Dangerous escalation has erupted once again in Central Asia, not on the border with Afghanistan but on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border where fighting has erupted. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have periodically experienced border issues since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The violence along this border has been going on for around ten years, but in recent years, small-scale fights between peasants carrying clubs and stones have turned into shootouts between border guards.
However, this time the severity and scope of the combat appear to be higher than the brief war of late April 2021 that resulted in 55 fatalities and hundreds of injuries. This is the second year in a row that fighting on the size of war is taking place along the two countries border. This time, nobody seemed to be able or willing to put an end to the fighting.
Although there had been gunfire exchanges in three or more border regions two days prior, during which at least two Tajik border guards were killed and people on both sides of the border were injured, heavy fighting did not begin until September 16. The exact events that sparked the recent conflict and the heavy fighting in April of last year are unknown, it is evident that Tajik forces launched coordinated attacks at a dozen or more points along the border and were able to enter Kyrgyzstan in some locations in both conflicts once hostilities started. By September 17, there had been fighting along a significant portion of the border in over a dozen locations.
As it turned out, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov were in the same room on September 16 during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) annual conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
However, during statements during the summit, SCO member state leaders, including Japarov and Rahmon, avoided discussing the violence. However, the Kyrgyz and Tajik presidents did meet briefly after the conference and reached an agreement to end the hostilities. That cease-fire also did not hold.
According to the Tajik State Committee for National Security, there was the deployment of artillery, multiple rocket-launcher systems, mortars, tanks, armored vehicles, military helicopters, and Kyrgyz military drones hovered overhead.
In the Osh Province of Kyrgyzstan, where Kyrgyz border guards in the Chon-Alai district reported that numerous villages came under mortar and artillery attack, fighting spread to places where it had never before.
By September 17, Kyrgyz officials had evacuated roughly 136,000 people from the region near the Tajik border; with the battle spreading down the border, that number was likely certainly higher by day’s end.
The bombardment of the province capital on September 16 led Kyrgyz authorities to relocate border dwellers to places significantly further away, in contrast to past evacuations of Kyrgyz citizens from border settlements in Batken Province when hostilities began.
Particularly alarming are reports from the Tajik side that Kyrgyzstan fired on the Tajik town of Ovchi-Kalacha with one of its recently acquired military drones, the Turkish-built Bayraktar. The violent conflict between the two nations, which already saw Tajikistan utilize helicopter gunships to attack a Kyrgyz village in 2021, would then escalate to a new level.
A Central Asian Tinderbox exploited by West
The US-led West is putting a lot of effort into dividing and ruling pairs of allies and foes across the BRICS-led Global South, but it’s important to note that their Hybrid War campaigns exploit preexisting fault lines, some of which are naturally re-erupting without the need for outside interference.
While cynics accuse him of purposefully separating and governing its people, Stalin intended to prevent identity disputes in this historically multicultural region of the USSR. Regardless of his intentions, however, there is no doubt that his legacy turned Central Asia into a tinderbox. The Kyrgyz-Tajik border is still not completely marked, which is typically cited as the cause of the ongoing clashes.
These Central Asian nations, which are assuredly parts of the Global South, are being influenced by the surge in nationalist sentiment to cynically use border skirmishes as politically expedient pressure valves to divert their poor people from turning against them and artificially unite their societies in the face of a purported external threat.
The decision-makers in these nations recurrently believe that sending a strong message to other nations can help dissuade unconventional threats at home. In Kyrgyzstan’s case, this means avoiding another Color Revolution, while Tajikistan wants the Taliban and ISIS-K to stop thinking it’s a pushover.
Challenges for Moscow
The fact that Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are both members of both organizations while simultaneously hosting the military forces of their mutual defense allies is evidence that membership in multipolar organizations like the CSTO and SCO and the presence of Russian bases could not prevent regional conflicts.
Despite Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan being members of the Russian-led CSTO and hosting its forces, that Russia lacks complete control over those two countries’ military strategies and regional dynamics in general, which significantly reduces its capacity to prevent and end regional conflicts. The recent flare-up has also come up at a time when Russia is engaged in a military campaign in Ukraine and facing a hostile outbreak along the Azerbaijan-Armenia borders.
Both combatants are prohibited from hosting foreign forces without the consent of their CSTO allies, but the US will undoubtedly attempt to persuade one of them to withdraw, as Uzbekistan did previously, under the pretense that they are angry with Russia for not supporting them, in order to host its forces in their place. Should this situation develop, it will be a major blow for Moscow in maintaining the security of its strategic interests in the region.