Author	Randa M. Slim
Publication	Searching for Peace in Europe and Eurasia - 2002,Searching for Peace in Central and South Asia
Year	2002

Summary

The borders of the three countries within the Ferghana Valley were artificially drawn between 1924 and 1936 by the Soviet authorities in Moscow, with Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz living on all sides. This is one of at least six major sources of present tension in the valley. Most international attention focuses on the threat of Islamic extremism. However, official attempts at conflict management through repressive measures and crackdowns against Islamic groups and civil society organizations are fueling rather than dampening people's anger and frustration. Effective conflict prevention might still push the Ferghana Valley away from the precipice to which it is now heading.

Throughout Central Asia's history, the Ferghana Valley provided an important center for merchants trading with China and the Mediterranean. A branch of the Great Silk Road linking China to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe passed through the Ferghana Valley. Initially part of the Timurid empire, after Timur's death the Ferghana Valley became a single political unit under the Kokand Khanate from the late sixteenth to the midnineteenth century. Tsarist Russia's advance into Central Asia by the midnineteenth century was fueled by "expansionist imperial policy, ambition to rule the entire continent east of Moscow, and unrelenting economic pressure from merchants, bankers, and industrialists."¹ Russian merchants were interested that Moscow secured supplies of Central Asian cotton. With the Bolshevik revolution and the introduction of Soviet rule into Central Asia, the social and political relations in the region were fundamentally altered. Prior to their assuming control of the region, people in Central Asia identified themselves in terms of their region and locale, religious practices, and family or clan. The Soviet policies in the region "precipitated nationalities from a range of less codified identities that had existed before, giving them their own distinct literary languages written in variants of the Cyrillic alphabet."² Borders were artificially drawn in such a way that Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz were found on all sides. This enabled the Soviet authorities to continuously be called upon by the people in the region to help them manage conflicts that were bound to emerge as a result of these artificial divisions.

Home to more than 10 million people, the Ferghana Valley is divided among three Central Asian republics: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. About 60 percent of the valley's territory lies in Uzbekistan (4.3 percent of Uzbek territory), 25 percent in Tajikistan (18.2 percent of state territory), and the remaining 15 percent in Kyrgyzstan (42.2 percent of state territory). The Ferghana Valley lies in the heart of the Tien-Shan range with the Syr-Darya River flowing through it. It is 350 kilometers long and 100 kilometers wide. There are seven administrative provinces in the valley—three are Uzbek (Andijan, Ferghana, and Namangan), three Kyrgyz (Batken, Osh, and Jalal Abad), and one Tajik (Sughd, formerly Leninabad). Complicating the boundary issue in the valley is the presence of seven small enclaves.

From the beginning, the Muslim people of Central Asia deeply mistrusted the Soviet ideology. Islam arrived in Central Asia in the eighth century and has since then played an important role in the cultural, social, and political development of the Ferghana Valley. In February 1918, the Basmachi Muslim rebel movement was created in the aftermath of an aggression by Soviet troops against the population of Kokand. The Basmachis were local military groups also led by mullahs who tried to overthrow Soviet rule and the old regional political elites in the name of an Islamic Turkistan. The Basmachi rebellion lasted until 1924 in most of Central Asia and was sustained in many parts of the Ferghana Valley until 1928. In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the different states of Central Asia declared their independence and later introduced their national currencies.

Today, the Ferghana Valley remains the part of Central Asia with the highest level of Muslim observance. Although the level of knowledge of Islamic theology and shari'a is quite limited among the general population, this has been increasing in the last several years. Seventy-five years of Soviet rule and constant attempts at suppressing Islam have in a small way paid off. What now remains strong in the valley is a ritualistic form of Islam. The Ferghana Valley is also the region in Central Asia that suffered most from independence, due to the imposition of territorial borders in an area that was economically interwoven during the Soviet times. As noted by an International Crisis Group report, "What were once internal administrative borders, across which flowed lively social and economic exchange and across which individual collective farms or villages had expanded, became new national borders."³Acute conflicts over water and land resources, old ethnic rivalries, and steep decline in people's living standards make this region most prone to violence.
This is a quick review of some of the conflicts that have occurred in the past thirteen years, 1989–2001.

1989
Ethnic clashes occurred in the Uzbekistan part of the valley between ethnic Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks. Meskhetian Turks belong to a small ethnic group deported from the Caucasus to Uzbekistan by Stalin. One hundred and three people died and over a thousand were reported wounded. The pretext for the fighting was a quarrel in the local market in the Kuvasay bazaar in the Ferghana district over the price of strawberries. Most of the Meskhetian residents had to flee the valley back to Russia and other Central Asian countries.
Ethnic clashes also occurred in Samarkandek (on the Kyrgyzstan part of the valley) between Tajiks and Kyrgyz over land distribution and water allocation. Several people were killed and injured. Violent tensions have also occurred between Tajik refugees and local Kyrgyz residents in the Batken province. Tensions erupted over water allocation.

