DUSHANBE, January 28, 2014, Asia-Plus – Kyrgyz builders have withdrawn most part of road-building equipment from the section of the Koktash-Aksai-Tamdyk road, which passes through the disputed territory, Loiq Mahkamov, the head of the Tajik jamoat of Vorukh, told Asia-Plus in an interview.
However, Mahkamov does not know precisely whether Kyrgyz builders have suspended the construction of the road or they have just sent the road building machines to another section of the road and will continue the construction work there.
Meanwhile, Kyrgyzstan’s news agency Kabar reports that Kyrgyzstan has insisted it will continue building the road. “We have reached the site, where bulldozers and excavators will not help. Blast works are needed,” Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Tokon Mamytov was quoted by Kabar as saying.
Mamytov reportedly also noted that the new road will become a traffic artery fro Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyz drivers will not have to stop at Tajik checkpoints in the Vorukh exclave.
But residents of Vorukh say the road, which will link the Kyrgyz villages of Aksai and Tamdyk, is planned across land that in fact belongs to the exclave.
Legally, Vorukh is part of Tajikistan, but due to past redrawing of borders, it exists as an exclave some 20 kilometers inside Kyrgyzstan.
Five Kyrgyz border guards, one Kyrgyz policeman, and two Tajik border guards were hospitalized with injuries on January 11 after tensions escalated into exchanges of gunfire along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. The clash started when Tajiks protested Kyrgyzstan’s construction of a bypass road through a disputed area. Tajikistan has requested to halt the construction of the road until the border is delimited.
