 2008, when UNESCO acceded to
the wish of the Cambodian government, headed by elected President Hun
Sen (whose former role in the Pol Pot regime had been covered up), to recognize
Preah Vihear as a World Heritage Site. Thailand’s foreign minister
resigned before the day was out. Since then, armed skirmishes, leading to
a number of deaths, have been a repeated occurrence in the immediate
vicinity of the temple. Both sides lay claim to an area of just 4.5 square kilometers.
Unofficial reports indicate that 3,000 Cambodian and 2,000 Thai
soldiers are involved in this localized face-off and are, depending on the
political mood, occasionally put on red alert. In places, the two armies are
separated by a distance of under 20 meters. A few rows of bushes are the
only thing obscuring eye contact with the black-uniformed forces of the
Thai army. The remarkable circumstance that, during one such altercation,
no fewer than ten of this group’s elite soldiers found their way into Cambodian
custody after only a few shots had been fired is a thorn that has
embedded itself deeply in the flesh of the Thai military leaders.
Precious few tourists make their way to Preah Vihear from the Cambodian
side due to the site’s remote location. On the Thai side – the Thais call
it Phra Viharn, both designations meaning «holy mountain» or temple – it
is the political and military tension that keeps visitors away. Notwithstanding,
both countries both hope this lofty sanctuary will attract streams of
foreign exchange similar to those generated since the turn of the millennium
by the vast temple facility centered around Angkor Wat, the rallying
point for the Khmer identity. After all, Preah Vihear is regarded by not a few
observers as the cultural zenith of the Khmer empire. Phnom Penh is replete
with flags bearing symbols of the temple. At the new Pochentong Airport,
visitors are no longer welcomed by a monumental depiction of Angkor
Wat, but by Prasat Preah Vihear. If all else fails, both sides – the 70 million-strong
Thai giant and the 14 million-strong Cambodian dwarf – will
doubtless continue their saber-rattling for the time being, at least until next
year’s World Heritage Conference in Bahrain. As a handful of soldiers wave
me goodbye and I begin my descent, a quotation by Cambodian President
Hun Sen comes unbidden to mind: «Even a fly can rob an elephant of
sleep.»