Uzbeks Clear Mines From Tajik Border

Uzbekistan's announcement that it is removing landmines from its frontier with Tajikistan should have been welcomed as a breakthrough in the two countries' troubled relationship. But such is the lack of communication between them that Tajik officials were completely unaware that the controversial mine issue was apparently being resolved at last.

Rashid Habibov, deputy commander-in-chief of Uzbekistan's frontier troops, made the unexpected announcement when he met his counterparts from other former Soviet countries in the Tajik capital Dushanbe on October 20.

Habibov said demining work was already well under way in Surkhandarya, the southernmost region of Uzbekistan, where around 20 per cent of the border with Tajikistan had now been cleared.

The Uzbeks laid landmines along their side of the border with Tajikistan from 1999 onwards, after an insurgent group called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan launched a cross-border raid that was repeated the following two years. The militants were based in Afghanistan but used remote mountain areas of Tajikistan as the launchpad for their incursions.

The mined border came to symbolise the often frosty relationship between Tashkent and Dushanbe. The Uzbeks accused their neighbours of not doing enough to stem IMU incursions, while the Tajiks replied that local farmers were regularly being blown up by carelessly-placed mines on a border that is ill-defined in many places.

The IMU faded from view in 2001 with the demise of their allies, the Taleban in Afghanistan. Some IMU guerrillas died making a last stand against United States-led Coalition forces in the northern city of Kunduz. Others have reportedly resurfaced alongside their allies in north-west Pakistan, but the threat they may once have posed to the Uzbek government has gone.

Habibov's announcement came as a complete surprise to officials in Dushanbe.

“Tajik border guards do not have any information to the effect that the border has begun being cleared of mines, and I am not aware of it happening,” the head of Tajikistan's border guards, Saidamir Zukhurov, told journalists.

The director of the Tajikistan's Mine Action Centre, Jonmahmad Rajabov, was also in the dark. “If Uzbekistan has begun clearing the border of mines, that's a good thing, but we have not yet received any information about this,” he said. “Furthermore, we need to know how the demining process is proceeding, and whether it meets international standards.”

The two governments have been discussing the need to remove landmines for some years, and last year the Uzbeks said they were doing so. However, according to Zukhurov the only thing in place is an agreement in principle - “a final decision on the start and duration of mine-clearing has not actually been made”.

Various international bodies including the European Commission, the Red Cross, the OSCE and the United Nations have all tried to encourage an end to the landmines, but with little obvious success, and the border area remains as deadly as ever.

Seventy Tajik nationals have been killed and 80 injured by mines since they were laid; there are no equivalent figures for people living on the Uzbek side of the border . The Uzbek government offers no compensation.

Hotamjon Yusupov, from the village of Lakkon in the Sogd region of northern Tajikistan, was the first of four Tajik citizens killed by mines so far this year.

Like many in this poor village of 6,000, the 39-year-old had gone to the border area to gather logs, the only way he had of earning money.

“How are we supposed to know that the border is there? We grew up here and never knew whose territory was whose,” said Yusupov's brother Akram. “Now my brother’s five children are orphans. The explosions won’t stop people [from moving around] - my fellow villagers will do the same thing. We have no other choice.”

Lakkon is in the Isfara district, wedged next to Kyrgyzstan as well as Uzbekistan, and people there are still unused to having restrictions placed on their freedom of movement since borders only became important after the Soviet Union broke up. In rural areas like this, the border is still largely unmarked, and Tajik officials have no information about the number of mines on their frontier or where they are located.

The anti-personnel mines are inconspicuous and easy to miss.

IWPR contributor visited a border zone near Lakkon which consisted of a flat field with no signposts warning of mines or showing that this was where two countries meet. There were no border guards in sight, just livestock out to pasture.

The Red Cross runs an education programme taking Lakkon’s schoolchildren up to the border area to teach them mine safety, but one community leader is sceptical that it will change their behaviour.

“We were forced to make villagers aged 10 and upwards sign a statement saying they'd been made aware of the dangers," said Hoshim Melikboev. "But you can’t do anything about it. They go and gather logs there to bake bread with, and rocks to build houses. You can understood them - they can’t survive otherwise.”

Yusufjon Ahmedov, a member of the Tajik parliament, said he receives numerous letters from voters who have suffered from the landmines.

He told IWPR of one letter that outlined the tragic story of Bahrom Umarov and his wife Savrinisso who were out gathering mulberries to feed their silkworms when they were blown up and killed by a mine in the Kanibadam district, also in northern Tajikistan.

Three years later, the Umarovs’ 10-year-old nephew Rashid was also killed by a mine while herding cattle near the border.

“These are just examples from a small number of letters that I've received from voters. Each of these letters contains the pain and unhealed mental anguish of fathers and mothers, wives and children,” said Ahmedov.

“The authors say in all of these cases that not only did no one from Uzbekistan provide help to the families of those killed or wounded, but they did not even remember them…. The powers that be in the neighbouring country preferred to pretend they did not know anything about the mines they had placed.”

He concluded, “Perhaps our citizens who were killed or injured did breach border-crossing procedures. But there should be basic standards: minefields should be marked and warning signs put up, which in most cases are absent."

Despite hopes that the Uzbeks are now serious about taking the mines away, Tajik political analyst Shorikjon Khakimov expects the process of reaching a final agreement on the issue to take a long time.

“The current situation shows the realities here. We do not trust each other, and the governments… lack political will,” he said. “Under various pretexts, the problem is being deliberately dragged out. The result is innocent victims. And it's unclear how long this will continue.”

Shirin Azizmamadova is an independent journalist in Dushanbe.