1990
Riots occurred between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh and Uzgen, Kyrgyzstan. Hundreds were killed. The causes of this conflict involved control over land and housing, the underrepresentation of ethnic Uzbeks in local and regional authority structures (while Uzbeks at the time made up 29 percent of the region's population), and demands for greater Uzbek autonomy as it relates to preservation of Uzbek culture and language.

1991–1992
The conflict involved a takeover of the Namangan regional administration by an unofficial militant organization called Adolat. The takeover was a protest by the local devout Muslim group against the official clergy's decision to endorse Islam Karimov's presidential candidacy. A wave of arrests followed the takeover and most of Adolat's supporters fled to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.

1996–1998
A series of riots, protests, and eventually a military coup attempt occurred in Leninabad (recently renamed Soghd), Tajikistan. In May 1996, violent demonstrations were held in Khujand and (Öra-Teppa demanding the removal of unpopular local officials. In April 1997, prison riots occurred in Khujand prison that led the deaths of a large number of prisoners. On 30 April 1997, Tajik president Imomali Rakhmanov was injured along with seventy others in an assassination attempt in Khujand. In November 1998, rebels led by ethnic Uzbek leader Mahmud Khudoiberdiev crossed into Leninabad from Uzbekistan, seized control of the security installations in Khujand, and occupied a regional airport in Chkalovsk. The main reason behind these events was the growing dissatisfaction by the Khujandis over the Kölabi-run government's attempts to undermine the northern region's traditional role in Tajikistan's political life. The Tajik government accused Uzbek president Islam Karimov of supporting the rebels.
A series of assassinations of police and local officials in Namangan, in the Uzbekistan sector of the valley, led to a massive crackdown in Namangan and Andijan including hundreds of arrests of suspected Islamic terrorists. The Uzbek government charged "foreign-trained Wahhabis" with responsibility for the assassinations.

1999
In August 1999, rebels crossed from Tajikistan into the Batken district in Kyrgyzstan, kidnapped foreign nationals, and engaged in clashes with the Kyrgyz and Uzbek troops. It is now believed that the rebel group included members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an Uzbek opposition Islamic group and former Tajik opposition fighters. They demanded a free corridor through the territory of Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan. The rebels eventually released the hostages after obtaining a ransom.
On 16 February 1999, six car bombs targeting Uzbekistani government facilities exploded in different parts of Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital, killing sixteen persons and wounding more than a hundred others. Uzbek official circles blamed the attacks on the IMU. The government used these bombing incidents as an excuse to launch a crackdown on the militants in the Ferghana Valley. Eleven people were sentenced to death and more than 120 others received long prison sentences. Despite the official version for these incidents, it is now strongly believed these bombings were part of an internal power struggle in Uzbekistan, and were aimed at shoring up the influence of one clique in the ruling elite.
In November 1999, clashes occurred in Yangiabad, in the Uzbekistan part of the Ferghana Valley. A group of fifteen to twenty gunmen also believed to be members of the IMU killed six people in clashes with the Uzbek security and Interior Ministry troops in the mountainous areas around Angren. The gunmen were killed. Violence erupted over water allocation between Tajik refugees and local Kyrgyz residents in the villages of Chet-Kyzil and Bai-Karabak in the Batken province.

2000
Violent tensions occurred in Samarkandek, Kyrgyzstan, over housing and land allocation pitting Kyrgyz against Tajik villagers.
In August 2000 small units of IMU rebels raided small villages over a wide area along the Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Tajik borders. The rebels are now believed to be stationed in parts of Tajikistan and the highlands of southern Kyrgyzstan.

2001
Under pressure from the international community, Tajikistan expelled the IMU militants from Tavildara in the Karategin Valley where the group had reportedly been based for several years. The militants along with their leaders were escorted to Afghanistan.⁴
Skirmishes have occurred in July between Kyrgyz government forces and IMU militants. That summer's raids were occurring nearer to Kyrgyz-Uzbek border regions, and indicate a shift in IMU tactics.⁵ IMU members seem now to have settled among the local population in these border areas inside Kyrgyzstan.

Conflict Dynamics

The three countries sharing the Ferghana Valley are in the midst of a host of crises. A legitimacy crisis undermines the people's confidence in their leaders' ability to represent their interests in a fair and inclusive manner. An economic crisis worsens that prevents these countries' leadership from meeting the basic needs of their population, thus giving way to the rise and eventual dominance of an informal or shadow economy. A security crisis, which causes these governments to divert scarce resources away from the development field and toward the military sector, still plagues the area's government. And finally, a mounting crisis of traditional values that have always governed these societies and by which traditional methods of decisionmaking in communities such as the council of elders have worked is of growing concern. These crises present the background against which we must view and analyze past and potential future conflicts in the Ferghana Valley. As Lubin and Rubin note, conflicts in the Ferghana Valley were "caused less by ethnic animosities than by a mix of elements—economic, social, political—embedded in a complex political and ethnic strata that formed the fault lines along which these conflicts eventually exploded."⁶ Most analysts focus on seven sources of tension in the valley: borders, overpopulation and "creeping migration," water, unemployment, Islamic militant groups, ethnicity, and a criminal cluster including drug trafficking, corruption, and organized crime.

