Cambodia

The aid is earmarked to help support both countries in border stabilisation efforts, demining and tackling drug trafficking and cyberscams.

The United States has announced it will provide $45m in aid to help solidify a fragile truce brokered by President Donald Trump between Thailand and Cambodia.

Michael DeSombre, the US assistant secretary for East Asia, said on Friday that the US would offer $20m to help both countries combat drug trafficking and cyberscams, which have become a major concern in Cambodia.

DeSombre was meeting with senior Thai and Cambodian officials in Bangkok and Phnom Penh on Friday and Saturday to discuss implementation of the peace accords, according to a senior State Department official.

DeSombre also said $15m would be given for border stabilisation efforts to help support people displaced by the recent fighting, as well as $10m for de-mining and unexploded ordnance clearance.

“The United States will continue to support the Cambodian and Thai governments as they implement the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords and pave the way for a return to peace, prosperity and stability for their people and the region,” DeSombre said in a statement.

DeSombre was referring to an agreement signed between the two countries in Trump’s presence during his October visit to Malaysia, then head of the ASEAN regional bloc.

Border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand flared up again last month, after the collapse of a truce brokered in July by Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to end a previous round of conflict.

The Southeast Asian neighbours agreed on another ceasefire on December 27, halting 20 days of fighting that killed at least 101 people and displaced more than half a million on both sides.

Thailand accused Cambodia of violating this latest ceasefire, though later retracted the accusation, with the Thai military saying the Cambodian side had contacted them to explain the so-called violation was an accidental fire.

Cambodia, meanwhile, has called on Thailand to pull its forces out of several border areas that Phnom Penh claims as its own.

The nations’ longstanding conflict stems from a dispute over France’s colonial-era demarcation of their 800km (500-mile) border, where both sides claim territory and several centuries-old temple ruins.

Trump has listed the conflict as one of several wars he says he has solved as he loudly insists he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump, on taking office, drastically slashed foreign aid, including for months freezing longstanding assistance to Cambodia for de-mining, with the administration saying it will provide money only in support of narrow US interests.

US citizens have been targeted by financial fraud operations taking place at scam centres throughout Southeast Asia.

Thailand is a longtime US ally, while the US has sought to improve relations with Cambodia to try to woo it away from strategic rival China.

Cambodian villagers have told Al Jazeera they’re being prevented from returning to their homes by Thai forces who remain on the Cambodian side of the border. Assed Baig sent this exclusive report from Chouk Chey, which has been cut off with rows of shipping containers.

Dec. 27 (UPI) — Weeks into a vicious border war that has killed dozens of people and displaced roughly half a million, Thailand and Cambodia agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire on Saturday.

The countries announced in a joint statement that they would not conduct any military activities along the border, although their troops can stay there, in an effort to have a prolonged period of peace to see if the cease-fire will hold, The New York Times and Financial Times reported.

The agreement comes after several days of negotiations to end renewed fighting that has plagued the border region for weeks, including Thai air strikes on Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey Province early Friday morning.

“The signing is not the end, but the beginning of proving sincerity through action,” Thailand’s Air Chief Marshal Prapas Sornchaidee said in a statement posted to X.

“Thailand will proceed based on the same principles it has consistently communicated to the international community,” said Sornchaidee, who is acting as director of the joint press center and principle spokesperson on the border negotiations.

The cease-fire was due to start at 12:00 p.m. local time, with all fighting and military activity halted and both sides avoiding “unprovoked firing or advancement or movement of troops toward the other side’s positions,” according to the agreement.

The agreement requires both sides to refrain from any type of provocative actions, to avoid disseminating “false information or fake news” and to commit to efforts for both countries to better work together.

Additionally, if the cease-fire holds for the full 72 hours, Thailand agreed to return 18 Cambodian soldiers — something it initially agreed to do in October — and both sides will start to allow civilians to return to their homes along the 500-mile border between the countries.

