ASTANA - This summer again, has been a troubled one for Central Asia as local conflicts sparked on the borders. Late July this year, fire was exchanged between Kyrgyz and Uzbek border guards. According to one version, it first started as a verbal altercation and then escalated to the use of firearms. One Kyrgyz border guard was killed.
This is not the first incident on the Kyrgyz – Uzbek border in the past several years. Likely, not the last either. Such cases also happen from time to time at the Kazakh-Uzbek border, as well as between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
So here we have a tri-lateral “conundrum” involving close neighbours in Central Asia. Several factors have contributed to the current situation. One of the issues is the shared use of trans-border water resources. The upstream countries believe that water is a resource just as oil and gas, and that it should be sold for big money.
The downstream countries believe they have the right to water and they call for fair sharing of this resource.
Meanwhile, the upstream countries are using their beneficial geographical position to dictate their conditions to the neighbours.
For example, on 7 July residents of the Kara-Bouourin province of Kyrgyzstan blocked the Bystrotok canal flowing towards Kazakhstan. Their demand was to renegotiate the 2001 agreement with Kazakhstan on delimitation and demarcation of borders. According to that document, a plot of land between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan where Kyrgyz farmers used to graze livestock had been annexed to Kazakhstan.
Disgruntled over the loss of the pasture, the Kyrgyz villagers blocked the trans-border canal Bystrotok leaving the neighbouring Kazakh farmers without water. Bytrotok is used to irrigate over 4,000 hectares of Kazakhstan land in the Zhambyl province.
The Kazakh embassy in Kyrgyzstan called on the Kyrgyz side to take immediate measures to restore the flow of Bystrotok through the borderline invoking violation of the earlier agreements on joint use of trans-border water resources and of generally accepted norms of international law.
Not only diplomats, but the elders and the governments of both countries got involved in the resolution of the situation.
Vice-premier of Kyrgyzstan Tokom Mamytov said all disputed land issues would be resolved through negotiations, and the lands that had passed to Kazakhstan under the earlier agreement will remain Kazakhstan’s.
An expert and political analyst for Central Asia, Daniyar Ashimbaev, argued that the situation around the Bystrotok canal clearly shows that the Kyrgyz government has no control in the peripheries. “We see systemic failures in the Kyrgyz governance: the numerous revolutions in that republic have broken Kyrgyzstan’s political continuity and have resulted in the formation of a so called ‘revolutionary sentiment’ in the Kyrgyz population as a whole, which makes it impossible to negotiate resolution of problems or to find compromises,” he opined.
He also noted that many Kazakhstan investors have invested and created joint ventures in Kyrgyzstan, which are now being nationalised.
“The problem is not just the canal. It is the entire area of the Kazakh-Kyrgyz co-operation,” the political analyst argued.
Meanwhile, the Kyrgyz Minister of Energy and industry Osmonbek Artykbaev announced recently its country’s plans to stop imports of Kazakhstan’s coal and to use its own coal resources instead.
“In the future, we intend to withdraw from Kazakhstan coal and to implement a staged transition of our thermal stations to local coal. Our forecast coal reserves are over six billion tonnes, and our goal is to develop them. Our task is to build thermal power plants that will use Kara-Kechen coal. In the future, we plan to sell our coal to China and to the other Central Asian countries,” the Kyrgyz minister said.
According to the first vice-minister of industry and new technologies of Kazakhstan, Albert Rau, Kyrgyzstan’s decision not to use Kazakhstan’s coal will not be a big loss for Astana. “Since 2010, this republic has been mining 100 million tonnes a year. The Kyrgyz exports are slightly over one million tonnes a year,” Rau said.
According to him, Kazakhstan exports its coal to Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Greece, Great Britain, Kyrgyzstan, and other countries. The coal mining companies of Kazakhstan produced 114.3 million tonnes of coal in 2013, out of which 81.5 million tonnes went to the domestic market and 32.8 million tonnes were exported. Eighty percent of Kazakhstan’s electricity generation is coal-based. Presently, Kazakhstan’s share in the world’s coal production is 1.7%, and in the CIS – about 15%. Kazakhstan’s coal reserves rank the 8th in the word.
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