Uzbekistan, citing security concerns connected with Islamic radicalism, has sought to curtail cross-border traffic with neighboring states, especially Kyrgyzstan. Local inhabitants on both sides of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border, however, have not accepted stricter border controls. In some areas, inhabitants continue to go to great lengths to circumvent existing restrictions.
The unprecedented alliance between the United States and Uzbekistan has prompted many observers to consider the long-term implications for Uzbekistan. Attention has focused mostly on how the anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan will influence Uzbekistan reform efforts.
This summer's tenth anniversary of the 1990 Kyrgyz-Uzbek riots in Osh coincided with a recent exponential growth of interest in the theme of conflict in the Ferghana Valley, and its Kyrgyzstani city of Osh in particular. The area has been re-defined in the popular imagination as a tinderbox of ethnic conflict just waiting to explode.
Two recent events in Kyrgyzstan--the adoption of a law making Russian an official language of the republic and the announcement that Bishkek will resettle displaced Afghan Kyrgyz--highlight the continuing tensions between civic and ethnic nationalism that have marked Kyrgyz politics since independence.
The language law is clearly a step toward the goal of creating a civic society for a
During Kyrgyzstan's post-election period, most attention has focussed on the demonstrations staged by supporters of two opposition leaders, Daniyar Usunov and Felix Kulov. Meanwhile, a potentially more explosive situation in southern Kyrgyzstan has gone virtually unnoticed by the international community, even though it raises the spectre of interethnic conflict among Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.
The first two papers in this series examined the 1999 Spring Border Crisis between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and the various reactions and responses to it. This final article concludes the series by detailing developments in the autumn which centred around disputes over border demarcation.
The first article in this three-part series (posted 12/08/99) described the course of the Spring Border Crisis between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in early 1999, and examined the effects on the population of the Kyrgyzstani part of the Ferghana Valley and the response of the Kyrgyzstani political opposition.