The soldiers were captured in July after weeks of fighting, which also had resulted in a cease-fire and an eventual peace accord signed in October in Kuala Lumpur.

That cease-fire and peace agreement rumbled in November when Thailand accused Cambodia of laying new landmines along its border — weapons that both countries have employed — Financial Times reported.

The new agreement, which was signed at 10:30 a.m. local time on Saturday morning, follows recent overtures from the United States and China to increase diplomatic efforts and end the conflict, the New York Times reported.

“The United States welcomes this announcement from Cambodia and Thailand on reaching a cease-fire that halts hostilities along their border,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “We urge Cambodia and Thailand to immediately honor this commitment and fully implement the terms of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords.”

With a cease-fire agreed to after three days of negotiations, a trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of Cambodia, Thailand and China will be held on Sunday and Monday to continue working toward a more lasting peace, Cambodian officials said.

A ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia has come into effect after weeks of deadly fighting across the border. Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig says artillery fire has stopped but the next 72 hours will be a critical test of whether the truce holds. Hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians are hoping it lasts.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Agreement follows talks aimed at ending weeks of deadly clashes along the Thailand-Cambodia border.

Thailand and Cambodia said they have signed a ⁠ceasefire ​agreement to end weeks of fierce fighting along their border that has killed more than 100 people and forced the displacement of more than half a million civilians in both countries.

“Both sides agree to an immediate ceasefire after the time of signature of this Joint Statement,” ‍the Thai and Cambodian defence ⁠ministers said in a statement on Saturday.

“Both sides agree to maintain current troop deployments without further movement,” the ministers said.

The ceasefire is scheduled to take effect at noon local time (05:00 GMT) and extends to “all types of weapons” and “attacks on civilians, civilian objects and infrastructures, and military objectives of either side, in all cases and all areas”.

The agreement, signed by Thai Defence Minister Natthaphon Narkphanit and his Cambodian counterpart Tea Seiha, ‌ends 20 days of fighting, the worst between the two Southeast Asian neighbours in years.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow soon.

Planned talks come as Southeast Asian leaders urge both countries to show ‘maximum restraint’ and return to dialogue.

Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to hold a meeting of defence officials later this week as regional leaders push for an end to deadly violence along the two countries’ shared border.

Thailand’s Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow announced the planned talks on Monday after a special meeting in Kuala Lumpur of Southeast Asian foreign ministers, who were trying to salvage a ceasefire.

That truce was first brokered by Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chair Malaysia and United States President Donald Trump after cross-border fighting broke out in July.

Sihasak told reporters that this week’s discussions would be held on Wednesday in Thailand’s Chanthaburi, within the framework of an existing bilateral border committee.

But just hours after the regional crisis talks were held in Malaysia, Cambodia’s Ministry of Defence said the Thai military deployed fighter jets to bomb areas of Siem Reap and Preah Vihear provinces.

The Thai army said Cambodia had fired dozens of rockets into Thailand, with Bangkok’s air force responding with air strikes on two Cambodian military targets.

Thailand and Cambodia have engaged in daily exchanges of rocket and artillery fire along their 817km (508-mile) land border following the collapse of the truce, with fighting at multiple points stretching from forested regions near Laos to the coastal provinces of the Gulf of Thailand.

Despite the cross-border fire, Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior said it remains “optimistic that the Thai side will demonstrate sincerity” in implementing a ceasefire.

Thailand’s Sihasak, however, cautioned that the upcoming meeting may not immediately produce a truce. “Our position is a ceasefire does not come with an announcement, but must come from actions,” he said.

His ministry said the two nations’ militaries would “discuss implementation, related steps and verification of the ceasefire in detail”.

The planned meeting comes as ASEAN on Monday urged both countries to show “maximum restraint and take immediate steps towards the cessation of all forms of hostilities”.

In a statement after the talks in Kuala Lumpur, ASEAN also called on both Thailand and Cambodia to “restore mutual trust and confidence, and to return to dialogue”.

