Original report from Oddar Meanchey province
05 January 2010
During the war years, the area of O’Smach saw some of Cambodia’s fiercest fighting. The region, in the mountains of today’s Oddar Meanchey province, was littered with mines and surrounded with guns. Here government forces battled with the royalist guerrillas. War lasted here from 1970 to 1998.
“O’Smach was formerly the hottest war zone, the one with the most fighting,” observed Nget Paranin, chief of the communes now-international checkpoint, on a recent afternoon. “But now it has become a region of markets, casinos, an international checkpoint and infrastructure.”
Indeed, 12 years after peace settled here, the guns are silent, there are no explosions, and fighters have been replaced by retailers and shoppers from the Cambodian and Thai sides of the border.
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