Thailand and Cambodia don't agree on how the most recent fighting started, only that it did, and the other side is to blame. Yes, both the Thai and Cambodian militaries accuse each other of opening fire first. The situation has really exploded where now there are points of conflict uh at at least six locations. The conflict seems to have started near a Hindu temple on the Thai Cambodian border. The official Thai account is that its forces heard a Cambodian surveillance drone approaching their soldiers positions. Then came six Cambodian soldiers armed. Thai officials say they tried to shout a warning, but then those Cambodian soldiers opened fire with heavy weapons, including rocket launchers. Cambodian officials deny this. They say Thai forces were the aggressors, laying out barbed wire in disputed territory, that they were the ones launching a drone into the air, and that they opened fire first, attacking Cambodian soldiers. Whichever account is true, the fighting immediately spread, and people started dying. Soldiers are firing at each other in multiple contested border areas. Cambodia firing rockets and artillery shells into Thailand and the Thai military using F-16 jets to carry out air strikes. A sharp escalation that's killed at least 11 civilians in Thailand. According to officials, the simplest explanation for how this spiraled out of control is that this is a border dispute, long contested territory between the two countries. But the reason there may not be an easy off-ramp to the fighting traces back to a very controversial phone call. Let's start with the border, then I'll get to the call. When you look at Thailand and Cambodia on a map, the line separating them representing an 817 km long shared border. It isn't quite as clear-cut as it looks. And just to show you what I mean, this temple, the site of the most recent fighting, quite clearly on the Cambodian side of the border, their claim is rooted in maps from the early 1900s that were drawn up while Cambodia was still under French colonial rule. It respects those borders, but Thailand says those maps are inaccurate and incomplete. And Thailand being by far the economically and militarily more powerful country, it has taken deacto control of sites like this very temple defending the high ground it sits on. This is extremely old temple that has a that has a religious significance to both cultures but in particular for the old Kimer Empire. Both sides, Cambodians and Thai feel resentful of history. Ties think that uh the French took some land from Thailand, gave to Cambodia. Cambodians think that this is their civilization from a long long time ago and ultimately this is their land. Over the last 60 years, the International Court of Justice has tried to play mediator here. It awarded sovereignty of several temple areas to Cambodia in the early60s. But around this same time, Thailand stopped recognizing the authority of the ICJ. It still doesn't today. The country's defense minister telling reporters Thailand is fully prepared to deal with border issues on all fronts legally, diplomatically, and militarily. The Thai military tends to insert itself into any political discussions or diplomatic discussions over the border. It also means that when things escalate, as they do now, they can escalate quite quickly and get out of control pretty rapidly because of the militarized nature of of the dispute. And so you have this sustained tension, the two sides largely wanting to avoid all-out war, but not wanting to seed ground either. Where things appear to have deteriorated though sharply is around May of this year when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a border fight on one of many contested patches of territory between the two countries. Then too, both sides claimed they were acting in self-defense. After that, a little over a week before the most recent fighting, a group of Thai soldiers would be injured by a landmine in disputed territory. One of them lost a foot. Days after that, another landmine explosion. A Thai soldier would lose a leg. That there are landmines in disputed areas. That's not a surprise. That's what you get with decades of war. But in these most recent cases, Thailand's foreign ministry accused Cambodia of laying new minds. that the ones triggered by Thai soldiers weren't there before, which they claimed to know from previous patrols. Cambodia says, "No, your soldiers just veered off agreed upon routes and triggered old mines that maybe have been there for decades." There's been a tit fortat series of economic and diplomatic retaliations over the last month or so by each side. Um, Thailand cut off certain crossber transfers of things like electricity. Cambodia banned many Thai imports across the border. Thailand closed a handful of border crossings. Cambodia then issued more trade restrictions. And all this brings us to the most recent clashes. Gunfights at temples, claims from both sides of rocket and mortar fire and air strikes, bombs falling onto Cambodian targets from Thai