https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/28/guards-clash-again-on-kyrgyz-tajik-border-ceasefire-falters
The two Central Asian countries and former Soviet Republics Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have recently reignited conflict on their border which had been more or less quelled since they agreed to a ceasefire in May of 2021. The border along the southwesternmost parts of Kyrgyzstan and the northwest of Tajikistan have long been controversial ever since the boundaries were first demarcated when the two countries belonged to the Soviet Union. Along with the nearby country of Uzbekistan, which shares the same issue from what the Soviet’s called National Territorial Delimitation and their attempt to split the territory on an ethnic basis to create countries, the Turkestan Range has caused a rather dire flaw in the Soviet’s plan. Running roughly between all three countries, the Turkestan Range has muddled the definition of the borders, leading to some small villages ending up disconnected from their countries, and some of the awkward intertwining of the Tajik province of Sughd and the Kyrgyz province of Batken. Similar to the border skirmishes between China and India, there is a key water resource located on the disputed land, the Isfara River and its reservoirs, which caused the original spark for the conflict spring of 2021 before the ceasefire was called. Some of the worst aggressors, in fact, have been the civilians of both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan who were responsible for instigating the conflict that occurred this Thursday January 27, 2022 and resulted in shots unleashed by both Tajik and Kyrgyz border guards as well as some casualties, though the exact number has not been officially released by either country. In this instance, Tajiks had, according to Kyrgyzstan, blockaded a Kyrgyz road connecting the border town of Isfana to the rest of Batken. Border guards from both countries arrived to settle the situation and remove the blockage, however, on and off fighting overcame this peaceful attempt to solve the problem. Kyrgyzstan reported four injured border guards and there are an unconfirmed eleven injuries and a single casualty on the Tajik side.
The citizens of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are rising to a dangerous extreme in their aggression towards each other and these sentiments are showing no sign of dying down despite multiple attempts by their governments to establish a lasting ceasefire. Just this year, civilians began a fight over a reservoir on the disputed Isfara River, using rocks as weapons to attack each other and it only escalated into a melee from there, with border guards exchanging fire with guns and even mortars. The skirmishes in April killed 49 people and in May, hundreds of people gathered in Kyrgyzstan’s capital city, Bishkek, seeking arms from the government to lend civilian support to the Batken province. A negotiated ceasefire in this week’s incident paused conflict for mere hours until it resumed at midnight. For Central Asia, I think this kind of competition for water will only continue to break the region apart as it is clear from the Tajik-Kyrgyz clashes that division among Central Asia’s people is much more probable reality than international cooperation. Whatever the intentions of the government, the will of the people is what is driving this situation. The protests in Kazakhstan over the rise in gas prices again show the disconnection between a Central Asian country’s government and what people made desperate and angry by the deprivation of resources are capable of doing all on their own.
In connection to International Relations, this is a true example of the realist view of the world: the basic need for water causing selfish acts from people when the supply is limited and a kind of chaos ensuing, despite this being more on a regional to local scale rather than inter-state or global. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have both made diplomatic attempts for brief to no avail, a failure of taking a more liberal approach to the problem. The people’s favored rationale is essentially “everyone for themselves”. Even if there were to be a system of sharing water between the countries, the region’s need for water to supply agriculture, especially for the popular crops of cotton and rice, on top of the population is growing beyond what is sustainable for the area.