ASEAN members also reiterated their concerns over the ongoing conflict and “called upon both parties to ensure that civilians residing in the affected border areas are able to return, without obstruction and in safety and dignity, to their homes”.

Fighting has escalated between Cambodia and Thailand, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes on both sides of the neighbouring countries’ border.

Now, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is taking the lead in attempts to end the violence and reach a peace deal.

All this comes after an attempt by United States President Donald Trump to end the war failed.

The Thai and Cambodian foreign ministers are set to meet in the coming days in hopes of reaching what Thailand has called a “true ceasefire”.

But without any letup in the long-running conflict, what will it take to bring it to an end?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Chheang Vannarith – Chairman of Angkor Social Innovation Park and a former assistant to Cambodia’s defence minister in 2011 and 2012

Ilango Karuppannan – Adjunct senior fellow at the Nanyang Technological University and former Malaysian High Commissioner to Singapore

Phil Robertson – Director of Asia Human Rights Labour Advocates and former deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division

Fighting has resumed hours before the countries’ foreign ministers meet in Malaysia to discuss steps to de-escalate hostilities.

The Thai-Cambodian tension is almost uniformly treated as a manageable bilateral issue, serious but contained, sensitive but familiar. This is a mistake. The real implication of the dispute is not the danger it poses of immediate escalation but rather what it indicates of the future security order of Southeast Asia and of ASEAN’s decreasing strategic relevance in the formation of that order. The problem is not that ASEAN lacks goodwill or experience, but that it is increasingly misaligned with the type of conflicts now emerging within its own region. At the heart of the dilemma is a category mistake: ASEAN was never constituted to arbitrate or adjudicate, only to regulate. Its diplomatic culture emphasizes confidence-building practices and the maintenance of open, institutionalized avenues for dialogue. Those are things necessary and reasonable. Territory sovereignty is different; it is zero-sum and domestically chiseled. As such, solving such disputes with ASEAN’s traditional toolkit is to operate outside one’s skill set, not unlike an artist trying to bake a cake.

Border tensions play a role in domestic politics on both sides. They play into narratives of sovereignty, justify military readiness, and distract from internal pressures. Crucially, escalation is not an end in itself. Escalation has its risks; resolution has its concessions. Protracted ambiguity, on the other hand, can be handled politically. ASEAN’s preference for dialogue without deadlines, restraint without enforcement, and consensual rather than arbitrated decision-making seems to reproduce this state of equilibrium. This dynamic is often misinterpreted as diplomatic paralysis. It is instead the reflection of a stable, albeit fragile, strategic equilibrium. ASEAN offers a forum for de-escalation. From the standpoint of member states, this is not an institutional malfunction but a rational outcome. The costs of change exceed the benefits, especially when national leaders must answer to domestic audiences that reward toughness over compromise. Where this method turns strategically perilous is in the aggregate. Managed conflicts are not frozen conflicts; they harden over the years. Military interventions are normalized, crisis rhetoric becomes established, and trust dribbles away. What begins as stability based on restraint gradually transforms into militarized coexistence. This process is not the escalation of the crisis but its solidification. As strife becomes routine, the region becomes accustomed to permanent insecurity, and politicians come to treat it as usual, not abnormal.

The regional context renders this trend more significant. Southeast Asia is not functioning in a permissive strategic environment today. Competition among the great powers is increasingly shaping the calculations of states in the region. Thailand’s security ties and Cambodia’s external alignments are not marginal to the conflict; they are part of its strategic backdrop. With external alignments solidifying, tensions within the region are becoming less easy to isolate. Even when they are not directly involved, the great powers’ presence changes bargaining behavior, threat perceptions, and strategic confidence. ASEAN can least afford to see its centrality challenged now. Centrality is strategically and politically meaningful when regional institutions make rather than take outcomes. When disagreements are settled outside the ASEAN framework through bilateral interests, external balancing, or strategic ambiguity, the organization’s role is so minimal as to be symbolic at worst. The consultations and statements continue, but the real influence is shifting elsewhere. ASEAN, over time, also runs the risk of becoming a platform on which it simply reacts rather than organizes and shapes regional strains.

