At the end of April 2021, fighting broke out along the border between
the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Over the course of just a few days, almost 50 people were killed and thousands were forced
to flee for their lives in the most serious confrontation between the countries in decades.
So, what are the roots of their long-standing border conflict?
And what exactly sparked this latest outbreak of fighting?
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Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay
and here I take an informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
How are the borders of countries defined?
While many have come about through war and conquest,
others have been negotiated or delineated by judicial processes.
And for many of the states that have emerged over the past 70 years or so,
their borders were defined by processes of colonisation and decolonisation.
But there's also the fascinating phenomenon of interstate borders that were originally drawn
up at a time when two countries existed as territories within a single state
but then became independent when the central states broke apart.
In such cases, the boundaries can be particularly complex as they follow a specific internal logic.
In the context of a unified state, such divisions may seem to pose relatively few problems.
However, following their independence, what had once been mere internal
administrative boundaries can become highly contested interstate borders.
One obvious example is the Soviet Union.
Its collapse in 1991 has thrown up a number of examples of contested borders.
But while many of us are familiar with the more high-profile cases,
such as Russia's claim on Crimea and Armenia's on Nagorno-Karabakh,
there are also a number of other lesser-known territorial disputes.
This was highlighted when serious fighting broke out between Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan in late April 2021.
So, what was the fighting between the countries all about?
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan lie in Central Asia - a collection of what is now five countries
that emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
At 200,000 square kilometres, or 77,000 thousand square miles, the Kyrgyz Republic - more usually
known as Kyrgyzstan - is the 85th largest of 193 members of the United Nations.
Its population currently stands at six and a half million.
Of this, 74% are ethnic Kyrgyz, followed by Uzbeks who make up around 15% of the population.
Ethnic Tajiks make up a little under one percent.
Lying immediately to its south is Tajikistan.
At 143,000 square kilometres, or 55,000 square miles, it is the 94th largest UN member.
Its population stands at 9.3 million.
According to the 2010 census, the most recent available,
the large majority are ethnic Tajiks making up around 84% of the population.
This is followed by Uzbeks who represent about 12% of the population
and then Kyrgyz who amount to a little under 1%.
Interestingly, while we tend to think of Central Asia as predominantly ethnically turkic in roots,
and the majority of the population of Kyrgyzstan are indeed of turkic origin,
Tajikistan stands apart.
The Tajiks in fact trace their roots to Persia and their language is closely related to Farsi,
the language of Iran.
But despite the linguistic and ethnic differences, the cultures of the region
share a lot in common - not least of all a common religious heritage as adherence of Sunni Islam.
Indeed, as we'll see, while the conflict increasingly has an ethno-national dimension,
it is in fact rooted in another issue: access to natural resources.
Both countries are highly mountainous and habitable pastureland is at a premium;
amounting to around 10 to 15 percent of their respective territory.
As a result, the vast majority of their populations live in lowland valleys.
And it's here that the real problem emerges.
The current conflict is centered on an area known as the Ferghana valley, a 200 kilometre long and
70 kilometre wide area that spans present day Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
The meeting point of two rivers, the area is extremely fertile and
has been an important site of human habitation for thousands of years.
Having been conquered by the Persian Empire in 500BCE, in 329BCE it came
under the control of Alexander the Great, who established a greek presence in the valley.
Later it would come under Chinese and Turkic control before being
conquered by the Arab Muslims in the 8th century.
In 1219, it was overrun by Genghis Khan, becoming part of the Mongol Empire.
However, for our purposes, the story really starts with the
process of Russian imperial expansion into Central Asia.
As part of this process, the Fergana Valley became part of what was known as Russian
Turkestan, which in turn became the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic,
a part of the Russian Socialist Federative Republic, following the Russian revolution.
In 1924, two years after the formal creation of the Soviet Union,
the Turkestan ASSR was dissolved and in its place two new soviet socialist republics,
the highest territorial unit of the Soviet Union, were created:
the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic.
In addition, several lower units were created.
These included the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, a part of the Uzbek SSR,
and the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, a part of Russia.
Both would later become top level socialist republics in their own right,
with the Tajik SSR created in December 1929 and the Kyrgyz SSR in December 1936.
It was during the Soviet era that the tensions over resources really emerged.
Both countries experienced a significant increase in agricultural production,
especially cotton, which led to an ever-increasing pull on the region's water resources.
However, as the republics existed within a single state,
and production was collectivised under Soviet control,
issues of land and water ownership were considered to be of little direct significance.
Indeed, the boundaries between the territories were at points adjusted
to reflect changing population patterns and agricultural use.
This even included the creation of a number of exclaves; pockets of territory belonging
to one Soviet socialist republic within the territory of another.
And yet, even within the USSR, there was several recorded incidents of serious violence, including
fighting in 1975 and 1989 that required the intervention of Soviet armed forces.
