#Eternal lands not responding series

People are unhappy, but the politics behind this is very powerful. The sense of resignation to the inevitable was expressed by one man who said, 'Everyone is just shocked. Some spoke of the fear that a mandatory visa regime would be eventually introduced. They knew that in a matter of days such contacts would come to an end, and were frightened about the future - about having to take large detours to see their families a few yards away. Almost everyone had relatives on the 'other side', where the village school and the cemetry were also located, and as we stood talking numerous people crossed the border with wares or livestock they had bought one side or the other. Locals were shocked, barely able to believe what was happening. Along this stretch the land was not disputed, but a densely knit community existed that would soon be cut in two. When I visited on November 2, the Uzbekistani authorities had dug up the road to prevent vehicle tranpsort and had set up a long row of concrete columns stretching away through the fields in both directions, but had yet to erect any barbed wire. Jar village consistis of one long, straight road, which happens to be disected by the border. Aravan shares only a roughly 80 mile (125 km) border with Uzbekistan, but along this over 350 hectares of land is disputed between them. To observe the effects of this demarcation first hand, at the start of December I visited the small village of Jar along the border with Kyrgyzstan's Aravan and Uzbekistan's Marhamat regions. Unilateral demarcation by one state at breathtaking speed would seem to be a recipe for dissatisfaction and conflict. Given the tangled borders (complicated by issues of interconnected gas, electricity and water supply networks), border demarcation would appear to be a complicated process, requiring compromise in order to achieve a consensus. Water systems are also intricately interconnected, with Uzbekistan drawing water from reservoirs located in Kyrgyzstani territory such as Kempir-Abad and Kerkidan, and with waterways such as the Southern Ferghana Canal criss-crossing the Aravan-Andijon border in multiple locations.Īlthough numerous demarcation commissions were formed during the Soviet era, none ever fully resolved questions relating to issues such as: isolated territorial enclaves temporary land leases which were never returned rent agreements which were left unpaid promises to resettle or recompensate those forced to move due to reservoir or other constructions which were never honoured and conflicting maps showing the borders running in different places. Industrial enterprises frequently overlap borders, an example being Uzbekistan's carbide production plant in the Kyrgyz region of Kadamjoi. As a result, today large areas of land officially claimed by one state in the Ferghana Valley are being farmed by citizens of the other states, an example of which lies along the Batken-Isfara (Kyrgystan-Tadjikistan) border, where over 1300 hectares of land are reportedly disputed. Soviet-era economic planning decisions, likewise, were made without taking borders into consideration. Bishkek had established a border commission in the spring to respond to developments, but it had not materialized on the ground.ĭemarcation of the border in the Ferghana Valley is proving to be extremely complicated, because the borders were in the Soviet times barely more than lines on maps, having little relevance to everyday life. To the surprise and dismay of many, there was no official Kyrgyz response to the Uzbekistani action. Around the start of October onwards Uzbekistan began in earnest the job of erecting a barbed-wire fence around large sections of its territory in the Ferghana Valley, apparently as a means to prevent continued incursions into Uzbekistan by armed opponents of President Islam Karimov's government. Some accused Uzbekistan of advancing border checkpoints along roads into Kyrgyz territory. There had throughout the year been persistent comments by Kyrgyzstani journalists and politicians concerning territorial disputes.

#Eternal lands not responding series

This final article concludes the series by detailing developments in the autumn which centred around disputes over border demarcation.Īfter the end of the Batken fighting a new development emerged that threatened to spark an even graver crisis between the two states than the events in the spring: Uzbekistan's unilateral demarcation of its border in the Ferghana Valley.

The first two papers in this series examined the 1999 Spring Border Crisis between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and the various reactions and responses to it.