Neighboring Central Asian countries Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have announced an agreement to demarcate their border, potentially ending decades of territorial disputes. The 972-kilometer-long border is one of the most mountainous in the world. The agreement was concluded nearly two years after the bloody border conflict in which approximately 100 people died in September 2022.
33 years after the proclamation of independence, two Central Asian countries, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, have finally agreed on the course of their common border, informed the authorities in Bishkek and Dushanbe.
Government delegations of both countries, led by the Deputy Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Kamchybek Tashiyev and the head of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan Saymumin Yatimov, met in Batken, a city located in the southwestern part of Kyrgyzstan, and reached an agreement on the final shape of the delimitation and demarcation of the border.
Bishkek and Dushanbe then started preparing documents on this matter. According to the statement of both parties, the legal procedures will take several months.
The length of the border between the two countries, established in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR, is 972 kilometers. This border runs almost entirely through high mountain areas, as mountains cover 93 percent of the area of Tajikistan and 94 percent of Kyrgyzstan.
Border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (illustrative photo) Shutterstock
In the first years after the collapse of the USSR, the issue of delimiting the border between the two countries that had so far been part of it was not discussed. Negotiations began in 2002, but they encountered many difficulties from the beginning.
Territorial disputes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
There are disputed areas that both countries consider their own – mainly areas with access to pastures for farm animals and water. Mutual claims to particular areas repeatedly turned into armed clashes. Skirmishes in April 2021 and September 2022 resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries on both sides.
In 2023, work on demarcating the border accelerated. In October last year, the heads of the security services of both countries signed a protocol, the content of which has not been made public.
It only stated that if its provisions were implemented, it would solve all problems regarding the border. Another meeting was held in January 2024, where secret agreements were also signed, but both sides announced that the course had been set at over 90%. border line.
In Central Asia, the problem of demarcating the borders between the states created after the collapse of the USSR does not concern only Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In November 2022, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan announced the end of the border dispute that had lasted over 30 years. The two countries then reached an agreement on the previously unsettled 312 km of the border, the total length of which is 1,314 km.
Main photo source: Shutterstock