DUSHANBE, July 18, 2016, Asia-Plus – The proposal on exchange of disputed border areas between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan is currently under consideration, Iftikhor Jumazoda, an official with the State Committee for Land Management, Geodesy and Cartography, told reporters in Dushanbe on July 18.
“Currently, a joint intergovernmental commission is working on this issue,” said Jumazoda. “To-date, the commission has completed work on delimitation and demarcation of a 519.9-kilometer stretch of a 971-kilometer border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.”
The work on delineation of the disputed areas along the Tajik-Kyrgyz border is under way, Tajik official added.
We will recall that Kyrgyzstan had previously suggested using the maps of the periods of 1955-1959 for demarcation and delimitation of the disputable stretches of the border while Tajikistan had suggested working with documents and maps of the period of 1924-1927. The maps of the early 1920s show the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic as incorporating Vorukh within its borders while the maps of the 1950s show Vorukh as an exclave within the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic.
The latest skirmishes sparked by a territorial dispute between residents along the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border escalated on August 4, 2015, leaving several people injured and damaging multiple homes.
The area at the focus of that and much previous unrest lies on the jagged frontier where the east of Tajikistan’s Sughd province and Kyrgyzstan’s Batken province meet.
The two countries have been unable to agree on the location of the border they inherited when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. As the population in the dense Ferghana Valley grows, it has become increasingly difficult to demarcate the contested sections, where valuable agricultural land often lies.
