Kazakhstan–Uzbekistan border

Tashkent and the 1924 line

The line was drawn in Moscow’s 1924 division of Soviet Central Asia into national republics. The Kazakh autonomous republic gained the Syr Darya region and the north of Semirechye, gathering most Kazakh lands, Shymkent included, into one unit. The big exception was Tashkent, home to both Uzbeks and Kazakhs: despite talks with influential Kazakh communists in Turkestan, the authorities assigned it to Uzbekistan.^[2] Today the border runs right along the edge of the city.

The Karakalpak autonomous region, around the southern shore of the Aral Sea, was first placed inside the Kazakh autonomous republic, and in 1936 it was transferred to the Uzbek SSR.^[2] That move set the long western stretch of today’s border across the Ustyurt plateau.

Moved in Soviet times

Land kept changing hands between the two republics. In 1956 the Saryagash, Kirov, Maktaaral and Zhetysu districts of the South Kazakhstan region were transferred to Uzbekistan and later returned to Kazakhstan, though not entirely. On 13 February 1956 part of the Golodnaya (Hunger) Steppe and the Bostandyk district also went to Uzbekistan. A Kazakh state history portal calls these lands the subject of competing claims to this day.^[5]

Delimitation

Work on the border began in the early 2000s. By 2001, 96 percent of the line had been agreed, but three sections stayed contested: the area of Bagys, a village in Kazakhstan’s Turkistan region; the former village of Arnasai; and the Uzbek village of Nsan, each with the land around it. Delimitation was completed in September 2002.^[1]

Marking the line on the ground took far longer. According to Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry, a joint demarcation commission met for 100 rounds of negotiations over 19 years, and the final documents run to more than 8,000 pages, with 1,301 markers along the 2,357 km border.^[1]

The 2022 treaty

Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, signed the demarcation agreement with Uzbekistan’s president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, during a state visit to Tashkent that ended on 22 December 2022, alongside a treaty on allied relations and an agreement to create an international centre for industrial cooperation. Tokayev called the border agreement historic.^[3]

The treaty came into force on 4 July 2023, completing the legal registration of Kazakhstan’s southern border.^[1] On 25 September 2024 the two countries submitted it to the UN Secretariat under Article 102 of the UN Charter; their foreign ministers called this an unprecedented step for Central Asian countries.^[4]

“completes the international legal registration of the state border of Kazakhstan on its southern borders”^[3]