Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan barrier

Occurrences, such as the removal of a 2-meter section of the fence on the road between the southern Kyrgyz regional capital of Osh and the small provincial town of Aravan in January 2000, highlighted the frustration experienced by the local population straddling the border region, after it turned out that it was local Uzbekistani citizens who cut through the border fence to smuggle goods to sell in Kyrgyzstan.[3]

On May 14, 2005, a day after the Andijan massacre, Uzbek locals seized control of Qorasuv, a town on the border with Kyrgyzstan, driving away the government officials. Angry crowds set alight government buildings and attacked the mayor. As thousands tried to flee the country and escape the political unrest, two bridges across the border were rebuilt in an effort to revive trade with Kyrgyzstan.[6]

The region has always been short of water. Rivers and streams that have traditionally irrigated the lands snake down the valley, now passing into different countries as many as 20 times. The new borders have set community against community in their attempt to access the water, resulting in violent clashes.[1]

Transport links have been seriously impeded in the Ferghana Valley by the barrier. The routes from Osh to almost all other towns in the south of Kyrgyzstan pass at least once through newly established or recently strengthened Uzbek checkpoints. Buses can be taken only to the border, where they stop and turn back, leaving passengers to walk through customs and take another bus to the next checkpoint. Journey times to some outlying mountainous regions have increased threefold, and costs have been pushed up not only by the need for more buses but also by bribes to be paid at checkpoints. Such costs hit hard in an area of rural poverty.[3]

Southern Kyrgyzstan is home to a sizeable Uzbek minority. In 1990, at the start of the barriers construction, tensions in the region between the Uzbeks and the Kyrgyz majority flared into bitter inter-communal violence leaving 170 people dead. The subsequent border disputes between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in 1999 added to the tensions.[3]

In 1999, the "border issue" became a key element in political battles between the Kyrgyz government and the nationalist opposition. Being the year leading up to parliamentary and presidential elections, the government avoided almost all mention of the dispute, emphasizing instead President Askar Akayev's "Silk Road diplomacy" of regional co-operation, which, it said, would solve all border problems in the long term by re-opening the ancient trade routes to Europe and China. The opposition dismissed these as empty words, and pointed to the government's perceived failure to prevent Uzbekistan from advancing border posts into Kyrgyz territory as indicative of the presidential administration's weakness.[3]