Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have put an end to a century-old conflict
On March 13, the heads of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Sadyr Japarov and Emomali Rahmon will sign a historic agreement on the state border between the Kyrgyz Republic (KR) and the Republic of Tajikistan (RT) at talks in Bishkek. The multi-year border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with armed clashes and casualties, will come to an end. The parties exchanged equivalent disputed areas and resolved the issues of joint use of interstate roads and reservoirs. The EU has allocated 3 million euros to Tajikistan to strengthen the border with Kyrgyzstan.
Sadyr Japarov met Emomali Rahmon at Manas Airport at the plane ramp on March 12. The two heads of state briefly discussed the upcoming negotiations and watched a concert program with the participation of artists from the two countries.
Unprecedented security measures were taken in Bishkek on the occasion of the state visit of the President of Tajikistan: the central avenue of the capital and adjacent streets were blocked, schools and kindergartens were switched to distance learning. The scale of the measures taken underscores the exceptional importance of the expected historic event, which was preceded by lengthy negotiations that ended on February 21 with the signing of a protocol on the demarcation of a common section of the border.
The 972-kilometer border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is complicated by the Soviet legacy. 100 years ago, in 1924, after the demarcation of Central Asia into separate states, the border was drawn in such a way that it passed not just through settlements, but also through the homes of residents of border areas, forming enclaves and ignoring ethnographic and economic realities. This provoked conflicts over access to resources. The aggravation of the situation after the collapse of the USSR led to numerous clashes between local Kyrgyz and Tajiks, culminating in the armed conflict of 2022, which claimed the lives of more than two hundred people and caused a massive evacuation of the population. Large material damage was caused to the infrastructure of the border territories of Sughd and Batken regions. The drug trafficking route also passed through here.
Negotiations on the delimitation of the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which began back in 2002, have been stalled for a long time due to Dushanbe’s concerns about political instability in Bishkek, where coups have repeatedly taken place. According to Igor Shestakov, director of the Oi Ordo Center for Expert Initiatives, Tajikistan expressed doubts about the Kyrgyz side’s ability to comply with the agreements reached. “The signing of the agreement today testifies to Dushanbe’s recognition of the stability of the current government in Kyrgyzstan. It is symbolic that Emomali Rahmon, who signed the peace agreements in Bishkek in 1997 that ended the civil war in Tajikistan, is putting an end to this protracted border dispute today. This event acquires special significance, being the last historic decision of President Rahmon,” Igor Shestakov told NG. Experts believe that the next step will be the completion of Operation Successor: Emomali Rahmon will hand over the country to his successor without global problems and surrounded by friendly countries, with the exception, of course, of Afghanistan, to which Dushanbe still has questions.
The expert noted that Sadyr Japarov, having come to power, promised to resolve the border issue diplomatically, and he succeeded. “Resolving this issue is of key importance not only for the internal stability of both countries, but also for the security of the entire region, given the turbulent situation in neighboring Afghanistan, where numerous militants are concentrated. The settlement of the conflict is in the interests of both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which are members of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization. – NG), which implied a certain participation of Russia in the negotiation process. Although Moscow’s influence was not always obvious, the expert is sure that without its participation the signing of the agreement would have been impossible. Tashkent and Astana, which are interested in regional stability and security, also contributed to the agreement,” Shestakov stressed.
He also noted that there are still questions in the Kyrgyz society about the signed agreement, since only some of its provisions were presented to the deputies of the Jogorku Kenesh. The document’s ratification procedure has yet to be completed. It is possible that opponents of the current government, primarily the president and head of the State Committee for National Security Kamchibek Tashiev, who played a key role in the negotiations, will try to politicize this issue. Moreover, the country will have to go through two electoral cycles – parliamentary elections and presidential elections in 2027. Nevertheless, the main achievement is the cessation of tension in the border area.
According to Alexander Knyazev, Doctor of Historical Sciences, a leading researcher at the MGIMO Institute of International Studies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, the completion of the Kyrgyz-Tajik border negotiations and the signing of the protocol on border delimitation is an undoubted success in bilateral relations. “The border conflict has dragged on for decades since the Soviet era and was the largest among its kind throughout the region, culminating at the end of 2022 at the interstate level. At the same time, I would note that the negotiations between Bishkek and Dushanbe began to acquire a constructive character, the parties agreed on such forms of settlement as the exchange of disputed areas and the joint use of individual border facilities, after a trilateral meeting on this issue with the President of Russia in Astana in October 2022, which gave the negotiation process the necessary impulses,” – said “NG” Knyazev.
According to him, one of the deputies in the Kyrgyz parliament had already made an inherently provocative attempt to challenge the agreement reached, but as a result, the draft treaty and additional agreements to it were approved by Parliament. “This attempt is a reminder that the resolution of the delimitation issue is not yet a final success. The next stages are the demarcation of the border, and then the implementation of all that has been achieved and agreed upon on the ground. The latter may be the most difficult when people on both sides of the borderline will need to explain the new reality. A person has been using a piece of pasture land or a water source for decades, and suddenly it turns out that it is now located on the territory of a neighboring state. At the same time, a single person may be much less concerned about the explanation that the country received the same thing in return, but in a different place. What matters to a person is what is here and now,” said Knyazev. Therefore, in overcoming many such local situations, according to the expert, there is still a lot of work ahead, which falls more on local authorities, up to a single locality.
Brussels did not stay away from the process of settling border issues between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The day before, it became known that the EU had allocated 3 million euros to Dushanbe for the construction of shelters and other facilities on the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. The project, called the Initiative to Strengthen Stability in Border Areas, will be implemented as part of an agreement of understanding between the country’s authorities, the EU delegation and the Aga Khan Agency, the recently deceased spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims (the agency invests a lot of money in Tajikistan).