Cambodia Counts the Costs of Its Border Conflict with Thailand |
More than two weeks into renewed frontier fighting between Thailand and Cambodia, Thai air sorties and Cambodian BM-21 rockets continue to cross the border, exacting a mounting military toll that Phnom Penh has so far kept largely out of public view.
The imbalance between the two militaries had been evident even before protracted tensions this year erupted into five days of blows along the border in July, after tit-for-tat escalations following the death of a Cambodian soldier in a disputed area in May.
Thailand’s armed forces outmatch Cambodia in size, firepower, and air capability, an asymmetry that Cambodian officials often cite in branding Thailand the “aggressor,” particularly as Thai strikes reach deeper into Cambodian territory.
Yet while Bangkok has publicly disclosed, and politically instrumentalized, the deaths of 21 soldiers since clashes resumed on December 7 – following the collapse of a Trump-led ceasefire that halted fighting in late July – Cambodia has released no official figures on military losses.
But figures reviewed by The Diplomat from a Cambodian provincial health official in the frontline province of Preah Vihear, which borders Thailand’s Sisaket and Ubon Ratchathani provinces, suggest the cost has been significant, at least on that front. Since December 8, more than 400 Cambodian soldiers and border police, who have also been engaged in combat, have been wounded in the fighting.
None of the 424 documented as being treated on a patient list at a major hospital in the province has died from their injuries, said the official, who is not being named due to sensitivity, despite conventional fighting across six disputed areas along the province’s border with Thailand, two of which the Thai army now says it occupies.
In other zones of intense fighting, similar casualty figures are likely. While the Cambodian government has reported 21 civilian deaths, no data on military casualties has been made public, and the Ministry of National Defense has issued broad directives discouraging material it says could undermine military “secrecy.”
At least 13 soldiers have been killed in clashes at the Preah Vihear front and brought to the hospital for preservation, according to the official. Reports from local outlets and circulated social media posts allude to dozens more.
So far, international mediation efforts have moved slowly. During a special ASEAN meeting on December 22, the two sides agreed to hold a meeting of their General Border Committee on December 24 to discuss a possible ceasefire. But with the conflict continuing, and with the risk that Cambodia could ultimately cede territory under its own mapping claims, the conflict is unfolding against a backdrop of deeper economic and structural vulnerabilities at home, pressures that Phnom Penh, or the long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), can no longer ignore.
A funeral is held for a 62-year-old Cambodian woman from Preah Vihear province’s Mom Bei area in the provincial capital after she was killed during the second day of renewed clashes with Thailand, Dec. 9, 2025. (Coby Hobbs)
“The pressures are real and unusually concentrated,” said Sophal Ear,........