Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are expected to continue border talks in the near future.
Tajik Deputy Prime Minister Azim Ibrohim and his Kyrgyz counterpart Zhenish Razzakov, who are cochairmen of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border delineation commission, met in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek on September 16.
According to the Kyrgyz government’s official website, the two discussed issues related to further expansion of trade and economic cooperation between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as delimitation and demarcation of the mutual border.
The Kyrgyz side reportedly proposed to hold a series of border talks in Bishkek and Dushanbe.
To-date, the two sides have endorsed a draft agreement on 519.9 kilometers of the border (a total length of Tajikistan’s common border with Kyrgyzstan is about 970 kilometers) but they have still failed to reach an agreement on the disputable border areas.
Recall that the Kyrgyz side last year proposed Tajikistan to exchange the disputable border areas.
“It will be a mutually beneficial exchange — the sides will receive 12 hectares each. We will receive areas located in the village of Kok-Tash, while the Tajik side will receive areas located below Kok-Tash,” the then Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Mamataliyev was cited as saying by AKIpress in November 2015.
According to him, the two sides have decided not work with different maps. “We will rely on four agreements: 1) the agreement establishing the CIS; 2) the Almaty declaration; 3) the agreement on the border integrity signed in 1994; and 4) the agreement between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan of 1996 under which we pledged to follow the signed documents,” Kyrgyz vice-premier said.
Meanwhile, 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 this 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.
