BBC visits villages that hit the middle

Now, through the middle of the village Cambodia, Chuk tea calls, and through the fields with sugar cane.

Behind them, a little above the border, high black screens rise from the ground, hiding Thai soldiers who put them.

This is a new, solid border between the two countries, which was once open and easily crossed by people on both sides.

Then, at 3:20 pm local time on August 13, it changed.

“Thai soldiers came and asked us to leave,” said Husis Malis. “Then they rolled the razor wire. I asked if I could return to get their culinary pots. They gave me only 20 minutes.”

Its one of the 13 families who were cut off from houses and fields on the other side of the wire, where they say they live and work for decades.

Currently, the Thai authorities have erected that they warn that they are illegally encroaching on the Thai territory.

In Chouk Chey, they claim that the border should pass along a straight line between two stone border markers that were agreed and installed more than a century ago.

Thailand says it is just anchoring its territory, given the current state of Cambodia conflicts. It’s not like Cambodia sees it.

Months of tension along the controversial parts of their boundaries broke out into an open conflict in July, leaving about 40 people of the dead. Since then, a fervent ceasefire has been carried out, although the war of the words that are fueled by nationalist sentiments on social media kept both sides on the border.

The BBC was in the Cambodia border areas, meeting with people who got into the middle and saw some of the damage left over five days of shelling and bombing.

In Chouk Chey, the Governor of the Ou Rattrov province had an economic impact on the Thai Action Community. According to him, they lose one million dollars a day in customs income from the closure of the border.

No one has come up with the figure how much the conflict between Cambodia and Thailand costs, but it is definitely high.

Billions of dollars in the annual trade slowed down to the structure. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian workers left Thailand, and Thai tourists stopped going another way. The new airport terminal built at a Chinese airport at Siem Reap, Gateway to the famous Angkor-Wat temple, deserted.

We were also shown a video from disappointed residents who descended the razor before Thai soldiers.

The governor said they were now told to avoid confrontation, but anger spread in another confrontation with Thai troops on September 4.

Northern Cambodia has other visible war costs.

The Temple of Pravo-Wih, which was sitting on the forest-shaped rock, near the border, is at the heart of the dispute between the two countries, and historical stories like to talk about themselves.

Thai nationalists are still difficult to adopt a ruling in 1962 in an international court that recognized the Temple of Cambodia territory, as the previous Thai governments could not challenge the French map that put it there. But the CU did not decide on other disputed border areas, leaving the seeds of today’s conflict.

Access to a beautiful 1000-year-old temple has always been much easier on the Thai side. Our vehicle on four wheels fought on a steep road, which the Cambodians built to climb a rock.

Once inside the temple complex, it was clear that he suffered in artillery exchanges of the end of July: two ancient stone ladders were defeated, while the other parts of the temple were defeated or broken down on lights, walls contained in the shrapne, with dozens of rain craters on the ground.

Cambodians say they recorded more than 140 explosive sites in and around it, which, according to them, from Thai shelling on July 24 and 25.

Officials from the Cambodian Center for Military Action also noted unbroken cluster ammunition, weapons, prohibited in most of the world, but which Thai military recognized by using.

Thai troops deny shooting in a temple, which UNESCO recognizes as a place of world heritage.

This accuses Cambodia of not seeing soldiers and weapons in the temple during the fighting, although we did not see it, and it was difficult to imagine big rifles along the steep road and into the temple complex.

Both countries now use similar problems to try to destroy international sympathy.

Cambodia complained to UNESCO to the detriment of Preah Vieher and describes 18 of her soldiers, captured immediately after the cessation of fire as hostages.

Thailand has shown evidence that Cambodian troops are still putting mines along the border, injuring many Thai soldiers who, as he claims, shows unwavering in his commitment to honor the ceasefire.

But all the Cambodian officials we met emphasized their desire to stop the conflict and restore relations with their big neighbor. This was another anxiety that pervades Cambodia’s story: what to be a smaller country surrounded by more powerful neighbors.

Both sides suffer from closing the border, but it is likely that Cambodia, much poor than Thailand, suffers more.

“You can’t force an ant to get out against the elephant,” said the Cambodia Sales Party’s press. “We have to accept that we are a small country, not big as elephants. So how could a smaller country ignite this problem?”

But this is exactly what Thailand accuses Cambodia’s government of fulfilling. An independent study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute shows the model of military strengthening along the border many months before a full -scale struggle began in July, most of them Cambodian forces.

Then, in June, former Prime Minister Hong Saint, still the most powerful figure in Cambodia, traced the conversation he had made from Tag-Thai Prime Minister Petongtarna Shinovattra, in which she seemed to offer him concessions and criticized his own military.

The embarrassment caused that the Constitutional Court of Thailand deviated and then fired it.

Thailand describes this as the first time the leader of ASEAN member (South -East Asia Bloc, which belongs to both countries), intervened to cause a political crisis in the neighboring country.

This undoubtedly threw the flames at the conflict, which significantly complicated any Thai government to accept the reconciliation at the border.

It is difficult to find out why such a cunning and experienced politician, like Hong Saint, decided to destroy his old friendship with the Shinovat family and remodel the border tension. The Cambodia government seems not ready to resolve the leak.

“The leak problem is just a small problem compared to what happened in Bangkok, and competing factions trying to gain power from the administration,” says Suos Yar, who accused the Thai troops in using the conflict to enhance their own influence.

Instead, he repeated Cambodia’s longtime call to Thailand to accept a controversial French map and intervention of the CU.

While politicians and officials continue to fuss, many Cambodians, displaced fighting have not yet gone home, despite the gloomy conditions in the temporary camps to which they were moved.

Five thousand families lived under the rudimentary target at the camp we visited, surrounded by dirt and minimum sanitation.

The municipal kitchen knocked out potato soup for dinner.

On the Thai side, where the conditions in the shelter were much better, all moved home for a few days after the cessation of fire.

“The authorities tell us that the situation is not yet good,” one woman said in the Cambodian camp. “When I live near the border, I don’t dare to come back.”

However, there is still an unexpected projectile left by five -day shelling.

But the floods of misinformation over the conflict in Cambodia, which warned, without evidence, about the inevitable Thai attacks and the use of poisonous gas, created a climate of fear, which also prevents people from returning to their homes.

The big sign was erected through the main route passing through the camp, reading “Cambodia requires peace – the final”.

It was the mood we heard from everyone we talked to Cambodia.

But in order for this to happen to the leader, both civil and military, in both countries it is necessary to reduce the uncompromising nationalist rhetoric, which now characterizes their dispute.