On December 4, following a meeting in the Kyrgyz city of Batken, the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan announced that they had come to an agreement on their shared border, the last frontier in Central Asia still in question and the site of violent clashes in 2021 and 2022. The announcement, which followed months of alternating negotiation meetings, marks a significant step.
What comes next may be far more difficult.
The negotiations have been spearheaded by the heads of the two countries’ State Committees for National Security: Kamchybek Tashiev of Kyrgyzstan and Saimumin Yatimov of Tajikistan. The details have not been announced.
In a December 4 meeting that, to quote Tajikistan’s official state news agency Khovar, “took place in an atmosphere of friendship and mutual understanding,” the two sides, “reached an agreement and fully completed the description of the remaining sections of the Tajik-Kyrgyz state border and gave instructions to the working groups… on the delimitation and demarcation of the Tajik-Kyrgyz state border to begin the process of drawing up the final documents for the delimitation of the Tajik-Kyrgyz state border.” The Kyrgyz government’s Cabinet of Ministers published a statement with the exact same language.
Broadly speaking, delimitation refers to the definition – on paper, such as in a treaty – of a border between countries. Demarcation refers to the physical process of marking the boundary on the ground and communicating to communities where the border lies. As Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan move decisively toward completing the delimitation process, eyes will turn to the demarcation process and the domestic diplomacy required to communicate the agreed-upon border to citizens living on its edges.
Managing expectations, Tashiev said that the next steps will include the drawing up of final documents, followed by the ratification of the agreement in both countries’ parliaments and presidential signatures. He said it would take “a few months.”
In December 2023, the two sides had announce hat they were in agreement on 90 percent of the border. The needle moved to 94 percent by late July 2024.
The Kyrgyz-Tajik border is about 975 kilometers long (sometimes it is reported as 972 km, sometimes 980 km). The border – particularly the stretch that divides Kyrgyzstan’s Batken and Osh regions from Tajikistan’s Sughd – has been a source of tension for more than three decades, culminating in the violence in September 2022, when researchers say both sides may have committed war crimes in targeting civilians.
What I’ve written previously still stands as valid:
An agreement on paper will be a powerful diplomatic achievement for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but the real work will come after in implementing the border. How the two sides plan to realize their border after decades of dispute in and among the affected communities and navigate future conflicts responsibly is unclear. On both sides of the border, officials have leaned into nationalist rhetoric when domestically useful, and have struggled to communicate the rationale and necessity of at-times controversial government decisions to the publics that have to live them out.
The announced agreement is an important step, and a testament to the possibilities of dedicated diplomacy. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been independent for 33 years and for 33 years the border has been a source of tension and, as in 2021 and 2022, sometimes considerable violence. It has damaged the relationship between the two states and it will take time to repair that damage. The work has only just begun.