Never ending. Why Tajikistan attacked Kyrgyzstan

Conflicts between these countries continue to emerge, but the current escalation of hostilities has become the bloodiest in recent times.

During the conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, 94 people on both sides were killed and hundreds of others were injured. Both sides, which are part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and are supposed to protect allies from external threats, accuse each other of escalating the conflict and using heavy military equipment, including aircraft of military and many rocket launch systems. Correspondent.net saying they did not divide Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The bloodiest escalation between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

Kyrgyzstan authorities announced the death of 59 people in the armed conflict in Tajikistan, another 140 people were injured. September 19 was declared a day of national mourning for the dead. The Office of the Prosecutor General of the country opened a criminal case under the article on a crime against peace.

“An interdepartmental investigative group has been formed to conduct a comprehensive and thorough investigation into the circumstances that led to the attack by Tajikistan. The formed group is conducting an examination of the affected villages,” the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The agency also reported that currently, the joint patrol made up of employees of the ministries of internal affairs of the two countries is conducting round-the-clock explanatory work with the population in the border area to protect and maintain law and order.

On September 18, they agreed on joint road patrolling between the Tajikistan cities of Khujand and Kanibadam on the border of the two countries. The parties also agreed to open the roads to the village of Vorukh – an exclave of Tajikistan in the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan on the border and ensure traffic.

Tajikistan for the first and last time announced the number of victims for its part on Sunday. The country’s Foreign Ministry reported on its social networks that about 35 killed and 25 wounded Tajik citizens, among whom, allegedly, there were women and children.

The situation on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan escalated on September 14, when fighting began between border guards in three sections in the Batken region. The parties agreed to a cease-fire several times, but the agreements failed each time.

Kyrgyz authorities have accused Tajikistan of dragging heavy military equipment to the border and using “the entire available arsenal” to shell Kyrgyzstan’s territory in an attempt to capture it. The country’s Ministry of Emergency Situations announced the evacuation of 136,000 people from the clash zone, and an emergency mode was introduced in the Batken region.

Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council Secretary Marat Imankulov said that among those involved in the fighting were representatives of international terrorist organizations and foreign mercenaries.

“On the side of the Tajik armed forces that attacked our territory, there were bearded men dressed in civilian uniforms with weapons in their hands, shooting in different directions both at houses and at civilians,” he said. .

According to the Secretary of the Security Council, one of these people was identified, he is a citizen of Afghanistan. Note that Tajikistan opposes the Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan.

The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said they consider the latest development to be a pre-planned armed attack. Their colleagues from Tajikistan noted that Bishkek is continuing its information campaign against Dushanbe, thereby escalating tensions in the border zone.

Tajikistan also accused Kyrgyz forces of raining “heavy weapons” on some Tajik borders. Tajikistan accused the Kyrgyz military of bombing the mosque with a drone, which, according to official statements, killed 12 people. Dushanbe also cited deaths in the shelling of a school and an ambulance.

The night of September 19 passed without incident on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It was noted that there were no violations of the ceasefire agreement. At the same time, the border situation remains tense.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov said Bishkek will continue to resolve border disputes through diplomatic methods.

“Tajikistan’s border territories are not defined and cause problems. We continue to work to resolve disputes on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border only by peaceful means,” Zhaparov insisted.

The CSTO Secretariat, in turn, offered its condolences in connection with the deaths of people in the border clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The organization stressed that it believes in “no alternative to political and diplomatic approaches” and is ready to “increase mediation efforts to achieve a sustainable compromise.”

As in the case of Armenia, “Putin’s NATO” once again demonstrated its failure and loss of influence in the region.

What are the reasons for the escalation of conflict?

Border conflicts between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan continue to erupt – more than 150 cases have been recorded over the past 12 years, but the current escalation of the conflict has been the bloodiest in recent times. The last such confrontation took place in April 2021, after which approximately 55 people were killed on both sides, 205 were injured.

The aggravation is due to the lack of labeling at around 70 contested sites. In total, according to the data for 2022, of the 972 kilometers of the country’s borders, about 600 kilometers have been agreed upon.

Sections between the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan and the Sughd region of Tajikistan remain controversial, where villages, and sometimes even houses of residents of the two republics, are located in close proximity, making it difficult to boundary determination.

Because of this uncertainty, clashes often occur between residents and border guards of neighboring states for the right to access water, land and communications. At the same time, weapons are often used, leading to human casualties.

The Batken region is the most remote region of Kyrgyzstan, bordering Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. There are seven enclaves (territories of one state surrounded by another) in the territory of the region, and this armed conflict broke out near the second largest enclave in the region, Vorukha. 35 thousand citizens of Tajikistan live there.

Conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

All the villages located in this region are surrounded by Kyrgyz settlements and plantations. In some places near Vorukh, the border is not clearly drawn, and because of these sections, conflicts often break out between the local population and the border guards.

A point of contention in the area is the road connecting the mainland of Tajikistan and Vorukh. According to the first Soviet maps (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan relied on maps of different years in border delimitation negotiations), this road belongs to the territory of the Tajik SSR, and according to later maps , it is now the territory of the Kirghiz SSR.

This part of the road is the only way to get from Leilek region to Batken region.

Economically, both the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan and the Sughd region of Tajikistan, through which the conditional border passes, are the most remote and economically poor regions, their populations suffering from unemployment and frequent droughts.

The main source of income for the inhabitants of both regions is agriculture. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor Tajikistan can afford to go to war, said Tajik expert Abdugani Mamadazimov.

“Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have experience in successfully resolving border disputes with other countries, showing that, if there is political will, the authorities will be able to complete the process of demarcation and delimitation of disputed kilometers in negotiating table. And this is in the interest of both states,” Mamadazimova quoted BBC News as saying.

Any concessions from the authorities and attempts to find a compromise on both sides are received by the local population with hostility. Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the surrender or exchange of lands was an unpopular decision for the authorities of both countries.

Umarov believes that the start of shooting on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border coincided with the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Samarkand – no coincidence. The SCO proclaims strengthening regional security as one of its main goals.

“What we are seeing looks more like a planned offensive from the Tajik side. This, of course, needs to be proven and double checked, but another argument that it is not a coincidence is that a major clash took place in April of last year during a CSTO meeting in Dushanbe,” the expert believes.

The clashes continued when the presidents of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China signed an agreement to build a railway linking those countries to Europe, bypassing Russia.

Today, both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are economically dependent on Russia, which is their largest trading partner and a country where one million Kyrgyz and one million Tajik migrants work. The economies of both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are highly dependent on migrant remittances, which account for nearly one-third of the two countries’ GDP.

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