Borders
Stalin drew the borders in the region in the 1920s, based on political and economic considerations and without respect for ethnic balance (many different groups were deported by Stalin, which complicated the border issues). These lines had little practical impact for most of the valley's residents when they were all part of the Soviet Union. Overnight with independence, these lines became the international borders of three sovereign countries, thus disrupting the ordinary flow of people, goods, and trade in the Ferghana Valley. Numerous border posts have been established between the different parts of the valley. As the United Nations Development Program/International Labor Organization social-policy review paper (1995–1996) noted, "The borders, being artificial, created ethnic groups and nationalities, not the other way around, and these divisions were perpetuated when the five Central Asian republics became independent. Where once there was unity, today there is national division and rivalry, at least potentially."
In response to growing IMU activity, Uzbekistan has imposed a visa regime and moreover mined its borders. Kyrgyzstan has also mined its borders with Tajikistan and blown up mountain passes in order to make them impenetrable by IMU militants. These actions make people's daily lives extremely difficult. They disrupt trade routes and hamper cross-border economic activities. By February 2001, it was reported that border mines had killed thirty civilians along the Tajik-Uzbek border. Border guards' abusive behavior and corruption indirectly foment interethnic tensions as blame for their behavior is displaced on neighboring villages of similar ethnic backgrounds. Local leadership in the valley is pushing their respective national government to take tough stands on the border issues and is applying increasing pressure on them to solve this problem.
There are also currently a number of border disputes among the three countries sharing the different parts of the valley that need to be addressed within some forms of multilateral or bilateral official mechanisms. There are close to 140 unresolved border disputes between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In April 2001, reports of a land swap between the two countries, enabling Uzbekistan to establish a land corridor to its Sokh enclave located in Kyrgyzstan's Batken district, drew ire from the local population and antagonized the Kyrgyz parliament.⁷

Overpopulation and "Creeping Migration"
With a young and rapidly growing population in a small region with limited arable land, the Ferghana Valley faces tremendous demographic pressures. The highest population density in Central Asia is now found in the valley—up to 250 inhabitants per square kilometer compared with the average of 14 inhabitants per square kilometer in Central Asia. Observers are witnessing a rural exodus to Osh in Kyrgyzstan, especially from the Batken province and among ethnic Kyrgyz who reside in Tajikistan, to Khujand in Tajikistan from the Jirgatal and Murghab regions, and to Andijan, Ferghana, and Namangan provinces in Uzbekistan. There is also a brain drain in the valley as Russians and Russian-speaking residents are emigrating to Russia and other Commonwealth of Independent States countries due to unemployment and deteriorating living conditions in the valley.
Competition for land is also rising as a result of demographic pressures. This problem is most acute in the case of Kyrgyzstan. This competition is taking on an ethnic dimension. There is a "creeping migration" phenomenon as Tajik citizens cross borders and try to purchase land and build houses on Kyrgyz farmland. They usually buy the land from Kyrgyz farmers only to discover later that the sale was illegal. This has lately caused a number of small-scale violent clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan among Kyrgyz and ethnic Tajiks who live in these border communities. Similar problems are arising among ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the Osh region. In the Uzbekistan part of the valley, it is being claimed that land is being reallocated to Uzbeks to the disadvantage of ethnic Kyrgyz and Tajiks who live in the area.

Water
Water is a cause of many of the small-scale conflicts that are currently unfolding in the valley, especially between northern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. During Soviet times, the different parts of the valley were made interdependent through a infrastructural network of water, energy, and transportation lines. The three countries "often have contrary needs for scarce water supplies: Kyrgyzstan uses one of the main rivers, the Syr-Darya, for energy production, but Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan need the water for irrigation of their large cotton and fruit crops."⁸ In 2000, agricultural production fell by 30 percent due mainly to limited water resources. Though water allocation is discussed each year in bilateral summits and agreements, the latter are often violated. Most water reservoirs are season-regulated and 90 percent of their water is for irrigation. Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, while water-rich, are dependent on imported electricity from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. This dependence has created many tensions among the three countries. On 23 July 2001, President Akayev of Kyrgyzstan signed a new law, "On the Interstate Use of Water Installations, Water Resources and Hydro Facilities in the Kyrgyz Republic," seeking to impose charges on countries such as Uzbekistan for Kyrgyz water usage. This new law will further weaken the already frail relationship between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Water scarcity is further exacerbated by the inefficient use of water in farming in the valley—the malfunctioning and in some cases totally destroyed drainage system and irrigation channels built by the Soviet Union. This has led to periodic flooding, rising water tables, and increased soil salinity, thus directly contributing to increased ethnic tensions among border communities.

