Temur Umarov and Alibek Mukambayev
The Ferghana Valley, divided on the political map between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, has resembled a battlefield ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hundreds of people have been killed in skirmishes and armed clashes in the region over the past three decades. Agricultural conditions rendered any kind of resolution seemingly impossible: resources are limited in this predominantly agrarian, densely populated, arid region. In addition, officials in all three states used the border conflicts for domestic political purposes.
On March 31, however, the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan assembled in the Tajik city of Khujand to solemnly declare an end to all of their territorial disputes. Future conflicts cannot be ruled out completely. But for now, Central Asia’s leaders see far greater benefits from cooperation than from aggression. That might be the only guarantor of stability in the Ferghana region.
National borders in Central Asia were only demarcated in the 1950s, and the republics remained dissatisfied with the outcome. Regular conflicts occurred between the Central Asian republics even during the Soviet era, when the borders between them were purely administrative. When the Soviet Union fell, each newly independent state began to interpret discrepancies on old Soviet maps in its own favor, which only exacerbated the problem.
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