The economic aspect makes the matter even more complex. ASEAN’s integration project presupposes a degree of predictability and strategic restraint. However, it is not entirely effective while security tensions between the two remain unresolved. Border disputes impede cross-border trade and infrastructure planning and introduce risk into investment calculations. They seldom produce immediate or dramatic changes, but they do build up. For a while, economic integration can coexist with political tensions, but not forever. Often, uncertainty begins to erode confidence, particularly in mainland Southeast Asia, where connectivity is most vulnerable to instability. The fundamental problem, then, is not whether ASEAN can stop war. It pretty much can, and it often does. The more profound question, then, is whether war prevention is sufficient in a region under such long-term strategic duress. A security order based solely on restraint, without avenues for resolution, will erode its ability to adapt. It treats the symptoms and not the causes of these problems. This does not necessitate that ASEAN turn away from its founding principles, but rather that it apply them in new and innovative ways. Consensus and respect for non-interference continue to be the pillars of regional cohesion. However, they no longer suffice. Without additional tools in the toolbox, such as informal arbitration, issue-specific mediation regimes, or more explicit regional norms on appropriate dispute behavior, ASEAN will remain trapped in a stance of containment, with no progress.

Overall, the Thai–Cambodian tension is no mere side issue. It shows how latent tensions, domestic politics, and external competition converge in ways that ASEAN cannot fully control. The risk is not a sudden breakdown but strategic stagnation: a region at peace but progressively divided, stable but strategically tenuous, and whose members continue to hesitate over which direction they want to take. If ASEAN is ever to have a fundamental, not just a token, role, it has to face up to this fact, not just in rhetoric but in its structures. This decision will determine whether the future security structure in Southeast Asia is built on deterrence of conflict or on the tolerance of latent tensions as the price of regional cohesion.

Despite Trump claim of ceasefire, no end on horizon to latest round of conflict recently reignited by border skirmish.

Cambodia’s defence ministry has accused Thailand’s military of bombing the casino hub of Poipet, a major land crossing between the two nations, which are engaged in renewed clashes along their border.

The ministry said in a statement on Thursday that Thai forces had “dropped 2 bombs” in the municipality of Poipet, located in the northwestern province of Banteay Meanchey, at about 11am (04:00 GMT) that morning.

At the time of reporting, Thailand had not yet confirmed the strike on the bustling casino hub, which is popular with Thai gamblers.

The interior ministry said this week that at least four casinos in Cambodia have been damaged by Thai strikes.

Renewed fighting between the Southeast Asian neighbours this month has killed at least 21 people in Thailand and 17 in Cambodia, while displacing about 800,000, officials said.

Thailand said on Tuesday that between 5,000 and 6,000 Thai nationals remained stranded in Poipet after Cambodia closed its land border crossings with its neighbour.

Cambodia’s interior ministry said the border closures were a “necessary measure” to reduce risks to civilians amid the ongoing combat, adding that air travel remained an option for those seeking to leave.

Truce denial

Five days of fighting between Cambodia and Thailand in July killed dozens of people before a truce was brokered by the United States, China and Malaysia, and then broken within months.

United States President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly intervened in the longstanding conflict this year, claimed last week that the two countries had agreed to a new ceasefire.

But Bangkok denied any truce had been agreed upon, and fighting with artillery, tanks, drones and jets has continued daily since a border skirmish earlier this month caused the latest round of conflict.

The conflict stems from a territorial dispute over the colonial-era demarcation of their 800km (500-mile) border and a smattering of ancient temple ruins situated on the frontier.

Each side has blamed the other for instigating the renewed fighting, claiming self-defence, while trading accusations of attacks on civilians.

China said it was sending its special envoy for Asian affairs to Cambodia and Thailand on Thursday for a “shuttle-diplomacy trip” to help bridge the gaps and “rebuild peace”.