Unemployment
Unemployment is high in the Ferghana Valley, particularly among youth. The collapse of the Soviet Union had a major impact on the economies of Central Asia, mainly in depriving the region of its network of suppliers and distributors and markets that used to be scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. Many industries in the valley are now idle. According to unofficial reports, the unemployment rate in the Batken province in the Kyrgyz part of the valley runs from 50 to 80 percent. It is estimated that 35 percent of the work force in the Uzbekistan part of the valley is unemployed, including the majority of those under the age of twenty-five. An unemployed and hungry youth is readily attracted to popular movements and ready to engage in criminal and violent activities. It has been reported that the unemployment problem has taken on an ethnic character. For example, in the Kyrgyzstan part of the valley, it has been observed that the rate of unemployment is higher among ethnic Uzbeks than Kyrgyz residents.⁹

Islamic Militant Groups
Islam has always been an inalienable part of the Central Asian culture, and more so in the Ferghana Valley. Although the Soviet Union tried over seventy-five years of its rule to co-opt local clergy and control them, underground Islamic networks that survived the Soviet times have now come to the surface and are playing a major role in the growth of militant Islamic groups in the valley. The two largest underground opposition Islamic movements known to be currently operating in the valley are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Liberation Party). They both appear to be pan-Islamists with a vision for creating an Islamic caliphate in the historical region of Turkestan based on shari'a law. They are ideologically influenced by the Wahhabi Islamic tradition of Saudi Arabia, though a leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir has recently claimed that though they agree on the goals, they differ with the Wahhabi movement over the means to achieve their goals. The latter believe in a guerrilla war and the creation of an Islamic army to do that while the former espouses a peaceful, long-term strategy of ideological work at the community level.

Hizb ut-Tahrir was founded in Palestine in the 1950s and remained underground during the Soviet times.¹⁰ It operates in small five-man cells, is highly secretive, and believes in peaceful political change through a mass revolt against the Central Asian regimes, while not excluding the possibility of using violent means if repression continues. The party has growing support in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Recently, more than twenty followers were sentenced to different prison terms in Khujand, Tajikistan. The IMU core leadership consists of former members of banned Islamic parties in Uzbekistan who had to flee the Ferghana Valley to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Iran in 1992 during the harsh crackdown on the opposition by Uzbekistan's government. IMU members fought with the United Tajik opposition during Tajikistan's civil war (1992–1997). When the Tajik civil war ended in 1997, the Uzbek fighters refused to lay down their arms, claiming that their goal now is to engage in an armed struggle to topple the Uzbek government and establish an Islamic state in Uzbekistan.

Until recently, it was believed that IMU members maintained their bases in eastern Tajikistan, from where it is convenient to pass into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Following their incursions into the Batken region in Kyrgyzstan in 2000 and 2001, and under strong pressure from neighboring Central Asian states, the government of Tajikistan is reported to have expelled the IMU's leader and some of his followers, who were flown aboard Russian helicopters to Afghanistan. It is now clear that the IMU did receive some support from the Taliban in Afghanistan and it is reported that other funders included Osama bin Laden and private Islamic groups in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.¹¹ As pointed out earlier, skirmishes in July 2001 between IMU and the Kyrgyz government forces point out that militants are now operating inside Kyrgyzstan. Strategically, this tactical shift indicates that the IMU leadership now regards Kyrgyzstan as a military objective in its own right, aiming to embroil it in a wider regional conflict. Many analysts tend to argue that Islamic militancy now represents the most serious threat to stability in the region. Others feel, however, that it is the harsh repressive regimes of Central Asia and the economic crisis in the region rather than Islamic militancy that are the real cause of instability in the region. Furthermore, an International Crisis Group report correctly argues that "the [Islamic] insurgency is a reflection of the economic hardships and discontent affecting a part of the population and a reaction to the severe crackdown on Islamic activities which has pitted observant but otherwise moderate Muslims against their state."¹²

Ethnicity
A gap exists between the ethnic divisions and the political boundaries in the Ferghana Valley. For example, 700,000 ethnic Uzbeks live today in southern Kyrgyzstan, 300,000 ethnic Kyrgyz reside in Uzbekistan, and more than 1.4 million ethnic Uzbeks live in Tajikistan. The threat of interethnic tensions is more likely in southern Kyrgyzstan. Osh residents still remember the 1990 clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz. Close to 30 percent of Kyrgyzstan's southern provinces are non-Kyrgyz. The largest minority group consists of Uzbeks (close to 15 percent), while Russians and Tajiks make up about 2–3 percent each. Despite Kyrgyzstan's publicly touted efforts toward diminishing the importance of ethnicity, ethnic Uzbeks in their part of the valley believe they have been increasingly discriminated against in allocation of official position, access to redistributed land, and access to other employment opportunities in the private sector such as the bazaar. It is also an alarming trend that many of the resource-based conflicts in the valley, and in particular in the Kyrgyz-Tajik border communities, are being expressed along ethnic lines. It has been noted that there is "sufficient tension based on discrimination, differential access to resources and the memory of past conflict to make the reoccurrence of such clashes a distinct possibility."¹³

