DUSHANBE, February 9, 2016, Asia-Plus – The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Tajikistan has sent a note over the arbitrariness of Kyrgyz local authorities.

According to information posted on the website of the Tajik Embassy in Bishkek, the note was sent to Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Ministry on February 8.

The head of one of Kyrgyz village communities accompanied by Kyrgyz border guards illegally entered the village named after Halim Boboyev in the Ovchi-Qalacha jamoat of the Tajik district of Bobojonghafourov and installed the Kyrgyz national flag on a Tajik-owned private house.

“In this connection, the Tajik side expresses protest and demands that an investigation be launched into this incident and decisive measures be taken to prevent such arbitrariness in the future,” the note says.

The Tajik Embassy notes that such illegal actions contradict the agreements reached by the intergovernmental commission for delimitation and demarcation of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border.

The Ovchi-Qalacha jamoat in Tajikistan’s Bobojonghafourov district borders the Kulundu jamoat of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region.

The Border Guard Directorate’s office in Sughd province has called actions of Kyrgyz border guards ‘provocation.’    

We will recall that Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service reported on February 8 that Kyrgyz border guards installed their national flag on a Tajik-owned private house in the village of Ovchi-Qalacha in the Tajik district of Bobojonghafourov on February 6, claiming that the building was on Kyrgyz territory.

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have been unable to agree on the location of the border they inherited when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.  They have delimited only about half of the 971 kilometers.  As the population in the dense Ferghana Valley grows, it has become increasingly difficult to demarcate the contested sections, where valuable agricultural land often lies.

In recent years, the tension along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek and Kyrgyz-Tajik borders have intensified after outbreaks of violence involving residents and border guards from all sides.

The latest skirmishes sparked by a territorial dispute between residents along the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border escalated on August 4, leaving several people injured and damaging multiple homes.

The area at the focus of this and much previous unrest lies on the jagged frontier where the east of Tajikistan’s Sughd province and Kyrgyzstan’s Batken province meet.