The Fergana Valley enclaves

Lines that didn’t matter, until 1991

In the 1920s Moscow divided Central Asia into Soviet republics, and inside one Soviet state the lines between them were mostly symbolic.^[2] Land is usually said to have gone to whichever republic’s language its people spoke: Barak, a Kyrgyz-speaking village inside what became Uzbekistan, went to Kyrgyzstan.^[2] Tajikistan was at first an autonomous region inside the Uzbek republic, and Sokh was given to Uzbekistan and stayed Uzbek when Tajikistan became a republic of its own.^[2]

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, those lines became international borders.^[4][3] In the mid-2010s nearly 30% of the Uzbek–Kyrgyz border was still disputed.^[2] The enclaves included Sokh, Shakhimardan, Jangail and Chon-Gara (Uzbek, inside Kyrgyzstan), Vorukh and Kapaygach (Tajik, inside Kyrgyzstan), Sarvak (Tajik, inside Uzbekistan) and Barak (Kyrgyz, inside Uzbekistan).^[5]

Sokh and Shakhimardan

Sokh sits in the middle of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken province, on the road that joins the two halves of the province. Kyrgyzstan refused to give Uzbekistan a corridor 17 km long and 1 km wide to reach it, because that would have cut Batken off from the rest of the country.^[2] Its people are almost all ethnic Tajiks. Schools there teach in Tajik, although Tajik is not an official language of Uzbekistan.^[2]

After the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan tried to enter the country through Sokh in the 1990s, Uzbek authorities laid anti-personnel mines along its border.^[2] For years Kyrgyzstan kept the 20 km road from Sokh to Rishtan in mainland Uzbekistan closed, forcing an 80 km detour. It reopened on 1 April 2021, after Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov’s visit to Tashkent in March.^[5]

Shakhimardan lies 17 km from mainland Uzbekistan, lives largely off tourism, and was the home of the Uzbek poet Hamza. No main road passes through it, so it troubles Kyrgyzstan less than Sokh does.^[2]

Vorukh and the Kyrgyz–Tajik border

Vorukh is a Tajik enclave of 130 km² in Batken province, and as with Sokh, roads cause friction. In April 2013 its residents attacked diggers building a Kyrgyz road that Tajikistan had not agreed to. On 11 January 2014 Tajik border guards fired mortars at another Kyrgyz road project, and every crossing between the two countries was closed.^[2]

Fighting over land, roads and water broke out again in 2021 and 2022. The 2022 conflict killed more than 100 people and forced more than 100,000 Kyrgyz citizens from their homes.^[3] On 13 March 2025 Presidents Sadyr Japarov and Emomali Rahmon signed a treaty settling the entire border, about 972 km. Vorukh and the Kyrgyz village of Dostuk were key parts of the deal, but the final map has not been published.^[3] On 31 March the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan met in Khujand and announced that all territorial disputes between their countries were resolved.^[3]

Swapping land

Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan agreed most of their border of nearly 1,400 km in 2017, and most of the rest, including the Kempir-Abad reservoir, in November 2022.^[4] Barak, Kyrgyzstan’s only enclave, had about 600 people who wanted to move to Kyrgyzstan.^[2] Under a 2024 land swap Barak passed to Uzbekistan, and its residents moved to a new village, Jany-Barak, in Kyrgyzstan’s Osh region.^[4]

In June 2026 Kyrgyzstan announced that the Uzbek enclaves of Chongara and Tash-Tobo had come under its jurisdiction. Their roughly 2,500 ethnic Kyrgyz residents will receive Kyrgyz citizenship, and Kyrgyzstan will give Uzbekistan an equal area of land.^[4] Sokh and Shakhimardan are much larger, and The Diplomat’s analyst doubts the same solution would work there.^[4]