Criminal Cluster: Drug Trafficking, Corruption, and Organized Crime
Drug trafficking and criminal activities are some of the main factors contributing to present and future instability in the Ferghana Valley. Drug trafficking has grown as a business as the economy in the region has declined. Drought, the wars in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and the absence of economic and social reforms have plunged the region into poverty. This phenomenon is aided by the informal economy known as the "shadow economy" that has developed over decades in the former Soviet sphere including Central Asia. The national governments in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan claim that the drug trade is also funding the radical Islamic movements operating in the valley, including the IMU. There is as yet no firm evidence to support this claim.

Drug cultivation, production, and transportation have started to create a culture of consumption in the valley, especially among the unemployed youth. Today's typical drug addict in the valley is aged between thirteen and twenty-two and is unemployed. More women are becoming drug addicts as they are being used as couriers. The fear is that the increasing drug business will in the future contribute to further corruption of the power and security structures in this region. On 2 March 2001, a former Tajik embassy official was convicted of carrying 68 kilograms of heroin.

There is an ongoing intense competition among various criminal groups for control of the best trafficking routes. According to Agence France-Presse, over a hundred new organized criminal drug-smuggling groups have sprung up in Tajikistan alone. One explanation for the murder of Tajikistan deputy interior minister Habib Sanginov on 11 April 2001 relates to intensifying competition among Tajikistan's drug lords. According to analysts, the greatest struggle now centers on the road running northeast from Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, connecting the Garm region with southern Kyrgyzstan.¹⁴ At present, large numbers of people are involved in these activities and the local state structures throughout the valley seem helpless at this point in containing this trade. Though one analyst points out that the drug trade in the Ferghana Valley presents one of the few examples of "coordinated interethnic cooperation," one might speculate whether in the future competing drug gangs will engage in turf wars that might take on an interethnic character.¹⁵

Official Conflict Management

National governments sharing the Ferghana Valley have in the past used and are now using different strategies and tactics for tackling sources of tension in the valley. This section will focus on the official attempts to deal with three major sources of tension: the economy (including land and unemployment), water, and Islamic militancy.

On the economic front, all three states have officially embraced economic reform policies. However, the implementation of such policies has varied in practice from one country to another, and within each country from one region to another. As far as the Ferghana Valley is concerned, these economic reforms have had a negative impact. As noted by Lubin and Rubin, "Customs controls, the establishment of separate currencies, and differences in rates and means of economic liberalization are all policy decisions that tear at the fabric that has woven the valley together over the course of centuries."¹⁶ The imposition of customs controls, especially by Uzbekistan, has impeded cross-border regional trade and exacerbated corruption and given border guards free reign to make people's lives very difficult.

Land privatization has proceeded slowly in both the Uzbek and Kyrgyz parts of the valley. In the Uzbek part of the valley, "privatized" collective farms are still required to produce cotton and wheat for sale exclusively to the state at well below market prices. In southern Kyrgyzstan, privatization has proceeded slowly given the history of the 1990 ethnic rioting in Osh over land allocation policies. There is a fear among Kyrgyz that ethnic Uzbeks will use their economic advantage to buy more Kyrgyz land, while Uzbeks fear that local officials in the valley will use the privatization process as a pretext to chase them out of prime agricultural land. The industrial sector is not faring better in the Ferghana Valley. Similar to the rest of Central Asia, industries (both primary and secondary) need to be overhauled and restructured. Local firms lack investment funds and an efficient infrastructure. Potential large-scale foreign investment is being withheld, especially in the Uzbek part of the valley, due to that country's restrictive economic policies. These economic woes are further compounded by the lack of good transportation links between the different regions in the valley and their respective national centers. It is fair to say that the valley's main economic activities remain centered on agriculture, and the sector is in bad need of reform.

As far as water reform is concerned, the major obstacles to effective management lie mainly in the lack of political will to tackle such a complex issue. This holds especially on the part of the regional and local authorities that derive much of their power from their control over water allocation in their respective localities. In addition, any successful attempts at dealing with water-based conflict will require an input of funds and expertise that are currently lacking in the region. These are necessary to overhaul a water supply system that is in sore need of restructuring and in some cases total rebuilding.

