Kyrgyzstan Bolsters Border Protection
Kyrgyzstan Bolsters Border Protection
A new border management strategy has been adopted in Kyrgyzstan which NBCentralAsia experts say does not exactly suit the country’s mountainous terrain but will improve controls through tighter cooperation between all of the ministries and agencies involved.
On July 3, Zamir Moldoshev, head of Kyrgyzstan’s border service, told the AKIpress news agency that his service is to be reformed through the European Union’s Border Management Programme for Central Asia, BOMCA, which is being implemented by the United Nations Development Programme.
The reforms are part of a new border management strategy that was passed by the Kyrgyz parliament on June 25 and will run until 2019.
The strategy has been drawn up by EU experts and is based on Hungary’s experience of border controls. Its main aims are to improved controls at border checkpoints and ensure better coordination between the different ministries and agencies that deal with frontier issues.
It is also proposed to use mobile units to will patrol the border to catch people trying to cross by unofficial routes, and also to ensure there is more cooperation between law enforcement agencies and border guards.
The Kyrgyz border guards are a military force that form part of the National Security Service and patrol the country’s 3,900-kilometre borders with China, Kazakstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The new strategy would apply the Hungarian model where the service is more of a law-enforcement agency than a military force.
NBCentralAsia experts say mobile patrols would only be applicable in the north at this stage, because there are no differences of opinion about where the frontier runs.
Tamas Kiss, chief technical advisor for the BOMCA programme in Kyrgyzstan, says that the situation here is different from Hungary. While Kyrgyzstan’s northern borders are clearly defined and reasonably accessible, most of the southern frontier goes through remote mountainous terrain where there are very few checkpoints. Reforms designed to make border guards work with the army, police, customs service and the health and environmental agencies could be applied in the north first.
According to the government department that oversees border issues, there are 58 disputed areas on the 1,375 km frontier with Uzbekistan, and 382 km remain undefined. There are also several disputed areas along the border with Tajikistan – specifically in the Leilek district of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region in Kyrgyzstan and in the Isfara and Jirgatal districts of Tajikistan.
Political observer Bazarbay Mambetov said the border guards are currently short of personnel, so they are left too thinly stretched to monitor the entire frontier. This leaves the country vulnerable to external threats.
That problem should be eased once other agencies and ministries get involved, but Mambetov said there was no point introducing police-style methods until the interior ministry’s law enforcement agencies themselves were reformed. Only the defence ministry can really help improve frontier protection, he said.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
On July 3, Zamir Moldoshev, head of Kyrgyzstan’s border service, told the AKIpress news agency that his service is to be reformed through the European Union’s Border Management Programme for Central Asia, BOMCA, which is being implemented by the United Nations Development Programme.
The reforms are part of a new border management strategy that was passed by the Kyrgyz parliament on June 25 and will run until 2019.
The strategy has been drawn up by EU experts and is based on Hungary’s experience of border controls. Its main aims are to improved controls at border checkpoints and ensure better coordination between the different ministries and agencies that deal with frontier issues.
It is also proposed to use mobile units to will patrol the border to catch people trying to cross by unofficial routes, and also to ensure there is more cooperation between law enforcement agencies and border guards.
The Kyrgyz border guards are a military force that form part of the National Security Service and patrol the country’s 3,900-kilometre borders with China, Kazakstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The new strategy would apply the Hungarian model where the service is more of a law-enforcement agency than a military force.
NBCentralAsia experts say mobile patrols would only be applicable in the north at this stage, because there are no differences of opinion about where the frontier runs.
Tamas Kiss, chief technical advisor for the BOMCA programme in Kyrgyzstan, says that the situation here is different from Hungary. While Kyrgyzstan’s northern borders are clearly defined and reasonably accessible, most of the southern frontier goes through remote mountainous terrain where there are very few checkpoints. Reforms designed to make border guards work with the army, police, customs service and the health and environmental agencies could be applied in the north first.
According to the government department that oversees border issues, there are 58 disputed areas on the 1,375 km frontier with Uzbekistan, and 382 km remain undefined. There are also several disputed areas along the border with Tajikistan – specifically in the Leilek district of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region in Kyrgyzstan and in the Isfara and Jirgatal districts of Tajikistan.
Political observer Bazarbay Mambetov said the border guards are currently short of personnel, so they are left too thinly stretched to monitor the entire frontier. This leaves the country vulnerable to external threats.
That problem should be eased once other agencies and ministries get involved, but Mambetov said there was no point introducing police-style methods until the interior ministry’s law enforcement agencies themselves were reformed. Only the defence ministry can really help improve frontier protection, he said.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
