[A Ferghana Valley dispatch from serial guest-blogger Dorzhiev. — YH]

Driving through the Tajik portion of the Ferghana Valley at dusk our taxi comes to halt. The man riding shotgun hops out to orient himself towards Mecca and perform his Namuz. While we wait a newly wedded man holding a bouquet of flowers for his wife asks the driver to take a detour to his village.

“How many kilometers is it?”
“Only twelve. I live at the border.”

After some grumbling our driver agrees and we turn down a side road. Ten minutes later we arrive in a small village.

“This is it,” the passenger indicates.
“Which side of the border do you live on. Tajik or Uzbek?” the driver asks.
“This is the Kyrgyz border, and I live on the Tajik side.”

To my foreign ears this conversation sounds the sort of Vaudevillian act that leaves you asking “Who’s on first.”

The confusion, however, is understandable in a region famous for it’s bizarre borders. From our point on the highway roughly 20 kilometers in either direction would put you in a different country. A holdover from Soviet times, today the borders of the Ferghana Valley resemble a jigsaw puzzle that has been cut out without consideration to geographic or ethnic realities. The post-Soviet division of the valley has been a bone of contention between the three states that share it. Arguments over water rights, resources, and enclaves continue to stir the ire of the governments of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The borders also present a challenge to security forces hunting insurgents.

On October 14th a group of armed men reportedly forced their way across the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. The group of roughly a dozen crossed from the Isfara district of Tajikistan to Batken province in Kyrgyzstan. It is currently believed that they are held up in the area around the Tajik enclave of Vorukh surrounded by Kyrgyzstan’s Batken Province. Batken consists of the southern most portion of Kyrgyzstan’s slice of the Ferghana Valley and has a history of unrest. Most notably in 1999 when a large contingent of insurgents linked to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan were responsible for shootings and a spate of kidnappings including the abduction of three American mountain climbers.

Last month another border crossing in the Batken region was the scene of another shootout prompting the Kyrgyz to tighten their borders. Additionally last month Saidumar Saidov, chief of police of Isfara district in Tajikistan was assassinated, however no one has yet been implicated in the killing. As of yet there is no evidence to suggest that these incidents are related, but their proximity and timing fuel the fears relating to the repatriation of insurgents feeling the heat in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In August Tahir Yuldashev the leader of IMU was killed in Waziristan by a US drone although the implications of his death for his followers is not yet clear.

The governments of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are understandably concerned about the flow of militants across their porous borders. The governments of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan especially lack the resources to adequately patrol them. This summer at a Tajik-Kyrgyz check point consisting only of a card table I watched as a lone soldier waived bus after bus through without bothering to stop them. Tonight as we return to the main road I take a glance down the dusty track that continues into Kyrgyzstan. There are no card tables and no soldiers. Only a herd of goats.

[Fabled to be founded by Alexander the Great, the Tajik city of Khojand is a mishmash of Soviet and Islamic ideas. Dorzhiev reports from the front. (See his earlier post here) – YH]

Could the clash of civilizations be resolved by a beard growing contest?

Khujand is the capital of Tajikistan’s northern Sogd province that presides over the country’s share of the Fergana Valley. The Fergana has a reputation as a Central Asian flashpoint owing to the convergence of multiple countries, ethnicities, and ideologies that cohabitate within its gerrymandered borders. In the past months it has grabbed headlines for skirmishes between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that escalated into violence. Additionally there have been several IMU related incidents in the nearby Uzbek cities of Khanabad and Andijan fueling speculation of the repatriation of insurgents feeling the squeeze in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. Elsewhere in Tajikistan the apparent return of warlord Mullo Abdullo in the Rasht Valley has sparked fears that civil war era malcontents are regrouping in the Gharm region. Fueling the trend, officials announced June 24th the arrest of 40 alleged extremists in Dushanbe. Given these recent developments one might be tempted to think of Khujand as a potential Kandahar or Peshawar. Such fears are stoked when we read that in recent months police in Khujand have rounded up at least two dozen members of Hizb Ut-Tahrir — an outlawed political party who encourages the re-establishment of the Caliphate. Read the rest of this entry »

[And now a travel dispatch from the front lines of the Fergana Valley from guest blogger code-name: Dorzhiev (seems suspicious) – YH]

Chugging up the Syr Daryo at night we look ahead to see swirls of smoke dancing amidst beams of neon light. The scene reminds me of the one in Apocalypse Now where captain Willard and his men encounter a surreal encampment on the Mekong river; an ephemeral outpost that marks the last stop before they reach Kurtz. Having read an account of Curzon and Younghusband’s forays into Central Asia just hours before the association came naturally enough. The melodrama of the scene, however, was somewhat diluted by the fact that our vehicle was not a PT gun boat or imperial caravan, but an oversized paddle duck my guide and I had rented for the half hour. We had wanted to hire the blue water bicycle, but some punk had nicked it from us by jumping in line.

The neon lights reflecting off the water emanated from a forest of technicolor palm trees, and the mingling smoke wafted from nearby barbeques on the bank. Apparently eating grilled meat under gaudy lawn furniture is somewhat of an institution in Tajikistan. At least it’s a popular activity at the fair grounds in Khujand, the capital of Tajikistan’s share of the Fergana Valley. For those whose impression of Tajikistan is either of Soviet styled bureaucracy or rural, subsistent peasantry the sights and smells of the Saturday night carnival might seem out of place. Gaggles of unattended children run between students and young families strolling along the riverside laughing, snacking, or waiting to ride the “mystery machine”.

Surveying the crowed from atop my perch on a rickety Ferris wheel I could be looking down at Perry, Georgia or Des Moines, Iowa. The only giveaway that I am in a precinct of a one time Persian province is that the ride attendant is well groomed and competent. No Carnie hailing from Dothan, Alabama could approach this level of professionalism or number of solid teeth. Granted this attendant is probably a high level bureaucrat employed by the “Ministry of Rotating Attractions” whose wages are paid from an ever shrinking public coffer instead of Barnum & Bailey’s.

If there is one bummer to this surprisingly happy scene it is the knowledge of Tajikistan’s current economic woes seen in the light of the countries young demographic. Like many struggling countries, Tajikistan’s population is growing faster than its economy. What effect will this downturn have on a restless generation who in the past few years have seen their hopes of upward mobility diminish? Will the effects of inflation, failure of the cotton crop (a chief export), and the drying up of foreign remittance push them over the brink? On the whole Tajiks live subsistent enough to be fairly shock resistance. This is, however, not as true for the minority of urbanized Tajiks living in cities like Khujand and Dushanbe whose economies are more tertiary. In times of trouble these people are, paradoxically, less able to cope.

A pithy example of this phenomenon could be seen in the winter of 2007. For Tajikistan it was the coldest in 40 years, and made worse by further rationing of energy from neighboring Uzbekistan. Ironically, this had the worst effect on those living in cities who had become reliant on infrastructure for their heat. In contrast, the villagers who are accustomed to going without electricity proved more resilient. On the whole 85 years of communist rule, civil war, and poverty have toughened the Tajik people. How exactly they will weather this particular storm remains to be seen. Tonight, however, they seem more interested in cotton candy and popcorn. Like the T-shirt of the guy in front of me reads, “No money, no crisis”.

Although my recent trip to Tunisia was short and not the usual journey through a war torn country, it was a fantastic experience and absolutely gorgeous country. Hence, I’ve completed a short travelogue for it and added it to the right hand sidebar along with the others. Readers can view it by clicking here.