For days, the piercing whistle of Cambodian rockets sent 69-year-old Kantapong Prakaew scrambling for cover in his makeshift bunker – a frail fortification against the conflict in Thailand’s Surin province.
He is one of the few elderly residents who refused to flee, holding out as artillery fire ravaged the fields and wrecked the livelihoods of a long underdeveloped region.
Across the borderlands, the recent flare-up of violence between Thailand and Cambodia has claimed dozens of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands.
While a tentative truce appears to be holding, the scars of conflict are everywhere to see – from the torn-up fields where Kantapong once tended eucalyptus and rubber trees, to the anxious calculations of villagers forced to count the cost of a dispute they did not choose.
“It’s been very hard for all of us. We all have debts to pay,” said Kantapong, whose wife fled their village Surin’s Phanom Dong Rak district for an evacuation centre while he stayed behind. “We’ve wasted time and opportunities. Who will be responsible for our losses?”
