Focus on conflict prevention in Fergana valley

Sometime in April 1998 - she can’t remember the exact date - Anzira Alinazarova was called out of class and told she was no longer welcome at the school where she had been teaching for the past 19 years. As a citizen of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, she was no longer qualified to teach in Uzbekistan. "It was as simple as that," said Alinazarova. "One day I was a teacher and the next I was unemployed. The director told me that if I wanted to teach at his school, then I would have to get an Uzbek passport." Seven other teachers of a total of 40, and dozens of students attending the school were given their marching orders the same day. "I was a good teacher and very loyal, but without warning I was suddenly fired," said Alinazarova. "I was so angry." Fired by a sense of injustice and bewilderment, she is not alone in her anger, because border restrictions imposed in the Fergana Valley - which comprises territory belonging to Tajikistan, as well as to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan - have compounded the economic misery wrought by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and led to a concerted effort on the part of advocacy groups and NGOs to prevent tensions between ethnic communities arising out of competition for scarce resources from spiralling out of control. The people of the Fergana Valley remember all too well that the "Osh events" of 1990 - when about 2,000 people were killed in an orgy of inter-ethnic violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities living in and around the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh - may yet return to haunt them. Ever since the days of the Great Silk Road, which runs through the heart of this valley, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz have lived side by side as distinct components of a single economic entity sited on the axis of a trade route linking Europe and Asia. In the vast landmass that today is known as Central Asia, then peopled almost exclusively by nomads, the residents of the Fergana Valley were distinguished by their sedentary lifestyle. But following the absorption of Central Asia into the Soviet Union, borders were drawn up separating the people of the valley into de facto ethnic blocs. For the duration of the Soviet empire until its collapse in 1991, these borders existed in name only. People were free - as they had been for centuries - to move themselves, their labour and their produce from one region to another. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment in Central Asia of five independent nations, all this began to change. Spurred into action in the late 1990s following incursions into Uzbekistan through Kyrgyz territory by the rebel Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and as a measure designed to protect the still largely public-sector dominated Uzbek economy, the Uzbek government began imposing new visa and border regulations on its southern neighbour, Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz government immediately responded in kind. Whereas, in the immediate aftermath of independence in 1991, Kyrgyzstan embarked on a rapid privatisation process and sold whatever it could to entice the nascent private sector into buying, Uzbekistan, by contrast persevered, with an economic policy characterised by public-sector dominance and subsidies. While Kyrgyz farmers were now obliged to buy fertilisers and other farming essentials, Uzbek farmers continued to receive them at heavily subsidised prices, thereby creating overnight a healthy black market in smuggled goods. The Uzbek authorities' resolve to tighten their porous borders was strengthened further in February 1999 when a series of bomb blasts, blamed on the IMU, shook the capital, Tashkent. Under the law, Kyrgyz citizens are allowed to travel up to 100 km inside Uzbekistan and stay for a few days, but for longer stays a visa is required. However, adding absurdity to inconvenience, neither country has a consulate in any of the border cities. This means that a resident of Osh - just five kilometres from the border - must now travel 14 hours by bus to the capital, Bishkek, in order to seek permission to travel inside Uzbekistan. It is not just a matter of inconvenience. The Uzbek authorities have also erected barbed-wire fences to demarcate the border, and manned them with border guards, whose proficiency at bribe-taking has made the lives of villagers living on or near the border more difficult still. Tensions between the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments have been deepened further by a battle for resources. Uzbekistan depends on Kyrgyzstan for a steady flow of the water needed for its agro-dependent economy, while Kyrgyzstan depends on its neighbour for gas. Each country frequently accuses the other of withholding supplies. And it is not just at official level that tensions are running high. Demarcation of the borders has left villages on both sides of the border without access to local markets, schools, hospitals and precious water supplies. "These restrictions have disrupted traditional patterns of trade and social interaction in the valley," said Dr Ustina Markus, a senior political analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG). Moreover, expressing a fear she shares with other concerned parties, she warns that "tensions on the ground mean that the threat of local conflict is ever present". But on the ground, Alinazarova and her fellow villagers insist that they bear no grudge towards their Uzbek neighbours. "We have never had any trouble between Uzbek and Kyrgyz citizens in this place," she said, "and, God willing, there never will be." However, Alinazarova is also the first to admit that unless these issues are resolved, then the potential for a deteriorating situation remains. Four years after the border restrictions were imposed, many children in her village have yet to enrol in another school, and she herself remains unemployed. "Since they put up the border fences, not only are we not able to send our children to school or our sick to the hospital or our people to their jobs, but now we must pay bribes to border guards to take our produce to market," said one villager on condition of anonymity. Villagers report that animals frequently wander across the border, and are then "arrested" by the border guards, who only return them for a ransom. "How much you pay them depends on how many animals and your ability to negotiate," said one villager, who also asked not to be named. "I don’t know if we should call it a bribe, but we certainly don’t get a receipt." Kyrgyz border guards, though fewer in number, are reportedly just as rapacious. And while there have been a number of attempts at official level to resolve some of these issues, little, if any, progress has been made, prompting communities on both sides of the border to come together in what Markus describes as "a kind of people's diplomacy in border resolution". This, in the case of Alinazarova’s village - Jar-Kyshtak - has taken the shape of a local committee, formed to oversee the building and establishment of a school on their side of the border - a border which runs right through the heart of the village. "We came together and decided to build our own school, because we knew that no one else would help us," said Husanboy Sabirov, a senior committee member. Materials were purchased with the help of the local governor and small contributions by the villagers themselves, who also gave their time and labour freely in the baking of bricks and building of the shell, which now stands in an otherwise open plot just 100 metres from the border. But there remains a significant shortfall in their budget, and Sabirov estimates that they will need a further US $20,000 to get the school finished. This is what has brought Mercy Corps International’s (MCI) Muminjan Musaev to Jar-Kyshtak. He is the leader of one of five teams comprising the Peaceful Communities Initiative (PCI) programme established by MCI earlier this year, following a conflict-resolution grant from USAID worth $2 million over the next three years. So far, the PCI teams are working in 15 communities on both sides of the Kyrgyz border with both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. "The aim of the project is the prevention of conflict through the mobilisation of communities," said Bakhtyar Ergashev, the PCI project coordinator. "We have a major problem of resource-sharing here in Fergana, and we have to empower local communities to solve their own problems rather than waiting for governments to do it." Ergashev cites an example in Batken Province, where last month Kyrgyz villagers came to blows with their Uzbek neighbours after the latter accused them of stealing wheat and allowing their animals to graze the wrong side of the border. "We brought together elders from both communities and held a meeting in a mosque, and the situation was resolved." But the purpose of the project is not simply to empower communities to resolve disputes, but to help them address their problems wherever they can. In Jar-Kyshtak, it is hoped that MCI will be able to help find some money to finish building the school, thereby to lay to rest one of the issues that contains the potential for conflict. "We are a very peaceful people and we do not want any trouble with our neighbours," said Halima Bolisheva, another teacher and resident of Jar-Kyshtak who lost her job when the borders were closed. "But there is only so much that we can do ourselves to resolve our problems. We need help. Only God knows what will happen to us if we don’t."