Conflicts over water resources manifest themselves in the valley at both the national and the regional/local levels. Some of the resource-based conflicts at the local level are in some cases amenable to a localized, affordable solution that need not involve the national authorities. Many of these conflicts over water have taken on an ethnic character at the local level. In southern Kyrgyzstan, many of the local conflicts over water pit Kyrgyz villagers against ethnic Tajiks or Tajik refugees living in Kyrgyzstan. They also involve border communities in southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. The potential of these local conflicts to escalate into widespread ethnic rioting in these parts of the valley is high, but are easily preventable with a site-specific, intercommunal, low-cost intervention. One of the few success stories in the Ferghana Valley has been a project funded by the Swiss Development Agency that focuses on local resource-based conflicts. This project will be presented in detail in the following section on multi-track diplomacy.

At the national level, water reform must be addressed within the framework of a multi-issue, multiparty negotiation process linking border, water, and energy issues. A multiparty process is essential due to the fact that the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins go through all six countries in the region—Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Due to the crisscrossed infrastructure links set up by the Russian Federation among its former republics in Central Asia, countries in the Ferghana Valley are interdependent in the supply of resources such as water and gas. Uzbekistan is totally dependent on Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan for irrigation water, while the latter depend on their gas supplies from the former. Economic relations among the three countries have been lately the subject of tit-for-tat games over these resources. While bilateral swap agreements on water resources and energy (e.g., the agreement between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed in December 2000) have averted major crises in the short term, they have proven to be dysfunctional in the long term due to complex political and economic problems between the upstream and downstream countries. Uzbekistan has imposed a gas embargo on Kyrgyzstan in winter 2000–2001 in order to coerce the latter into settling a territorial dispute over the Sokh enclave. To compensate for gas shortages, Kyrgyzstan diverted water resources into hydroelectric power generation, resulting in decreasing water supplies to Uzbek farms across the border.

A regional, integrative approach to dealing with resource-based conflicts has so far been rejected by Uzbekistan. The latter has also rejected international assistance in helping the countries reach consensus on a regionwide water management system. It fears that outside intervention will increase the bargaining power of the two weaker parties in this relationship, i.e., Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Water is the one resource that gives Kyrgyzstan, and to some extent Tajikistan, leverage over its powerful neighbor. Uzbekistan's position has been that all Central Asia's water resources are "common wealth" that must be provided by the upstream countries, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, at no cost. Kyrgyzstan has proceeded to defend its water resources. In March 2001, Kyrgyzstan declared that it was ready to provide 750 million cubic meters of water instead of the previously agreed-upon 2.3 billion cubic meters. Combined with the drought that has plagued the region for the last two years, this is having a devastating impact on Uzbekistan's cotton harvest. As stated earlier, President Akaev has signed on 23 July 2001 a law that seeks to impose charges for water usage in line with world prices. Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have proceeded to decrease their dependence on Uzbekistan for their energy supplies. The Kyrgyz government hopes to invest in the building of new hydropower stations over the next four years. The hope is that by 2005, Kyrgyzstan will produce enough electricity to meet its domestic needs. Tajikistan is making strong efforts to attract foreign investment in the hydropower sector. With its rich hydropower resources (presumed to have the eighth-highest concentration of such resources in the world), Tajikistan still relies on neighboring countries such as Uzbekistan to meet 20 percent of its energy needs. In order to attract investment into prospective hydropower projects, Tajikistan is considering a variety of options from joint ventures to direct investment. It has already transformed twenty-four power stations into joint stock companies, with the government holding all the initial shares. It has recently turned over the management of these shares to the Ministry of Power Engineering.¹⁷ Enacting a new water management regime will be directly linked to the land privatization efforts. Unless farmers in the valley start using water more efficiently, any water management system will fail. Creating such incentives among the valley's farmers is tightly linked to a "real" land privatization effort by the government. So far, governments have seemed content to continue subsidizing the agricultural sector rather than privatize the land.

In dealing with the Islamic insurgency, the three countries sharing the Ferghana Valley differed in their assessment of the threat and consequently in their response to it. After fostering an Islamic revival in the 1990s following the Soviet collapse, Uzbekistan has recently come to perceive Islamic militancy as the most serious threat to its national security. Its official strategy for dealing with this threat has so far centered on repressive military measures. It has recently closed down more than nine hundred mosques in the Ferghana Valley region. Regional authorities regularly conduct house-to-house raids and mass arrests of groups of men who assemble in public. Government agents monitor mosques, even "official" ones, and men shave their beards for fear they will be labeled Islamic radicals. In Namangan, nearly everyone has a family member or friend who has been arrested. Recently, the Uzbek government has admitted that detention camps exist, though it is impossible to determine the exact number of detainees, believed to be in the thousands.¹⁸ Recently, in Andijan more than three hundred people demonstrated in front of municipal administrations demanding that their relatives be released from jail.¹⁹ In order to stem the cross-border IMU incursions, the Uzbek government has mined its borders with both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, causing many civilian deaths. It has also imposed a strict visa regime that hampers cross-border trade in the valley. In March 2001, fifty ethnic Uzbeks holding Tajik citizenship and living in Uzbekistan were deported to the Tajik border on suspicion that they are IMU collaborators. In response to the August 1999 IMU incursion, Uzbekistan bombed territory in Tajikistan thought to be occupied by IMU followers, thus increasing the tensions that already existed between the two countries. Uzbekistan is still pursuing its policy of mining mountainous areas along the borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, further indicating its intent to deal unilaterally with the IMU threat. Many observers believe that the increasing popularity of the militant groups in the valley, particularly of the IMU and Hizb ut-Tahrir, is as much a result of the government's repressive tactics and people's discontent with the region's economic decline.

