Having apparently addressed their citizens’ crushing poverty, inadequate access to education and constant battles with malaria, dengue fever, typhoid and hepatitis A, Cambodian and Thai officials spent the last week threatening each other with all-out war over a newly dedicated UN World Heritage site that both countries insist is theirs.
From the International Herald Tribune:
Calling a border confrontation with Thailand “an imminent state of war,” Cambodia asked the United Nations and its Southeast Asian neighbors to intervene Tuesday as hundreds of soldiers faced each other for the eighth day on the grounds of a disputed temple.
A bilateral meeting on Monday failed to resolve the standoff, and troops from both sides remained camped at the ancient Hindu temple, Preah Vihear, that perches on the edge of a cliff dividing the two nations.
Funny that these two countries would get so worked up about a Hindu temple, since both countries are 95 per cent Buddhist. What’s more, you’d think they’d both be reluctant to wreck their fledgling economies with war — Cambodia’s gross national income per capita is just $490/year, (less than $1.50 a day and a little lower than Nigeria’s), while Thailand’s is an only slightly better $3,050/year (about on par with Namibia).
Hopefully this is just a lot of posturing and chest-puffing, and neither side actually intends to go to war. Still, if you put a few hundred young testosterone-filled troops from two bickering nations in close quarters, give them all guns, leave them there for over a week and tell both sides that they hold the one true claim to the little plot of land they’re standing on, bad things may happen all by themselves…
Photo via The Telegraph.
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