PSCRP-BESA Reports No 130 (May 12, 2025)
by Alexander Shpunt
Judging by the extremely cautious reports in analytical publications of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are at the final stage of the process of delimitation of the state border dividing the two republics in the Fergana Valley. The unsettled borderline of the area near the Tajik exclave of Vorukh has formed an acute conflict for all decades after the collapse of the USSR, occasionally turning into armed clashes.
The border between the Isfara district and the Batken district, at that time the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region within the Russian Federation, was first defined by a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks a century ago, in 1924. In that extremely vague document, Vorukh was not an enclave; there was a direct open territory, a road connecting Vorukh with the rest of the Isfara district.
The dispute between the neighboring republics arose in the 1950s, when the construction of the Tortkul reservoir and the Tortkul canal was planned. At that time, several thousand hectares of territory belonging to the Isfara district were proposed to be transferred to the Kyrgyz Republic. In exchange, the Kyrgyz side was supposed to use the Tortkul reservoir as an inter-republican one and assist in irrigating about 3.5 thousand hectares of land in the Isfara district. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Tajik SSR did not ratify it and rejected it; neighboring Kyrgyzstan ratified the document.
The situation may seem fantastic to the Soviet bureaucracy, which sought to control every step of the authorities of the national republics, but nevertheless, Moscow preferred to pretend that the problem simply did not exist.
The first shots were fired almost exactly half a century ago: on New Year’s Day, December 31, 1974, hunting weapons were used. Of course, the USSR authorities kept the situation secret – Moscow made a new decision on the redistribution of territories, without taking into account the opinions of either side in the conflict. The next time the conflict entered the stage of open confrontation was in 1989, when the formal pretext was the water use regime of the Isfarinka River . And again, Moscow by force imposed on the local leaders of that time a new territorial solution that did not suit either the Tajik or the Kyrgyz sides, and the only purpose of which was to hide the very fact of the conflict.
The list of episodes in this confrontation, including bloody ones, could go on for a very long time, as it arose from the Soviet bureaucracy’s tendency to ignore and hush up objective contradictions between the national territories of the USSR. The last time shots were fired was in mid-September 2022; that episode became the largest and bloodiest in the entire history of Kyrgyz-Tajik conflicts on the border – the parties used not only small arms and mortars, but also heavy armored vehicles and aviation. As a result, about 100 people died, and more than 140 thousand local residents had to be evacuated.
And yet, according to very cautious, but already official reports, we are seeing an extremely rare example of a territorial conflict in the post-Soviet space that is close to finding a mutually acceptable solution.
At the end of March, Kamchybek Tashiev, co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission on border delimitation and demarcation (and simultaneously deputy chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan, head of the State Committee for National Security), spoke at a meeting of the Zhogorku Kenesh (parliament), where the Cabinet of Ministers submitted draft interstate agreements with Tajikistan. In parallel with the consideration of the draft of the main agreement on the Kyrgyz-Tajik state border, documents regulating the issues of construction and operation of highways between the states, as well as the access regime to water and energy facilities were submitted to the parliament for approval – these documents have already been adopted by the Parliament of the Republic.
The Tajik side was given a territory of one thousand hectares of pasturelands in the Vorukh exclave area, in exchange for which similar areas of cattle grazing lands were received in the Chon-Alai district on the Karaganda-Sai section, and he specified that the Tajik side had initially put forward a request for a larger volume of territory, citing the growth of the exclave’s population. Representatives of Kyrgyzstan at the negotiations considered it inappropriate to take such a step, since the exclave’s territory would increase significantly, which could potentially cause additional complications in the future.
The Golovnoy hydrotechnical structures, where a large-scale incident involving weapons occurred four years ago, were divided equally, despite initial objections from the Kyrgyz side. Bishkek agreed to make concessions to the Tajik side after receiving an offer of compensation – a total of seven hundred and fifty hectares of territory in various disputed areas were received for the concessions.
The area around Tort-Kocho, which is the intersection of the strategic Osh-Razzakov highway and the highway that connects the mainland of Tajikistan with the Vorukh exclave, has acquired the status of joint use. This status allows both countries to jointly exploit this section without creating mutual security threats.
A few days ago, on April 29, in the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan, in the Koshmolo area of Tort-Gul aiyl aimak, work began to install equipment on the Kyrgyz-Tajik state border . The ceremony to launch the work took place at a strategically important point – on a stele located at the junction of the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The parties reached compromise agreements after reaching an agreement to determine the configuration of the border, essentially starting work on developing agreements anew. Until that moment, all the decades of independence had been attempts to refer to the extremely contradictory and fragmentary documentation of the Stalinist and subsequent periods of the USSR, including cartographic materials and documentation dating back to the 1920s.
It was precisely this rejection of pseudo-historicism, the willingness to begin a dialogue not as two โrepublics of the USSR,โ but as two modern independent states, that led to hope for success.
All territorial conflicts of the former USSR, without exception, employ arguments based on Soviet bureaucracy and documents from the USSR authorities. The conflict around the exclave of Vorukh clearly shows that these documents cannot be considered as arguments. The communist leaders were interested in concealing disputes, not in resolving them.
The path chosen by the current leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistanโthe search for consensus on the platform of national interests of the new independent states โ could become an example for developing approaches for other countries of the former Soviet Union.
Alexander Shpuntย is Israeli and Russian researcher and expert in theory and practice of information and analytical work in the field of politics, resides in Haifa. Since 2016 he served as a professor at the National Research University โMoscow Higher School of Economics. In 1999 โ 2011 he also served as the Executive director of the โEffective Policy Foundationโ, the largest think-tank in the RF at that time, and in 2011 founded and headed the Institute of Political Analysis Tools, specializing in systems for monitoring political behavior.