But there is another, less-studied side of the business that plays out on remote frontiers like this one, where opportunity, self-interest and money intersect.
Cambodia and Laos share a remote frontier that includes some of the wildest areas of both countries.
And Sani Top, 9,432 feet up a zigzag dirt road, is its remotest frontier.
Many families displaced by the upheaval have drifted to remote frontiers and grow coca where the lack of roads to market is not a problem.
Vast as are his physical proportions, I knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate to the remotest frontiers of his person.
And then once more, stronger, sharper, the message flashed from a remote frontier of his field.
It said 800 troops were being assigned to the remote frontier in a joint military and police operation.
She seems to have tired quickly of life on the remote frontier, returned to Kyoto, married a policeman and never returned.
They gradually intermarried with other ethnic groups in what was long a relatively remote frontier.
This placed the empire in a precarious position when serious threats arose in the interior or along a remote frontier.