fighter jets. But even still, low-level conflict between these two countries has broken out sporadically for decades. What makes this one different comes down in part to a 17-minute phone call. In midJune, as tension along the Thai Cambodian border was escalating, then Prime Minister of Thailand Pedon Hung Shinawat called an old family friend. Prime Minister of Pton Shinawan from Thailand was trying to reach out to Hunsen, an elder statesman and and many would argue again the real power behind the throne in Cambodia to try to head off further escalation and find a pragmatic way to cooperate. So receiving that phone call, Hunen, former prime minister of Cambodia and now the president of the country's Senate, very important figure in Cambodia. Okay. Now, before I play more of the call for you, let me just say the call was leaked by Hunen himself or his people posted to his official Facebook page. So, we tried to get one of our in-house translators to listen to it, but then realized we don't have any in-house translators who speak Thai or Camir, which is how the two leaders spoke to each other through their own translator. So, long story short, I've listened to lots of different translations now of that phone call, and while they all do have little differences, they all tend to agree on the most important points of the call, which I'll play for you now. So, a few things to point out there. In that call, Thailand's prime minister is asking Cambodia's former prime minister to have some sympathy for your niece, referring to herself. They're not actually family. on this call. That would have been seen as a term of endearment, showing great affection and respect. Maybe unusual though, when soldiers of your two countries are shooting at each other. But what you're also hearing is great deference. What was perceived by many as bending over backwards to appease the leadership of a country that's not exactly on friendly terms. I'll play one more clip where Shinowat continues to show great difference and even what her harshest critics might consider treason. So again, calling Hunen uncle, but then appearing to criticize her own army's actions in the border dispute. [Music] What Shinowat just did in that moment was to accuse a Thai commander of being from the opposite side. Again, it might seem strange that the Thai PM would speak in this way to Cambodia's leadership, but like I said, they're old family friends. Hello. Can you hear me, Uncle? Yeah. Yeah. This is a dynastic uh family in Thailand. It's a dynastic family uh in Cambodia, even though the structure of government is different. Um so they've had those historic positive ties over time. Generally, it's not a it's not a relationship between two enemies or adversaries that finally boiled over, but it's I think it's a situation where two generally amicable states uh have a long-standing historical irritant which which unfortunately uh was allowed to boil over in this case. Thailand's prime minister tried to explain to her citizens afterwards that this was just her way of negotiating. It's something that shouldn't have happened. I am sorry for all the people that I've upset. But the general public certainly didn't see it that way. That leaked recording sparked widespread outrage and protest. Shinowat's ruling coalition crumbled when its second largest partner withdrew support. Shinowat was herself investigated over possible ethics violations and ultimately she was replaced. Thailand's prime minister Potong Tan Shinowad has been suspended from her position by the country's constitutional court. That's what made this thing explode and now it's really hard to get the genie back into the bottle because there's no trust whatsoever. Thai leadership has to sit there and wonder what else Hunen is going to release next. What other um supposed political bombshell is he waiting to throw? The reason all of this matters is because it shows how there is great instability between the two countries. It's not clear why Cambodia's Hunsen burned this bridge by leaking this phone call. But clearly it has thrust Thailand into a leadership crisis. And now the last thing it can be seen to do is capitulate. The prime minister was just tossed out of power for being too nice to a Cambodian leader. So every incentive now is to take a hard line. On the Cambodian side, um I think Hunan has staked out a pretty clear position here that painted Cambodia as the David versus this bigger Goliath that they're on the right that Thailand is the aggressor. And so there doesn't seem to be a lot of incentive for Cambodia to suddenly walk that back and say never mind, we'll seek a bilateral accommodation. So that's where things stand. Diplomatic relations downgraded and at least for its part, Thailand warning its citizens that the conflict may expand. To be clear, all of the experts we spoke to think this is unlikely to blow up into a fullscale war. But experts are also warning the two countries may lack the leadership strength required to pull back from war. [Music]