Stronger fact-finding efforts essential to solving Thai-Cambodian tiff

Without authoritative information, warring parties respond to conflicting accounts over shared facts, leaving fertile ground for escalation.

The renewed border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia on Dec 8, 2025 — culminating in Thai aerial strikes after a deadly exchange of gunfire in the early hours — reveal a need to reinforce the verification regime of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord.

Once again, Southeast Asia has witnessed how swiftly a localised incident can escalate when verification mechanisms fail to keep pace with political and military pressures.

The Thai government and its disaster management agencies have been swamped with pleas for help due to floods that have inundated vast areas, including Hatyai, barely a week ago.

At the time of writing the residents of these areas are still picking up the pieces of their shattered lives and, indeed, businesses and homes.

Meanwhile, Cambodia must not allow any rogue elements within its army or non-state traditional actors to test the patience of Bangkok for that matters to their own capital.

Thus, the problem at hand is not the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord, which remains a vital diplomatic framework, but the absence of a robust fact-finding structure capable of intervening before tempers intensify and retaliation begins.

The contested narratives following the clash illustrate this gap. Thailand insists Cambodian forces initiated the shooting, while Cambodia maintains that Thai troops were the aggressors.

Without active and neutral verification, Phnom Penh and Bangkok are left defending their own version of events, and regional audiences can only watch as political statements replace evidence.

This vacuum of authoritative information creates fertile ground for escalation, as governments respond not to shared facts but to separate, conflicting accounts.

This is precisely why Asean’s Observatory Team, composed largely of defence attachés stationed across member states, must be given far more authority and operational space.

These officers have the training, access, and military understanding needed to determine what happened quickly and accurately.

Yet under the current system, they remain peripheral to crisis management, unable to deploy swiftly or conduct meaningful verification along sensitive borders.

If the Observatory Team can be further empowered to move within hours of the clash, inspect the site, interview field commanders, cross-check ballistic evidence, and relay their findings simultaneously to Bangkok and Phnom Penh, the situation might have stabilised before airstrikes were immediately ordered.

Verification does not erase grief, nor does it prevent governments from mourning their losses. But it does offer a factual foundation upon which political leaders can respond with clarity rather than conjecture.

Neutral verification also protects both sides from acting on misinformation. Without it, Thailand was left to rely solely on internal military reports, amplified by public anger over the loss of its soldiers.

In such moments, restraint becomes politically difficult, especially when the border has long been a symbol of national pride.

Cambodia, meanwhile, had no mechanism to validate its denial in a manner that carried regional weight.

The absence of an impartial referee allowed a familiar pattern to unfold: accusation, counter-accusation, and then escalation.

Asean must recognise that its Observatory Team is not merely symbolic. With proper authority, it can become the backbone of regional conflict prevention — a mobile, professional, multi-country verification mission capable of reducing ambiguity and miscalculation.

This requires political will, not new treaties. Defence attachés already serve as the eyes and ears of their governments; Asean should harness this expertise collectively, allowing them to establish facts before misinformation triggers violence.

The stakes are higher now because Thailand is grappling with profound domestic pressures.

The government is already under scrutiny for its handling of a crisis that displaced hundreds of thousands and damaged the reputation of its emergency-response apparatus.

With an impending general election expected in March or April 2026, political tensions in Bangkok are peaking.

Any incident along the border risks becoming entangled with electoral dynamics, where strong reactions may be rewarded more than measured diplomacy.

Cambodia, too, must remain mindful that non-traditional actors — smugglers, local militias, criminal syndicates, or political spoilers — may seek to provoke clashes for their own gain.

Borderlands in Southeast Asia have long been porous spaces where opportunists exploit weak monitoring systems.

In a volatile political moment for Thailand, even a small provocation could trigger a disproportionate response if not swiftly and credibly verified.

Both sides therefore have a shared interest in strengthening Asean’s verification regime. Empowering the Observatory Team is the most immediate and practical step toward preventing another avoidable spiral.

Truth, established quickly and impartially, is Southeast Asia’s best defence against turning minor incidents into major crises.

To label the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord as weak and inconsequential is to deny the room to enhance the mechanisms further.

That would be fatal not only to Thailand and Cambodia but the centrality of Asean as a regional organisation capable of creating the right defence architecture to absorb traditional and non-traditional security issues.

Not all at one go but through careful calibration with the Strategic Dialogue Partners of Asean and other member states of the Asean Regional Forum and Asean Defence Ministers Plus meetings too. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.