The two countries have begun exchanging parcels of land under a milestone border agreement that ended one of Central Asia’s longest-running territorial disputes.
Officials from both sides have on Tuesday started working through a range of property-related, legal and administrative issues ahead of the land transfer. The first stage of the process covers Chongara and Tash-Tobo, the villages with a Kyrgyz-majority population of roughly 2,500. Both locations were previously part of Uzbekistan’s Ferghana region.
Bishkek confirmed that the villages are currently registered under the new jurisdiction, with residents issued Kyrgyz passports afterwards. Kyrgyzstan will reciprocate by handing over similar plots of border land to Uzbekistan, presidential spokesman Askat Alagozov said in February.
The land transfer comes just days after Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and his Kyrgyz counterpart, Sadyr Japarov, met on Lake Issyk-Kul for bilateral talks.
Uzbek-Kyrgyz border disputes
The exchange follows years of negotiations over the Uzbek-Kyrgyz frontier, much of which remained disputed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unclear borders resulted in complicated enclaves and disputed sectors, which led to local tensions over access to land and water.
In 2022, after high-level negotiations that began in 2017, a comprehensive border treaty was signed, demarcating over 300 kilometres of complex segments and resolving the issue of the Andijan Reservoir.
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