Vietnamese tanks moving to Preah Vihear to help Cambodia: Unconfirmed online report

16 Feb 2011
LGV

The following translation from French is an excerpt from a post on Le Grand Village. The original article in French is available here.

A division of Vietnamese tanks crossed into Cambodia to travel to the border with Thailand. While the UN is pushing for a dialogue within the ASEAN framework, the protagonists are getting ready for fighting.

Vietnamese tanks cross Cambodia and China provides fighter jets

I can tell you and it was a big shock for the witness who recounted to me the scene [of the Vietnamese tanks]. Twenty years earlier, the witness saw the arrival of the Vietnamese tanks which came to “liberate” the country from the Khmer Rouge regime. These Viets stayed and they looted and took away wealth belonging to a country that was then in agony.

The witness thought he would die from fright when on Saturday, early in the morning, he saw a new column of Viet tanks following the same path, twenty years later, to “save” Cambodia once again!

These tanks were sent to scare Thailand and to act as a counterweight in the negotiations. However, Vietnam, just like China, had obtained well earned compensation for this help. In addition to the strengthening of their influence within ASEAN vis-à-vis the loss of credibility of the Thai capitalism, Vietnam and China have their eyes fixed on the oil reserve recently found in Cambodia (furthermore, Vietnam already offered to provide oil – which Cambodia needs while waiting to be able to pump out its own resources – in exchange for future exploration rights).

The escalation of violence and the preparation for war worry NGOs in Cambodia, and they also alarm the expats. The risk of embroiling the region is small but real. The regional and international powers will not allow Southeast Asia to be embroiled in fighting. Being too sensitive, the region has numerous interests and it also attracts the US, as well as China and India. None of these superpowers want to see a war between Thailand and Cambodia, and even less within ASEAN itself. Only Thailand would want a war in order to seek its national popularity which was lost during the Red Shirts crisis.