New Year, Same Bad Borders

The Persian New Years holiday, Nowruz, which marks the first day of spring is celebrated across Central Asia. Made a public holiday in all five states shortly after independence, celebrations from Astana to Bishkek to Tashkent include fairs, parades, games, and dancing. This year, on a section of the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border the holiday was marked with the closing of a border crossing, the arrival of 40 Uzbek troops, two armored personnel vehicles and two military trucks.

On March 18, according to the Kyrgyz authorities, Uzbekistan unilaterally decided to close at least two border crossings between a pair of remote Kyrgyz towns in western Kyrgyzstan. The road between Ala-Buka and Kerben, both Kyrgyz villages in the Jalalabad region, passes through a spur of Uzbekistan’s Namangan region on the north side of the famed Fergana valley. This, like the rest of the convoluted Fergana borders, is a vestige of Soviet rule. In dividing the republics of Central Asia along ethnic lines the Soviets virtually ensured pockmarked borders, especially in the Fergana valley.

Uzbek authorities said the sudden deployment and closure was linked to increased security during the Nowruz holidays. But the location and limited nature hinted at a more specific motivation. As with previous incidents – some of which have been violent – along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border (but also Kyrgyz and Uzbek borders with Tajikistan), local issues seem to be at the heart of flaring tensions, the larger border delimitation issue aside.

The Kyrgyz foreign ministry summoned Komil Rashidov, Uzbekistan’s ambassador in Bishkek, on March 18 and handed him a “note of protest.” Kyrgyz news outlet 24.kg reported that Daniyar Sydykov, state secretary, “expressed hope that the Uzbek authorities will show the political will and determination in strict compliance with international law and the Treaty of Eternal Friendship between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan dated December 24, 1996.”

Kyrgyzstan’s armed forces, responding to the additional Uzbeks on the border sent two of its own troop carriers to the area on March 19. The Uzbeks had closed one border crossing entirely and barred Kyrgyz citizens from crossing into Uzbekistan through another. In response, the Kyrgyz barred Uzbek citizens from crossing at three other points. Kyrgyzstan made its withdrawal contingent on Uzbekistan’s.

On March 21 both sides pulled back, drawing down to a reported eight soldiers on each side of the checkpoints. While the Nowruz incident seemed to be resolved after a few days, the story from the Uzbek side that the increased security was due to the holiday seemed thin, more an excuse than an explanation.

Kurbanbai Iskandarov, the Kyrgyz government’s special envoy on border issues, told Kloop.kg (a Kyrgyz news website) that the incident was linked to a local water reservoir. Reminiscent of a spat last year between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – in which Tajiks villagers claimed Kyrgyz villagers blocked a canal and so blocked a road in response – the latest incident on the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border similarly points to resource access as core source of tension.

Tensions over resources – particularly water – occur at both the hyper-local level and the national level. Iskandarov’s comments to Kloop indicated that the Nowruz incident was part of an ongoing back and forth regarding the Kasan-Sai reservoir just south of Ala-Buka. (Stories about this incident named the reservoir as the “Orto-Tokoi (Kasan-Sai) reservoir,” but there is another reservoir near Issyk-Kul which is also called “Orto-Tokoi”). According to Iskandarov, Uzbekistan recently sought permission to send people to carry out repair works on the reservoir, which had been constructed by the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. The USSR had ordered the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic to allocate a portion of its water resources to the Uzbeks, for that republic’s massive cotton industry. In the late 1940s, 660 hectares of land were transferred to the Uzbek republic for the construction of a reservoir which was completed in 1954 and enlarged in the 1970s. Disputes over the reservoir’s ownership were reignited by independence in 1991. The Uzbeks said they’d given land in compensation for the reservoir’s territory and the Kyrgyz said the reservoir was built on land still belonging to Kyrgyzstan and thus belonged to the Kyrgyz.

“According to all the documents, this is our territory, so in the event of repair works being required, they should be carried out by the Kyrgyz side,” Iskandarov told Kloop.

While the troops have been pulled back local tensions remain, forcing the cancellation of an opposition rally in Kyrgyzstan’s south on March 24. And the tensions look likely to persist, with opposition politicians saying the Kyrgyz government gave away Kyrgyz land to the Uzbeks.

Uzbekistan lies downstream from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The latter two countries are poorer and by comparison lack the resource wealth that exemplifies the rest of the region, with a single exception: water. Bishkek and Dushanbe have both based their future development prospects on harnessing their water resources, using hydropower to generate electricity for export. Although this strategy makes sense for these countries individually, Uzbekistan relies on the water trickling out downstream to feed its cotton industry. Tashkent has been strident in its pushback against any upstream projects that might alter the flow – lashing out at Tajikistan’s Rogun dam project, for example.

That this specific dispute is still ongoing is not just a testament to how critical water resources are in the region, it also demonstrates just how little political progress has been made, particularly with regard to borders, in Central Asia since independence. Central Asia is hardly the only region with convoluted borders and disputes over shared resources, but it has allowed the disputes to derail efforts at economic integration. Neighbors tend to be the easiest markets to access, but Central Asia has been called the least-integrated region in the world for good reason. Kazakhstan is the only state in the region to appear in lists of the top five trading partners (either export or import) for any of the other regional states.

The Nowruz border incident is indicative of a larger systemic problem. The haphazard and often arbitrary closure of checkpoints not only hinders Uzbek and Kyrgyz citizens from traveling to neighboring towns – forcing them onto small side roads and hours of detours – it also fosters ongoing resentment between neighboring communities, and between border communities and central governments. Ultimately, it’s these local tensions that could eventually cause an eruption on the border, rather than anything stemming from Tashkent and Bishkek.