Two incidents occurred between residents of Tajik and Kyrgyz border villages on December 1.    

Residents of the Tajik village of Somoniyon in Sughd province say residents of the Kyrgyz village of Kok-Tash abducted the 59-year-old deputy principal of School 64, Kamoliddin Sobirov, on the morning of December 1, at around 10:00 am and took him to their village, where they beat him.  They reportedly let him go home only in the evening, at round 5:00 pm.    


The same day, Kamoliddin Sobirov was taken to the Isfara central city hospital.  A physician, who wanted to remain unnamed, told Asia-Plus on December 2 that Sobirov has injured ribs and a head injury.  According to him, Kamoliddin Sobirov is still in the trauma department and his condition is assessed as stable. 

Tajik officials have not commented on the incident

Meanwhile, Kyrgyz media outlets have reported that Kyrgyz national has been beaten at Kyrgyzstan’s common border with Tajikistan.   

Citing Kyrgyzstan’s border service, Kyrgyzstan’s online news agency 24.kg reported on December 2 that on Wednesday, at around 3:00 pm, a cow of a resident of the Kyrgyz village of Dakhma entered the territory of Tajikistan.  When the Kyrgyz national was looking for his cow, Tajik nationals reportedly detained him.  In response, Kyrgyz reportedly detained a citizen of Tajikistan.  On the same day, the Tajik national was reportedly released.  

Recall, citing the press center of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (SCNS), Sputnik reported on December 2 that seven or eight shots were allegedly fired by unknown persons from Tajik side towards Dakhma area in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken district at around 9:15 pm.  According to the Kyrgyz border service, the shots were fired from a hunting gun

A statement released by Kyrgyzstan’s SCNS press center says heads of border districts, senior representatives of law enforcement agencies and competent bodies of the two countries met in Tort-Kocho area in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region yesterday at 11:30 pm to discuss the situation.  They reportedly agreed to jointly patrol a border area, where the incident took place, beginning on December 2.

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have not yet resolved the border delineation problem.  Many border areas in Central Asia have been disputed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  The situation is particularly complicated near the numerous exclaves in the Fergana Valley, where the borders of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan meet.

The border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has been the scene of unrest repeatedly since the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

It has been difficult to demarcate the Kyrgyz-Tajik border because over the course of some 100 years Soviet mapmakers drew and redrew the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, incorporating land that had traditionally belonged to one people in the territory of the other Soviet republic.

Exclaves appeared and temporary land use agreements were signed.

All of this survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and people in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have various Soviet-era maps they use to justify their claim to specific areas along the border.

Border talks between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan began in 2002.  Only slightly more than half of the 970 kilometers of border shared by the two countries has been demarcated despite decades of attempts to bring the matter to a close.  The border delineation problem has led to conflicts between rival ethnic communities.