Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan border
The Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan border is 1,314 kilometres (816 mi) in length and runs from the tripoint with Kazakhstan to the tripoint with Tajikistan.[1] It is Kyrgyzstan's longest external boundary.
Description
The border starts in the north at the tripoint with Kazakhstan and then creates a ‘finger’ of Uzbek territory wedged between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; the border traverses the
The northernmost section of the border is mountainous and sparsely populated, in stark contrast to the rest which traverses the densely populated Ferghana Valley.
The Uzbek railway network has several sections which cross this border, leaving a handful of stations in Kyrgyzstan at the end of small branch lines, and the easternmost section of railway crosses the border twice. This is a legacy of the Soviet era where infrastructure was built without regard to what were then internal boundaries.
Enclaves
There are several enclaves along the border: one Kyrgyz enclave in Uzbekistan (
History
Russia had conquered Central Asia in the 19th century by annexing the formerly independent Khanates of Kokand and Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara. After the Communists took power in 1917 and created the Soviet Union it was decided to divide Central Asia into ethnically-based republics in a process known as National Territorial Delimitation (or NTD). This was in line with Communist theory that nationalism was a necessary step on the path towards an eventually communist society, and Joseph Stalin's definition of a nation as being "a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture".
The NTD is commonly portrayed by anti-communists as being nothing more than a cynical exercise in divide and rule, a deliberately Machiavellian attempt by Stalin to maintain Soviet hegemony over the region by artificially dividing its inhabitants into separate nations and with borders deliberately drawn so as to leave minorities within each state.[2] Though indeed the Soviets were concerned at the possible threat of pan-Turkic nationalism,[3] as expressed for example with the Basmachi movement of the 1920s, closer analysis informed by the primary sources paints a much more nuanced picture than is commonly presented.[4][5][6]
The Soviets aimed to create ethnically homogeneous republics, however many areas were ethnically-mixed (e.g. the
NTD of the area along ethnic lines had been proposed as early as 1920.
On 25 February 1924 the Politburo and Central Committee of the Soviet Union announced that it would proceed with NTD in Central Asia.[15][16] The process was to be overseen by a Special Committee of the Central Asian Bureau, with three sub-committees for each of what were deemed to be the main nationalities of the region (Kazakhs, Turkmen and Uzbeks), with work then exceedingly rapidly.[17][18][19][20][21] There were initial plans to possibly keep the Khorezm and Bukhara PSRs, however it was eventually decided to partition them in April 1924, over the often vocal opposition of their Communist Parties (the Khorezm Communists in particular were reluctant to destroy their PSR and had to be strong-armed into voting for their own dissolution in July of that year).[22]
The border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan proved exceedingly hard to draw owing to the mixed nature of settlement in the Ferghana Valley. As a rule of thumb the territorial committees gave nomadic areas to the Kyrgyz and settled ones to the Uzbeks.[23] However the Soviets felt that the Kyrgyz entity lacked towns, and that this would act as an impediment to economic development.[24][25] It was for this reason that the Kyrgyz were awarded Osh, an overwhelmingly Uzbek-populated town.[23][26] There were further disputes over Andijan, Margilan and Jala-abad; eventually the first two were given to the Uzbeks, the latter to the Kyrgyz.[27] Originally the border was much longer, as the Uzbek SSR included the Khojand region as well as the rest of what is now Tajikistan as the
The boundary became an international frontier in 1991 following the
Border crossings
- Shamaldy-Say (KGZ) - Uchqoʻrgʻon (UZB) (road and rail, currently closed)[37]
- Manyet (KGZ) - Izboskan (UZB) (road)[37]
- Khanabad (UZB) (road and rail, currently closed)[37]
- Osh (KGZ) - Qorasuv (UZB) (rail)
- Dostyk (KGYZ) – Dustlyk (UZB) (road)[37]
- Kyzyl-Kiya (KGZ) - Quvasoy(UZB) (rail)
Settlements near the border
Kyrgyzstan
- Këk-Tash
- Sumsar
- Ala-Buka
- Akkorgon
- Ak-Tam
- Tuyukdzhar
- Kerben
- Uspenkovka
- Kyzyl-Jar
- Shamaldy-Say
- Kochkor-Ata
- Jalal-Abad
- Kara-Suu
- Osh
- Aravan
- Uch-Korgon
- Kyzyl-Kiya
- Kadamjay
- Pulgon
- Zar-Tash
Uzbekistan
Disputed bodies of water
- Kempir-Abad Reservoir
- Kasan-Sai Reservoir
See also
References
- ^ CIA World Factbook - Kyrgyzstan, 23 September 2018
