Even before it flared up again in 2008, the Preah Vihear temple dispute between Cambodia and Thailand was used by students of international boundaries as a text book example of a number of important principles. Perhaps the most important of these was that maps should never be relied upon to provide definitive descriptions of boundary – especially where those maps have been drawn up by people living on one side of the border. The second, scarcely less important principle is that the longer a government tacitly or implicitly acknowledges an asserted boundary, the harder that boundary becomes to challenge.

Since the temple dispute became ‘live’ again, a number of significant new principles could be added to the pair above. One is simply the importance of recognising the interconnectedness between territory disputes and a host of other issues, relating not only to bilateral relations but also to domestic politics and the state of the economy. Others are that governments do not always have the ability to resolve potential border flashpoints – if they did, then why haven’t they done so already? – and that definitive rulings by international tribunals cannot always provide a cure-all for disagreements between neighbours.

The Preah Vihear temple complex, perched atop a cliff in the Dangrek Mountains which divide Thailand and Cambodia, has been a place of veneration for both the Thai and the Khmer people for nine centuries. The travails involved in reaching it – in combination with its religious significance and artistic merit – have long made the temple an obvious place of pilgrimage. But its location did not become a bone of contention until the governments of French Indochina (part of which is today’s Cambodia) and the Kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) agreed in 1904 to establish a commission for the purpose of delimiting their shared border.

The commission reached its conclusion amicably, agreeing that the watershed of the Dangrek mountain range should define the boundary, and subsequently officials from the Indochinese side – some of whom had been members of the mixed commission – drew up a map in which Preah Vihear lay on the Indochinese side.

At the time, the Siamese government accepted this map in good faith; crucially, a Siamese monk even accepted an invitation to visit the temple as a guest of the French Indochinese government. After all, the commission had met in a collegiate spirit, and no cause for concern was evident until it transpired that the map did not accurately define the watershed – had it done so, the temple would have lain on the Siamese side of the border. In the mid-1950s Thailand occupied the temple; Cambodia, protesting, took the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

In its judgment, published in 1962, the court found that the map was not of itself binding, agreeing with Thailand that the initial depiction of the watershed, and hence the boundary, was erroneous. But the court went on to say that since the Siamese authorities had ‘accepted the map without further investigation, [they] could not now plead any error vitiating the reality of their consent,’ and furthermore that they had already passed up several other opportunities in which to raise the matter. Preah Vihear, declared the ICJ, would remain in Cambodia.

Boundary disputes have a habit of flaring up when least expected. In July 2008, Cambodia successfully managed to have Preah Vihear included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, with an incendiary effect on Thai national sentiment. Initially, the Thai government had supported the submission, and for a time the two administrations worked together on a plan whereby a buffer zone around the temple would be regarded as Thai but ultimately administered jointly. Such an arrangement would have in effect made the temple a Cambodian ‘enclave’ within Thailand.

But opposition MPs decried the government’s failure to support what they described as Thailand’s sovereign interests, and relations between the two countries became heated. Troops built up on both sides of the border and a skirmish in October 2008 led to casualties on both sides. In the event the immediate situation was diffused; but the numerous dawns which have since risen over the temple complex have proved to be false, and as of January 2010 this potential conflict seems to be moving away from, not toward, a peaceable and long-lasting solution.

There is no doubting the depth of genuine national feeling keeping the issue on the burner. For many Cambodians, the temple represents a vestige of a Khmer kingdom which was once very much more extensive than it is now; whereas Thais see the 1962 ruling as a perpetuation of an injustice made against them by a former, albeit neighbouring, colonial power.

But there are a number of other contexts to consider. Thailand’s unsettled political situation certainly has a bearing: Preah Vihear is a useful stick with which the opposition can beat the ruling regime. That Cambodia has appointed former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to the post of special economic adviser can only be seen as a further complication. And then there is the issue of the Overlapping Claims Area (OCA), a 27,000 square-kilometre area in the Gulf of Thailand that has consistently evaded the imposition of a bilaterally-agreed maritime border between Cambodia and Thailand. Like Preah Vihear, the OCA is at once technically complicated and highly sensitive to changes in political temperature – both issues are capable of upsetting each other’s apple cart.

Yet there remains hope that the temple dispute can be resolved. In October last year, the Cambodian government supported a Thai suggestion that the dispute should be submitted to ASEAN for arbitration, which would be an interesting test of the organisation’s capability as a forum for dispute resolution – cynics might argue both that ASEAN has typically shied away from overtly political acts which might upset regional relations and that Cambodia and Thailand have already sought the assistance of a third party (in the form of the ICJ).

Other people’s disputes are always so much easier to solve than one’s own. But a long-lasting solution must inevitably take account of the shared and respective histories of both nations. In 2008 something along these lines was almost achieved; nonetheless, any agreement will remain vulnerable to attempts on either side to whip up xenophobic sentiments for political advantage – patriotism, as Dr Johnson pointed out, is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Preah Vihear remains an interesting case against which to test another pithy aphorism: Robert Frost’s observation that there are ‘no bad fences, only bad neighbours.’ The Thais and the Khmers are bad neighbours. While they have avoided outright war in the modern period, they remain suspicious of each other, and the potential for mutual recrimination is high. Also, and unfortunately, the ‘fence’ itself is a bad one, and the situation as a whole underlines the way in which poorly demarcated boundaries can become flashpoints capable of souring relations if given the opportunity to do so.

Perhaps the greatest hope resides in the thought that if both parties value Preah Vihear as highly as they profess to, then they share a greater sense of communality than they realise. A more likely prediction, however, is that ‘the temple case’ will remain on the syllabus of students of boundaries for a long time to come.

The Preah Vihear Temple located at the edge of the cliff that sticking out into the border side of Cambodia 525 meters below.

The question is, in this case the international border is on the mountain top or the borderline located on the ground below, if it is the ground below then is it the cliff that sticking out from the mountain on the side of the border of Thailand is part of the side of Cambodia? Or should it be called part of watershed on the side of the Thailand.

Did you guys have chance to visit and se the actual temple???
You will see why there is a dispute….and will be for the next century

Back to the situation at hand, modern cartography is a science of measurement based on reference points. I can’t pretend to understand it but the World Court examined evidence presented by mapping experts on both sides and determined that the temple belongs to the modern country of Cambodia. Period.

Based on your interest, we’ve just added a new 13 page PDF document in Khmer that includes many maps, photos and diagrams that will be helpful to non-Khmer readers. It also has links to a number of original sources that you’ll find useful.

What I still do not understand is how the Thais justify their argument that 4.6 square kilometres adjacent to the temple belongs to them. Where is the French map by reference to which the World Court made its decision. I have never been able to find it with the Court’s online papers.

Andrew Hicks