#18 - JRL 7282
Post-Soviet republics struggle
By Bagila Bukharbayeva
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AYBEK, Uzbekistan — The border has two faces in Aybek: one an imposing
checkpoint behind an iron fence policed by stern border guards with dogs; the
other, an unmarked ditch.
"This is the border," Rojaboy Khamrayeva insists, pointing at the
unimposing ditch a few steps from her house in this village 75 miles south of
Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent.
On the other side of the ditch, in Tajikistan, three men warm themselves by a
bonfire as their sheep graze in a field. Their village is just across the field,
some 300 yards away.
One of them, Komilzhon Toirov, says he doesn't even bother with formalities when
crossing the border. "Why should I go through the checkpoint?" he
asks. "I live here."
This openness is disappearing, however. Uzbekistan is moving to impose strict
controls along the entire border, a response to growing tensions among the five
former Central Asian states of the Soviet Union.
Some parts of its borders with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have been mined,
leading to more than 40 civilian deaths.
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan began drifting
apart as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991.
Border disputes, economic hardship and security pressures have created distrust
among ethnically and culturally close nations that lived side by side for
centuries without borders.
The region was cut into five republics in the 1920s by Soviet leader Josef
Stalin. His divide-and-rule dictatorship ran borders through areas populated by
people of the same ethnic group.
Now all independent, the countries are pressing territorial claims against one
another. None wants to give in, and all have been putting armed guards and
barbed wire along the borders and introducing visa requirements.
The restrictions and harassment by poorly trained and poorly paid border and
customs officers anger border dwellers who are losing the freedom to move about
freely to visit relatives and do business.
Saodat Olimova, a Tajik sociologist, said the anger is a further threat to the
whole region's security, which has already been strained by the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism since the late 1990s — a phenomenon inspired by events in
nearby Afghanistan.
"This creates a very good breeding ground for various religious extremist
groups that call for a single Muslim state," she said.
Among the five republics, Uzbekistan has the biggest population and army, and is
accused by Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan of mounting air raids on their territories
in the hunt for Islamic militants. Uzbekistan has denied the charge.
Turkmenistan is also upset. It expelled the Uzbek ambassador, accusing his
government of aiding organizers of an attempt to kill President Saparmurat
Niyazov on Nov. 25. Uzbek officials denied that, too.
Filip Noubel, an analyst from the International Crisis Group, said Uzbek leaders
worry about the political instability in Turkmenistan, which has a long, poorly
controlled border with Afghanistan.
The Uzbeks want "to make sure that there will be no second Afghanistan in
Turkmenistan," he said.
Uzbekistan secretly sheltered and armed opposition leaders during a five-year
civil war in Tajikistan in the mid-1990s and it supported the ethnic Uzbek
warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum during Afghanistan's civil wars.
"The neighbors don't trust Uzbekistan," said an Uzbek political
analyst, Fayzulla Iskhakov.
The lack of trust has badly hurt the region's economies, which under the Soviets
worked as one, sharing water, energy resources and roads.
Failure to agree on prices and other trade terms at times has left whole Kazakh
and Kyrgyz towns and villages cut off from Uzbek natural gas, Uzbek cotton and
rice fields without water, and districts in Tajikistan without food.
Miss Olimova, the Tajik sociologist, said the region desperately needs to
integrate. "Any separation of our countries will lead to a dead end,
catastrophe," she said.
Aug. 9, 2003:
#7282 • JRL Home
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