New clinic eases border tension

A new UN-supported project on the Tajik-Kyrgyz frontier aims to reduce tension between communities, while providing much needed healthcare to populations on both sides of the border. Funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and located in Tojikon village in the Tajik Vorukh enclave, over 450 km north of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, but surrounded by Kyrgyz territory, the facility provides health care to around 5,000 residents in the area, Bakhrom Fayzullayev, UNDP's national coordinator for the project, said on Wednesday. A legacy of the Soviet era, enclaves in this region are islands of territory completely surrounded by land belonging to a neighbouring country. Moscow had established administrative borders of the Central Asian republics in the mid-1920s, which followed neither natural geographic boundaries nor strict ethnic lines. Soviet planners often avoided drawing more homogeneous or compact republics for fear they might fuel ethnic separatism. Further, given the highly centralised nature of Soviet planning, economic and transport links were designed to traverse borders between republics freely. Goods thus flowed largely unhindered across these internal borders and people would notice little more than a plaque or a small police outpost as they moved from one republic to the next. The Tajik Vorukh enclave, located in the southern Kyrgyz province of Batken, is situated in the densely populated and volatile Ferghana Valley region, shared by Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The valley operated as a relatively unified political and economic unit until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. That year, with the granting of independence, the three former Soviet republics partitioned the area establishing borders that form a tangled knot, indecipherable on a map, implausible to onlookers and a key source of regional tension. One practical problem has been the provision of health care which has proven chronically inadequate for both the Tajik and Kyrgyz populations in the area. "The local primary health clinic, which was established under the Soviet Union with the capacity to serve 1,500 residents, was not able to serve the increasing number of patients," Fayzullayev said. The lack of accessible health services has forced local Tajiks to seek medical help in clinics and hospitals in the district capital of Isfara, or even the Tajik provincial capital, Khujand. There has been conflict with the neighbouring Kyrgyz village of Aksay, because many Aksay residents, devoid of medical services, were also making use of Tojikon's rural clinic. This was fuelling tension between the two border communities, according to local observers. In an effort to tackle the problem, the Tajiks in Tojikon developed a project aimed at rehabilitating and improving the local health centre. Kyrgyz people from Aksay village also helped with the work. "This project received support from UNDP and US $6,254 was allocated for the project's implementation. It's great that residents of both Tojikon and Aksay villagers, on opposite sides of the frontier, took part in the work," Fayzullayev said, adding that now both communities were benefiting from medical assistance at the centre. Tajik district administration officials, who recently visited the centre, said that they would assist by helping with medical staff, while officials from the Kyrgyz side have promised to assist with an electricity supply for the facility.