The Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan border near Osh. Photo by Panoramio user igor_allay.

“Exchange of fire”

“They have violated our borders! And they were drunk!” “They have violated our borders!”

While such an exchange of shots could seem to be childish games and amusing, “ordinary citizens are becoming nervous about this”, the RFE/RL’s Uzbek service reported commenting on the latest cases of detaining officers and citizens of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan by each side.

The detentions started with a group of Uzbek citizens stopped and detained on the Kyrgyz territory in mid-late August. The Kyrgyz side launched a criminal investigation into the “illegal crossing” of the state borders by four Uzbek servicemen. Uzbekistan was quick to respond naming the detention “illegal” and later responded in a similar manner, on Kyrgyzstan’s Independence Day on 31 August, with two cases of detaining Kyrgyz border guards who have reportedly also violated the border crossing regulations and were “armed, aggressive; and drunk”.

Effect on the population

Well, it is for the first time one hears Kyrgyz border guards detained any Uzbek official whether civil or military. Uzbekistan reacted harsher by detaining a Kyrgyz colonel, lieutenant-colonel, lieutenant and private “to match” the four detained Uzbek officers. In the light of the recent events in Osh and Jalalabad, the local population living in border zones is becoming very anxious as to the standoff’s end, local observers suggest.

“This can become very ugly, since both parties are military bodies hence they have firearms and other weaponry,” a local resident said.

The impact on the local population can be further aggravated by the fact that Kyrgyzstan, already suffering a major budget deficit due to the April and June turmoil, does not have funds to construct 60% of the Osh-Batkent-Isfana which was meant to bypass and detour two Uzbek and one Tajik enclave on the Kyrgyz territory.

Standoff

The standoff, meanwhile, was apparently provoked by the closure of a transit route in southern Kyrgyzstan due to “aggressive attitude of Uzbek border guards” as of 23 August, Kyrgyz authorities reported. Uzbekistan, on the other hand, explained its actions as means for safety before the Independence Day celebration on 1 September.

The area in question is a high-mountainous region with roads in already poor condition. Being forced to take a worse detour road had taken about 100 protestors to the street there on 1 September 2010.

Deliberately or not, but an Uzbek website is further worsening the situation by describing the already poor-image-bearing Kyrgyz servicemen as “drunk, aggressive, assaultive and harassers” which was painted for the Uzbek citizens after the bloodletting events in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyz officials are too fuelling the tension by claiming one of the two top-rank detainees is wounded, referring to a certain piece of “own information”, and Uzbekistan not taking medical care of him.

“Hostage exchange”

The only way out of the situation, experts suggest, is exchanging “hostages”. Doing so would be an independence holiday gift for both neighbors! However, even that seems to be a vague option, since both parties officially detained the other country’s officers and launched criminal investigations into the border trespassing cases.

“I only hope this will not be the second episode of what we saw in June [presumably in Southern Kyrgyzstan; Sartpayev]; if so, it’s a regional war with one [presumably Uzbekistan; Sartpayev] side definitely taking over the other,” a local resident wishing to stay anonymous said.