Recent reports indicate that the IMU has changed its professed view of Kyrgyz territory as purely a corridor into Uzbekistan, and is now seeking to embroil Kyrgyzstan in a wider regional conflict. Kyrgyzstan's government has so far adopted a two-pronged approach to its interactions with the IMU: On the one hand, it has been building up its defense capabilities, while on the other, they made overtures to the IMU about negotiating a nonviolence pact.²⁰ However, negotiation overtures came to a halt after a Kyrgyz military court sentenced two IMU fighters to death for their participation in the August 2000 raids. The IMU had warned of retaliation if the death sentences are carried out. Kyrgyzstan' policy toward Islamic activists has recently become more restrictive. Distinctions are being made between "official" Islam and the independent Muslim clergy. The latter are being closely monitored, especially in southern Kyrgyzstan. Following the 1999 incursions, a closer collaboration was established between the Kyrgyz Ministry for National Security and the Uzbek National Security Service. With the recent IMU incursions showing that the IMU is now operating inside the Kyrgyz territory, the Kyrgyz government is bound to increase its repressive tactics in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Tajikistan is the only country in Central Asia that has involved Islamists in its governing coalition. The 1997 peace accord between the government and the United Tajik opposition stipulated that 30 percent of the official posts be allocated to members of the opposition, which consisted mostly of Islamic Revival Party members. The current minister of emergencies, Mirza Ziyayev, is reputed to have fought alongside IMU leader Joma Namangani during the 1992–1997 Tajik civil war. There is now ample evidence that former United Tajik opposition militants have been involved with the IMU in the actual fighting in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In May 2000, under pressure from its neighbors, Tajikistan expelled IMU fighters from its territories where they have been based for years. However, there are some in the Uzbek and Kyrgyz military who still believe that the IMU is utilizing bases in Tajikistan. Tajikistan's government is more threatened by Uzbekistan's policies than by the IMU. Uzbek raids inside Tajikistan in 1999 against IMU bases there killed civilians and damaged homes. Its strict visa regime has restricted Tajik citizens' travel throughout the region, given the fact that Tajikistan is almost exclusively dependent on Uzbekistan for transportation links to the outside world. Its mining of the borders has caused close to thirty civilian deaths in Tajikistan to date. Continuous accusations by the Uzbek president that Tajikistan is supporting the IMU is further exacerbating tensions between the two governments. Recently, he demanded that the Tajik government relieve its minister of emergency situations from his post on the grounds that he is a close ally of IMU leader Juma Namangani.²¹ Tajikistan's government views the IMU's presence in Tajikistan as providing it with some leverage vis-à-vis the Uzbek government, which still harbors a dissident army officer, Mahmud Khudaiberdiyev, who attempted a coup in 1998 against the ruling elite. Both the Tajikistani government and the leadership of the Islamic Revival Party are now more worried about the activities of the Hizb ut-Tahrir in northern Tajikistan. A number of Hizb ut-Tahrir followers were captured in November 2000 and sentenced to terms in prison. Other followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir were recently captured in Dushanbe.

Due to different assessments in the three countries of the seriousness of the Islamic threat vis-à-vis their respective national security, multilateral regional attempts to counter this threat are likely to be limited. In June 2001, at a summit of the Shanghai Five, Uzbekistan joined the newly created Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In addition to Uzbekistan, SCO's members include China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. One of the major aims of the SCO is to improve the regional response to radical Islam in Central Asia, including the creation of a regional antiterrorist center in Bishkek. However, recent statements by Uzbek president Karimov and Russian officials already attest to the difficulties facing the newly created organization.²² The Uzbek president has expressed concern that the SCO should not become a Russian instrument to mount anti-U.S. initiatives in the region. Previous border demarcation agreements between China on the one hand and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on the other are being reexamined, creating tensions among the three governments. Russia is becoming more concerned with Beijing's growing influence in the region and is concerned that the SCO might become a venue for China to pursue its ambitions in Central Asia. Furthermore, financial resources needed for the implementation of regional agreements such as the regional antiterrorist center have yet to materialize. A far more serious implication of the Islamic threat to the valley lies in the fact that it has provided the governments in the region the opportunity for diverting scarce governmental resources away from the developmental field and toward the security and military sectors.

