Kyrgyz and Tajiks Prevent Bishkek and Dushanbe from Resolving Border Disputes

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 10 – The governments of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan say they want to resolve their differences on the roughly half of their common border where there are differences, but the peoples of each are opposed to making any concessions to the other and as a result the entire process has been effectively put on hold despite much official back and forth.

            For years, only 504 kilometers of the 976 km border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has remained without demarcation not because the two governments do not meet and talk about it  but because the two peoples don’t want to make any concessions, Ivan Latin says (ritmeurasia.org/news--2019-03-09--kirgizsko-tadzhikskaja-granica-imitacija-delimitacii-41480).

            “The absence of a common document on delimitation about [even] the portions of the common border between Kyrgystan and Tajikistan that have been agreed to,” the commentator says, “show that the problems in the border are of the two countries are more serious than they may appear at first glance.”

            Without agreement on principles, one cannot hope for an accord. And if those principles can’t be agreed to by officials, those who live and work in the 70 disputed sections of the frontier region can’t be expected to agree either – and there is good evidence that they don’t.

            In 2014, there were 30 border incidents; in 2015, 10 in which three Tajiks died and 20 from both nations were wounded; in 2017, there were ten such incidents; and in 2018, seven. Even small things, like the location of a cemetery, can trigger then as happened two months ago. One hundred Kyrgyz and 50 Tajiks clashed over monuments.

            A major reason for the lack of progress is that the populations don’t want to have any.  According to Berkhrus Khimo, a Tajik economist from Vorukha, the largest Tajik exclave within the borders of Kyrgyzstan, “Kyrgyz society is very active, and the powers that be in Bishkek are afraid to make any compromises” on the border.

            The same likely could be said about the Tajiks in the frontier areas. They don’t want change either unless there is significant compensation – and these countries are too poor to be able to provide much of that. The UN has been involved for the last three years, but, as Latin says, there has not been much progress.

            One possibility that has been floated is leaving the border undefined but creating a common economic zone that would embrace frontier regions on both sides. That might help promote an improvement in relations on which border demarcation could proceed. But so far there appears to be little support for that idea.