Thailand and Cambodia signed a ceasefire agreement on Saturday after weeks of deadly fighting along their border over competing territorial claims.
The neighbors’ long-standing border conflict reignited this month, shattering an earlier truce and killing at least 47 people, according to official counts. Around one million people have also been displaced.
The agreement took effect at noon local time and calls for a halt in military movements and airspace violation for military purposes.
Only Thailand has carried out airstrikes, hitting sites in Cambodia as recently as Saturday morning, according to the Cambodian Defense Ministry.
The deal also calls for Thailand, after the ceasefire has held for 72 hours, to repatriate 18 Cambodian soldiers it has held as prisoners since earlier fighting in July. Their release has been a major demand of the Cambodian side.
Agence Kampuchea Press via AP 
Within hours of the signing, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry protested to Cambodia that a Thai soldier sustained a permanent disability when he stepped on an anti-personnel land mine it charged had been laid by Cambodian forces.
Defense ministers met at the border to sign the agreement
The agreement was signed by the countries’ defense ministers, Cambodia’s Tea Seiha and Thailand’s Nattaphon Narkphanit, at a border checkpoint. It followed three-day lower-level talks by military officials.
It declares that the sides are committed to an earlier ceasefire that ended five days of fighting in July and follow-up agreements.
The original July ceasefire was brokered by Malaysia and pushed through by pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. It was formalized in more detail in October at a regional meeting in Malaysia that Trump attended. Despite those deals, the countries carried on a bitter propaganda war and minor cross-border violence continued, escalating in early December to widespread heavy fighting.
Many clauses similar to those in Saturday’s agreement were included in October’s ceasefire document, and were open to various interpretations and generally honored only in part. These included provisions concerning land mines and the Cambodian prisoners.
The fragility of the new agreement was underlined by Thailand’s Defense Ministry spokesperson Surasant Kongsiri in a news briefing after Saturday’s signing. He said that the safe return of civilians to their homes would indicate the situation had stabilized enough to allow the repatriation of the captured Cambodian soldiers.
“However if the ceasefire does not materialize, this would indicate a lack of sincerity on the Cambodian side to create sure peace,” he said. “Therefore, the 72-hour ceasefire beginning today is not an act of trust nor unconditional acceptance but a time frame to tangibly prove whether Cambodia can truly cease the use of weapons, provocations and threats in the area.”
Civilians bore the brunt of the fighting
Thailand has lost 26 soldiers and one civilian as a direct result of the combat since Dec. 7, according to officials. Thailand has also reported 44 civilian deaths.
Cambodia hasn’t issued an official figure on military casualties, but says that 30 civilians have been killed and 90 injured. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated on both sides of the border.
“Today’s ceasefire also paves the way for the displaced people who are living in the border areas to be able to return to their homes, work in the fields, and even allow their children to be able to return to schools and resume their studies,” Cambodia’s Defense Minister Tea Seiha told reporters after the signing.
Each side blamed the other for initiating the fighting and claimed to be acting in self-defense.
Heng Sinith / AP 
The agreement also calls on both sides to adhere to international agreements against deploying land mines, a major concern of Thailand.
Thai soldiers along the border have been wounded in at least 10 incidents this year by what Thailand says were newly planted Cambodian mines. Cambodia says the mines were left over from decades of civil war that ended in the late 1990s.
Following the latest injury on Saturday, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry noted that the new agreement “includes key provisions on joint humanitarian demining operations to ensure the safety of military personnel and civilians in the border areas as soon as possible.”
Another clause says the two sides “agree to refrain from disseminating false information or fake news.”
The agreement calls for a resumption of previous measures to demarcate the border. The sides also agreed to cooperate in suppressing transnational crimes. That’s primarily a reference to online scams perpetrated by organized crime that have bilked victims around the world of billions of dollars each year. Cambodia is a center for such criminal enterprises.
World leaders hail the agreement
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was instrumental in putting together the original ceasefire, said the new agreement “reflects a shared recognition that restraint is required, above all in the interest of civilians.”
The European Union also welcomed the agreement, and called on “both sides to implement it in good faith.” EU foreign affairs spokesperson Anouar El Anouni thanked the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which both Cambodia and Thailand are members, for “playing a positive part in the result,” in a social media post.
“The EU stands ready to provide any support needed,” El Anouni said.
The office of United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said he “welcomes news that Thailand and Cambodia have resumed a ceasefire and hopes this will pave the way for confidence building and peace.”
“Communities and migrants affected must receive all necessary assistance to return home safely,” the office said on social media.
