The Endlessly Troublesome Fergana Valley

Before the 18th century, Central Asia functionally had few borders. By the end of the 20th century, the lines Imperial Russia, and then the Soviet Union, had drawn were solidified into borders that continue to cause friction today. Yet no border in the region causes as much trouble as those that split the Fergana Valley between three states. The ethnic, national, economic, and environmental stresses that help fuel tensions in the valley are evidenced by occasional border clashes, restrictions on travel between neighboring states, upriver dams causing downriver rage, and periodic inter-ethnic violence.

Geographically, the Fergana valley is formed around the fertile confluence of the Naryn river and the Kara Darya, which flow out of the Tian Shan mountains and meet in the valley to form the Syr Darya (Darya means “river”). The Syr Darya eventually flows, or rather trickles, into the Aral Sea. Central Asia’s geography consists of mostly mountains or steppes, but the Fergana valley is 8,500 square miles of fertile, flat plains.

Five years ago, after revolution swept Kurmanbek Bakiyev from Kyrgyzstan's presidency, he fled to the southern city of Osh, his hometown. Near the Uzbek border, Osh is the heart of southern Kyrgyzstan and the center of the Kyrgyz portion of the Fergana. The city had a 70 percent Uzbek majority according to the first Soviet census in 1926; by 2009, Uzbeks were still Osh’s most numerous ethnic group, but made up only 48 percent of the population (just above the ethnic Kyrgyz population at 43 percent). Bakiyev had been considered a champion of southern Kyrgyz, and rallies held in support of him – even after it was clear he had lost the country – became a flashpoint for ethnic violence.

The state says over 400 people were killed in the 2010 riots that occurred mostly in Osh but also in Jalalabad. Other sources claim thousands died. Radio Ozodlik, the Uzbek language edition of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that 2,608 Uzbeks had been killed. Some of the disparity can be explained by the fact that official sources only counted those who died in hospitals and were formally buried. Locals say many died outside of hospitals and were buried traditionally by their families.

The 2010 violence was not unprecedented. In 1990, riots between Uzbek nationalists and Kyrgyz nationalists – apparently over rights to a former collective farm – resulted in the deaths of 300 to 600 people.

The trouble between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks is a function of the border, though it is not – as ethnic conflict elsewhere sometimes is – about the border itself.

Border History

Imperial Russia encroached on the Kazakh steppe in the early 18th century, building fortified cities at Omsk (1716), Semipalatinsk (1718), Orenburg (1743), and other sites that dot the modern border between Kazakhstan and Russia. By 1801 all of the great Kazakh hordes would come under Russian rule. Further south, the Khiva Khanate hugged the southern edge of the Aral Sea and the Emirate of Bukhara thrived from the still-standing eponymous capital now in Uzbekistan to Osh, in modern Kyrgyzstan. Early in the century, Bukhara split – with the Kokand Khanate declaring independence in the eastern Fergana valley. Further east, Kyrgyz tribes lived in the mountains around Lake Issyk Kul. In the region’s west, along the shores of the Caspian, Turkmen tribes formed an amorphous confederation. Nowhere were the lines solid.

In the mid-19th century, the Russians moved further south. The Kyrgyz tribes negotiated special treaties which by 1864 brought them under the protection of the Russians. The Khanates of Kokand and Bukhara contested encroaching Russian influence in the 1860s, but a Russian army conquered Tashkent in 1865, Khujand in 1866, and Samarquand in 1868. In 1869 the khan of Kokand signed a peace treaty; by 1875 both Kokand and Bukhara had been annexed by Russia. Khiva was crushed by two Russian armies in 1873, one marching west from Tashkent and the other sweeping down through the land between the Aral and Caspian. By the end of the century, the Turkomans came under Russian rule as well.

When the Soviet Union drew the borders of modern Central Asia in the 1930s, it did not necessarily do so arbitrarily – though they followed neither strictly ethnic or geographic boundaries. Some historians say splitting the Fergana Valley between three administrative regions was deliberate. Soviet planners feared that more homogenous or compact republics could fuel separatism. Or perhaps the Soviets divided the fertile land – perfect for cotton crops – to split the revenue between all three. The borders were largely a non-issue while the Soviet Union remained. Goods and people could easily traverse the borders as they were all within the Soviet umbrella. This is no longer true and it has hampered the region’s economic progress.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Central Asia’s newly independent states moved quickly to solidify their sovereignty. The quickest route was to embrace nationalism – stressing a national identity, based on ethnicity, vis-à-vis other states. But Fergana, a veritable patchwork of ethnicity split between three states, did not fit easily into this brand of defining national character ethnically.

As time has gone on, this remains a critical concern for regional powers. Kazakhstan has made a big deal of celebrating the 550th anniversary of the Kazakh state – never mind that almost all regional historians find the date arbitrary. Regional analysts link the sudden celebration to comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin last year about how Kazakhstan had never been a state before 1991. Aimed at calming nascent worries that Russia will do to northern Kazakhstan what it has done in eastern Ukraine, “harking back to 1465 is really about appealing to ethnic Kazakhs,” Dr. Rico Isaacs of the Oxford Brookes University, an expert on Kazakhstan and its nation-building efforts, told Eurasianet. “The fact that Kazakhstan is such a diverse nation is problematic when it comes to ethnically exclusive discourse, such as this statehood celebration.”

Economic Stagnation

In the Fergana valley, in particular, this has led to economic stagnation. The borders between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are difficult to cross. Uzbekistan requires a visa for Tajiks to pass through. Khujand, the second largest Tajik city and almost as ancient as Osh, sits at the far western end of the valley. The Sughd district is bordered almost entirely by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan; only a thin strip of territory – in some place only about 20 miles wide – links the district to the rest of Tajikistan. For this reason, the Tajik government largely stays out of affairs in Sughd, except to periodically arrest handfuls of people – usually on charges of being Salafists or dissidents.

Uzbekistan has a heavy government presence in its portion of valley. In 2005 unrest became a massacre in Andijan, which sits in the center of the Uzbek piece of the valley. In 2014 Uzbekistan cut off gas supplies to Kyrgyzstan for eight months on account of a contract technicality and in recent years there have been several border clashes near Uzbek exclaves enveloped by Kyrgyz territory.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan both lie upriver from Uzbekistan and have built significant dams in order to generate hydropower. The two have little by way of natural resources: gold and aluminum mostly and hardly any energy resources aside from water. Uzbekistan, however, has built its economy on cotton, which necessitates vast quantities of water. This issue would still arise had the borders been drawn more sensibly, but the division certainly doesn’t help in navigating these issues.

Last month a Kyrgyz official said that most of the Kyrgyz that had gone to join ISIS in Syria were Uzbeks. Such statements – whether true or not – press an ethnic point that the country’s neighbor, Uzbekistan, could very easily take offense to. There is not much love lost between the three states that share the Fergana.

Borders are troublesome things the world over, especially when drawn on maps without regard to history or geography. One of the most interesting aspects of the Fergana valley is that ethnic tension has not always been so stark. Before the Soviets drew lines, the difference between Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uzbeks was functional. Tajiks at least spoke a different language – of Persian descent rather than Turkic – but Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uzbeks were variations on a theme. Soviet ethnographers categorized highland Kipchaks (the nomadic Turkic people that spread across the Eurasian steppe in the 11th and 12 centuries) as Kyrgyz and the lowland Kipchaks as Uzbeks. Many maps still call the Kazakh steppe the Kirghiz steppe – illustrating the absurdity of some of these divisions.

But the divisions exist, whether they have practical roots or not. They stymie the region’s integration in a very tangible way and provide the fuel for conflict.