Fergana Valley No Longer at ‘Critical Risk’ of Islamist Explosion, Regional Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 20 – The Fergana Valley shared by Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan has 17 percent of the population of Central Asia as a whole even though it occupies only two percent of the total area of that region has long been a source of instability there because of competition over scarce resources and the influence of Islamist groups.

            But according to Russian and regional experts on the area, the Fergana Valley no longer is “a zone of critical risk” given both the border demarcation agreement signed a year ago and the efforts of both the three countries and Moscow to reach agreements on water sharing and other issues (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-03-10--delimitacija-granicy-vyvela-ferganskuju-dolinu-iz-zony-kriticheskogo-riska-86347).

            These specialists say that before the demarcation agreement, conflict was at the center of life in this valley and it was something that Islamist groups regularly and successfully exploited to spread their messages at the expense of traditional Islam and to recruit young Muslims to fight both there and elsewhere against exiting regimes.

            The problems of the past have not disappeared, these specialists say; but they are far more manageable than they were. And as a result, the danger that the Fergana Valley will descend into violence and trigger instability across all of Central Asia is far less than it was only a few years ago.

            That may be an overly optimistic assessment, however, given that population in the region  continues to grow at a rapid rate and that the governments of the three countries don’t have the funds needed to solve all the problems of the people in this valley, including in particular declines in the amount of water available for public and economic use.

            But the current optimism is a far cry from the alarmist language experts on the region were using only a few years ago (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/04/fergana-valley-heading-toward-explosion.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/kazakhstan-and-russia-increase-security.html).