Demining in border areas underway, military officials say

The Uzbek military is clearing mine fields in the Ferghana Valley part of the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border which have in the past claimed the lives of many civilians. "[Preliminary] work on demining actually started at the beginning of August. We assessed the area and demining efforts are now underway along the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border," Komil Jabarov, an Uzbek defence ministry spokesman, told IRIN from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent on Tuesday. Demining would also cover the borders of the Uzbek enclaves of Sokh and Shakhimardan located within Kyrgyzstan, Jabarov added. Enclaves are islands of territory completely surrounded by land from a neighbouring country - a legacy of the Soviet period when borders were simply administrative. According to the Uzbek defence ministry, Tashkent planted mines in some mountainous parts of its Kyrgyz and Tajik borders which were difficult to control in an effort to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) since 1999 and prevent drug trafficking and weapons smuggling through the area. Earlier in July, Uzbek authorities said at a session of the Uzbek-Kyrgyz inter-governmental commission that they were ready to start demining its Kyrgyz border from 15 August, Ilkhom Zakirov, a spokesman for the Uzbek foreign ministry, told IRIN. Tashkent first expressed its willingness to consider removing land mines, along its 1,000 km plus frontier with Kyrgyzstan at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna on 18 June, a move welcomed by Bishkek. "It is a very positive development. We are interested in demining of these fields because there won't be any more casualties and people living in the border areas could conduct their normal daily life activities," Gulmira Borubayeva, a spokeswoman for the Kyrgyz border service, told IRIN from the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Since mines were planted in 1999, more than a dozen Kyrgyz and some 60 Tajik civilians have been killed by mine explosions in the border areas. Mining also renders thousands of hectare of land unusable in this impoverished corner of Central Asia, making it a longstanding regional issue. The Uzbek demining team had conducted evaluations on the ground around the Uzbek enclaves, Borubayeva added. "The initial stage of their demining work has already started. Their military personnel passed through our territory to their enclave of Shakhimardan and they determined where they would do the demining work." According to the Kyrgyz border service, the heads of the two states' border units on the ground were scheduled to meet Tuesday or Wednesday to tackle some technical issues, while local residents were told to stay away from some areas when demining works commenced. Although the Uzbek authorities reportedly appealed for international assistance for the demining effort, no such help has been forthcoming. "For the time being we are coping with the issue on our own. Demining is a very expensive activity and assistance would be welcomed," Jabarov noted.