These issues would start to take on new significance in 1991
when the USSR began to break apart.
On 31 August, just days after a failed coup in the Soviet Union, and following the lead of Ukraine
and Moldova, the the Kyrgyz socialist republic declared independence alongside the Uzbek SSR.
A little over a week later, on the 9 September, the Tajik SSR followed suit.
Six months later, on the 2 March 1992, following the final collapse of the USSR,
the Republic of Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic were admitted as members of the United Nations.
From the start, tensions emerged between the two countries over their respective border.
As well as concerns over pasture land and access to water,
issues also arose over a number of important roads that pass through one another's territory.
Although attempts were made to try to delimit a border,
these efforts were complicated by a fundamental difference on the reference point for the process.
While Tajikistan insisted on using maps drawn up in the 1920s,
Kyrgyzstan referred to maps prepared in the late 1950s.
As a result, out of a border stretching over 978 kilometres, even today, 30 years after
they became independent, over 450 kilometres - a little under half - remains undefined.
What has made this situation particularly worrying is that over the past two decades
it has led to a number of border clashes between the two countries.
The exact number is contested as in most cases
these have tended to be relatively low level incidents
often involving groups of villagers armed with little more than stones and farming implements.
However, there's also been a number of more serious outbreaks of fighting.
For example, in 2014, one outbreak involved over a thousand civilians.
But at times these incidents have even escalated to include border guards and army units,
which has led to gunfire and even the use of artillery and mortars.
This all means that on top of the lingering sense of resentment over
territory lost during the Soviet era, and competing claims to resources,
it appears as if a more ethnic dimension to the conflict is now emerging.
It's against this backdrop that the most recent outbreak of fighting erupted.
So, what exactly happened?
The immediate cause of fighting seems to have been the installation of a surveillance camera
to observe a water pump and reservoir close to the Tajik exclave of Vorukh,
in the far west of Kyrgyzstan, in the Batken province.
On 28 April, reports emerged of fighting between villagers who began hurling rocks at each other.
From there, the conflict escalated quickly with reports of attacks against houses and shops.
What made the situation particularly worrying,
and set it apart from usual clashes, was that it didn't remain localised.
Instead, confrontations emerged at various points along the disputed border.
This in turn saw border guards and troops joining the fighting
and soon led to reports of gunfire and even the use of mortars.
Despite efforts to bring a halt to the fighting, the incidents continued into the next day.
By this stage, the Kyrgyz Government was accusing Tajik forces of even
using helicopter gunships to attack villagers,
prompting it to call a state of emergency and begin evacuating people from the region.
Amidst wider international calls for both countries to de-escalate the crisis
and protect civilians, the clashes finally came to an end on the 1 May
when the heads of the countries' security services jointly announced a 'complete ceasefire'.
While the conflict proved to be relatively short-lived,
the effects of the fighting were significant.
It's estimated that 49 people were killed and around 160 wounded.
Moreover, over 30,000 were forced to leave their
homes when Kyrgyzstan evacuated its citizens living in the region.
In addition, numerous houses and other buildings - including schools,
checkpoints and shops - were burnt down.
Looking ahead, it's hard to say where things will go from here.
In some senses, there's room for hope.
Soon after the ceasefire, the two presidents Sadyr Japarov of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan's
Emomali Rahmon spoke by phone and agreed on several further steps to ease tensions.
This included forming a joint military commission to inspect the withdrawal of forces
and the two countries have also announced that they expect another
140 kilometers of their border to be demarcated in the coming weeks.
But while these steps might well help to ease matters in some places,
it's likely that the most contentious areas will remain potential hot spots for years to come and
low level incidents between villages are likely to continue, any of which could well escalate.
Moreover, both countries have now launched criminal investigations against the other
into the causes of the fighting, which could also exacerbate tensions in the months ahead.
The emergence of fighting between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan has again focused attention
on the legacy of border conflicts that can emerge when countries break apart.
In this case, and despite long-standing efforts to reach an agreement on the delimitation of
their boundaries, the two countries have seen a number of confrontations emerge.
While in many cases these have been relatively low level and involved
civilians attacking each other with little more than stones and farming implements,
in some cases the fighting had become a lot more serious and has drawn in the armed forces
of the two countries; as happened in the most recent bout of fighting.
In this sense, the latest confrontation between the two countries is certainly nothing new.
However, it does serve to underscore just how much fluid boundaries created a time when
frontiers meant very little within a state can later become points of conflict when that
state ceases to exist and its constituent parts become independent countries in their own right.
In the meantime, while the ceasefire appears to be holding,
going on past experience it seems unlikely that this will be the last such example of conflict
between these two Central Asian nations.
I hope you found that useful. If so, here are some more videos that you might find interesting.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.