- ^ The charge is so common as to have become almost the conventional wisdom within mainstream journalistic coverage of Central Asia, with Stalin himself often the one drawing the borders, see for example Stourton, E. in The Guardian, 2010 Kyrgyzstan: Stalin's deadly legacy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/20/kyrgyzstan-stalins-deadly-legacy; Zeihan, P. for Stratfor, 2010 The Kyrgyzstan Crisis and the Russian Dilemma https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/kyrgyzstan-crisis-and-russian-dilemma; The Economist, 2010 Kyrgyzstan - Stalin's Harvest https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/06/17/stalins-harvest?story_id=16377083; Pillalamarri, A in the Diplomat, 2016, The Tajik Tragedy of Uzbekistan https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/the-tajik-tragedy-of-uzbekistan/; Rashid, A in the New York Review of Books, 2010, Tajikistan - the Next Jihadi Stronghold? https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2010/11/29/tajikistan-next-jihadi-stronghold; Schreck, C. in The National, 2010, Stalin at core of Kyrgyzstan carnage, https://www.thenational.ae/world/asia/stalin-at-core-of-kyrgyzstan-carnage-1.548241
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 39-40
- ^ Haugen, Arne (2003) The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, pgs. 24-5, 182-3
- ^ Khalid, Adeeb (2015) Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR, Cornell University Press, pg. 13
- ^ Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making Of Soviet Turkmenistan, Princeton University Press, pg. 46
- ^ a b Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 44-5
- ^ Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making Of Soviet Turkmenistan, Princeton University Press, pg. 47
- ^ Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making Of Soviet Turkmenistan, Princeton University Press, pg. 53
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 43-4
- ^ Starr, S. Frederick (ed.) (2011) Ferghana Valley – the Heart of Central Asia Routledge, pg. 112
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 40-1
- ^ Starr, S. Frederick (ed.) (2011) Ferghana Valley – the Heart of Central Asia Routledge, pg. 105
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 39
- ^ Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making Of Soviet Turkmenistan, Princeton University Press, pg. 55
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 42
- ^ Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making Of Soviet Turkmenistan, Princeton University Press, pg. 54
- ^ Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making Of Soviet Turkmenistan, Princeton University Press, pgs. 52-3
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 92
- ^ Starr, S. Frederick (ed.) (2011) Ferghana Valley – the Heart of Central Asia Routledge, pg. 106
- ^ Khalid, Adeeb (2015) Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR, Cornell University Press, pg. 271-2
- ^ Edgar, Adrienne Lynn (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making Of Soviet Turkmenistan, Princeton University Press, pgs. 56-8
- ^ a b Starr, S. Frederick (ed.) (2011) Ferghana Valley – the Heart of Central Asia Routledge, pg. 108
- ^ Haugen, Arne (2003) The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, pg. 189
- ^ Khalid, Adeeb (2015) Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR, Cornell University Press, pg. 276
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 49
- ^ Haugen, Arne (2003) The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, pg. 191
- ^ Bergne, Paul (2007) The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic, IB Taurus & Co Ltd, pg. 55
- ^ Rahim Masov, The History of the Clumsy Delimitation, Irfon Publ. House, Dushanbe, 1991 (in Russian). English translation: The History of a National Catastrophe Archived 2016-12-10 at the Wayback Machine, transl. Iraj Bashiri, 1996
- ^ Haugen, Arne (2003) The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, pg. 167
- ^ Trofimov, Dmitriy (2002), Ethnic/Territorial and Border Problems in Central Asia, retrieved 28 October 2018
- ^ International Crisis Group (4 April 2002), CENTRAL ASIA - BORDER DISPUTES AND CONFLICT POTENTIAL (PDF), retrieved 28 October 2018
- ^ Daily Sabah (6 September 2017), Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan sign historic border agreement, retrieved 4 November 2018
- ^ Baumgartner, Pete (14 December 2017), Tug-Of-War: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan Look To Finally Settle Decades-Old Border Dispute, retrieved 4 November 2018
- ^ "Kyrgyz and Uzbek Presidents Sign Border Agreements Into Law". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ "Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan approve range of documents on border demarcation". Azernews.Az. 2023-05-29. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ a b c d Caravanistan - Uzbekistan border crossings, retrieved 7 October 2018