Development and Dialogue in the Ferghana Valley

Map 1.

In a 1904 speech to the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Halford Mackinder labeled Central Asia, the “Geographical Pivot of History.” ¹ Indeed, control over the vast open steppes and steep mountain ranges between China and the Caspian Sea was once considered to be the key to wealth and power. From Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, legendary conquerors used the Eurasian subcontinent as a playing field for their “great game.” Traders made and lost fortunes along Central Asia’s Silk Road, on which exotic goods from the Far East traveled to the lucrative markets in the West. In 1917, however, the Bolshevik revolution effectively closed off this region to the rest of the world. Throughout the following seventy years of Soviet rule, international access to the Central Asian republics was extremely limited. By the beginning of the 1990s, the region was completely marginalized. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, however, Central Asia reopened. Now the Eurasian steppes are once again becoming a pivotal part of the international community.

After a decade of independence, though, the region is economically destitute and politically divided. Increasing tensions between the Central Asian states currently give rise to serious concerns about the eruption of the same devastating inter-ethnic violence that has occurred in other post-communist areas, such as the Caucasus and the Balkans. In 1997, the Council on Foreign Relations sent a team to the Ferghana Valley to research the potential for violent conflict in this pivotal region. The resulting publication, Preventing Conflict in Central Asia: The Ferghana Valley, concludes that the likelihood of a conflict in Central Asia is indeed high.

The past struggles among neighboring civilizations over control of the Eurasian subcontinent have resulted in a complex regional demography and multicultural population. At the same time, however, they precluded the establishment of a lasting, coherent political order. When the Soviets established political entities in this ethnically diverse land, they divided the region along arbitrary lines that suited their own strategic interests. The result was a patchwork of ragged political divides that made little sense in terms of natural geographic boundaries or ethnic composition.

When the Central Asian republics became the unwitting recipients of independence in 1991, these arbitrarily drawn borders took on a new importance. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Ferghana Valley, a fertile oasis in the heart of Central Asia. During the early years of the Soviet Union, the valley was divided among three republics in an attempt to prevent the historically rebellious inhabitants from rising up against the Soviet empire. Over 90 percent of the Ferghana Valley was included in the Republic of Uzbekistan, while the remaining portions were given to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. At the same time, a concerted effort was made to establish regional interdependence. Part of this strategy was the construction of a veritable jigsaw puzzle of roads, canals, and railroads that crisscross state borders, making overland transportation lengthy and difficult. For example, the only road from the Kyrgyz city of Osh to the Tajik city of Khojent crosses into Uzbekistan and back no less than four times.

Moreover, as part of a deliberate policy that Edward Allworth termed “ethnic gerrymandering,” the divisions were established in such a way as to include large minorities in each republic. ² In the mid-1990s, for instance, more than 25 percent of the population in the Kyrgyz part and over 30 percent of the people in Tajik section of the valley claimed to be ethnically Uzbek. There are also significant Tajik and Kyrgyz diasporas in the Uzbek section of the valley and a decreasing number of ethnic Russians and other minority groups living in all parts of the valley. Paradoxically, the Soviets, spurred by fears of pan-Turkic separatist movements, actively encouraged the valley’s ethnic groups to develop individual national identities.

While heterogeneity does not...