Dr. Strangelove has a cow: could a wayward bovine spark a war in Central Asia?
Politics and Society, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan3 Comments
Photograph by Flickr user David Wild (CC-usage).
Uzbek border guards say they were close to open fire killing 25 Tajik servicemen who, according to them, violated state borders of Uzbekistan and intruded to its territory. The press service of the Uzbek National Security Service’s committee for border protection said:
By its actions, the Tajik side severely violated generally accepted international norms and bilateral agreements to keep the inviolability of the state borders. The intrusion could have been described as an armed invasion…
According to the statement, about 25 Tajik soldiers entered the Uzbek territory to release a colleague detained by the Uzbeks allegedly for trying to steal a cow.
The detainee admitted that he must have stolen cattle from Uzbek citizens under his commanders’ instructions. According to him, they had to do this because they had not been supplied with food for a long time.
However, the Tajik version of the incident is completely different. They told Interfax that the Tajik cow, left without caring, crossed the border and a Tajik soldier tried to get it back into Tajikistan. He and the cow were detained by Uzbeks.
A Tajik officer told Interfax that he and several soldiers tried to negotiate with the Uzbek border guards to release the Tajik servicemen “without crossing the borderline, in view of a simple human error”. The Uzbeks have rejected this.
Could a cow to provoke an armed conflict between two neighboring countries?
Actually, these kind of situations, i.e. erroneous crossing into each others’ territory, are not rare between the two neighbors. The border is potted with mountains, and like them, it’s cragged shape. Tajik and Uzbek border guards are usually friendly to each other and it’s been their habit to resolve incidents like this by negotiation, e.g., returning stray cattle.
However, it’s also true that approximately 70 Tajiks and five Uzbeks have been accidentally killed by landmines buried by the Uzbek. The landmines were installed in 2000 as a defense against the intrusion of Islamic militants. Unfortunately, not a single militant has ever killed by them, but instead ordinary people pasturing their cattle or mistakenly passing the unseen border line.
It’s perhaps hypocritical then that the Uzbek authorities, who have never commented upon these deaths, have now published a special statement regarding the cow. I wonder how much of the Roghun-related tensions described by neweurasia’s Dushanbe may be playing a role in this.
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Something similar happened in along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border with a cow. The incident was reported by RFE/RL. The Kyrgyz border guards were detained and a shootout followed.
I think it is a matter of resources for Uzbekistan. Cattle could be considered a resource because its byproduct could mean life or death. This relates to Rogun because Uzbekistan feels that Tajikistan is being greedy with the water and depriving Uzbeks of it. Tajikistan, by successfully financing and constructing Rogun, will control the water in Central Asia, and ultimately the whole region.
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Hi Alpharabius,
I am happy if they control all the water. The only thing the nations next to tajikistan have done is giving them a hard time. Uzbekistan cuts the supply of electricity to tajikistan and other nations could careless if the tajiks die or not. Afterall there are two differnt races, the mongoloids and tajiks so ofcourse all the nations surrounding tajikistan are mongoloid people and if anything they want to see the tajik people perish. I am happy that finally these people will have to listen. I never wanted it to be like that. I think central asian countries should come together and become like the EU in a way and help eachother since noone esle will help them. Anyways I am excited. Thank you for the news.
Jamshed
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