Multi Track Diplomacy

This section will focus on the efforts being undertaken by international governmental and nongovernmental organizations to manage some of the sources of tension in the Ferghana Valley. Few of these projects have involved cross-border partnerships, mostly due to Uzbekistan's resistance. Due to their mandate, some donor agencies, such as USAID, work mostly bilaterally with partners in the other states. Hence, they will find it hard to fund a regional project. Regional projects have so far been limited to two parts of the valley: southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. One or two projects are truly regional in their action plan and implementation policies in that they involve joint Kyrgyz-Tajik analytical and implementation teams. Southern Kyrgyzstan has benefited from much international aid and development assistance due to the fact that the Islamic insurgencies have hit it most in the past two years. Though many donor agencies now profess funding conflict-prevention projects, few are committed to the long-term agenda of a conflict-prevention program. To succeed, a conflict-prevention program cannot be subordinated to the three-to-five-year funding cycle of most development agencies. As correctly noted by Barnett Rubin, "The evolution of perceptions of Central Asia illustrates . . . a tendency to overemphasize operational prevention—intervention to halt escalation of violence—and under-emphasize structural prevention—establishing programs to strengthen fundamental factors that prevent conflict, such as governance and equitable development."²³ This section will discuss in brief the two projects that first brought the ideas of structural conflict prevention in the Ferghana Valley to the attention of Western policymakers, and then present four projects that promise much hope for long-term conflict prevention in the valley.

The United Nations—Ferghana Valley Development Program
This is the first international project to call for a comprehensive conflict-prevention approach in the Ferghana Valley. The project discusses three major challenges facing the Ferghana Valley: maintaining the interethnic peace and good community relations; promoting regional dialogue and cooperation on issues such as Islamic militancy and drug trafficking; and building regional institutions covering both the official and the civil-society sectors. The program called for a regional, trilateral program focusing on issues dealing with growth and sustainable development. The programmatic areas advocated by the program were five: (1) job creation and income generation; (2) establishing joint interethnic confidence-building measures; (3) regulation of cross-border trade and a related dialogue on the maintenance of transparent boundaries; (4) regional cooperation in the fields of language and education; and (5) revival of a common cultural heritage in the region. The program further advocated cross-border partnerships in the valley among NGOs and other civil-society organizations working in the region. The project officially began in August 1998, established its headquarters in Osh (Kyrgyzstan), and set up a bilingual website at ferghana.elcat.kg>. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan participated in the program. The United Nations Development Program was the lead agency and funder in the countries where the program operated. Uzbekistan refused to participate in the program, and couched its refusal in terms of opposition to external conflict prevention in the valley. In reality, analysts now note that Uzbekistan's rejection of the program was due to its perception that this effort was a Kyrgyz attempt to intervene in Uzbekistan's affairs through international agencies.²⁴

Center for Preventive Action (CPA) Project on the Ferghana Valley
The purpose of this project was to assess the potential for conflict in Central Asia by studying one of its most volatile areas and provide recommendations for policymakers on conflict prevention in the region. In addition to the interethnic schisms, this project's key premise focuses on "a range of economic, political, social, organized crime, environmental, security, and other factors that have long proved incendiary in this part of the world."²⁵ A project working group was assembled, chaired by former U.S. senator Sam Nunn, a very influential and widely respected policymaker, that included policy experts, business executives, journalists, national security experts, and members of the nongovernmental sector. A delegation of the working group traveled to the region in March 1997, visiting the Uzbek and Kyrgyz parts of the valley. Other members of the working group visited northern Tajikistan in May 1998. The working group report was issued in the form of a 1999 book titled Calming the Ferghana Valley—Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia. It recommended the following conflict-preventive measures in the valley: (1) creation of an information clearinghouse on the Ferghana Valley to assist both investment and foreign assistance; (2) promotion of cross-border civil-society initiatives in the fields of governance and human rights; (3) supporting efforts at regional intercultural dialogues; (4) focusing foreign development assistance on cross-border regional projects while maintaining bilateral aid; and (5) promoting foreign direct investment in the valley by pressing Uzbekistan to relax its currency and border restrictions.
The UNDP and the CPA projects were critical in putting the Ferghana Valley on policymakers' agendas, especially in the West, and in promoting an active interest and eventually engagement by the donor community in the valley. Many of the ongoing development projects in the valley have adopted the principles and recommendations advocated by these first two initiatives. Following is a short description of four other projects that have much potential for regional conflict prevention in the Ferghana Valley.

Peace Promotion Program for Bordering Regions
This is one of the most ambitious, ongoing peace promotion programs, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. It is a regional program involving a number of local NGOs in all three countries. It adopts a multifold strategy targeting the grass roots, and middle-level leadership in the region. This program includes a number of civil-society initiatives.

Cross-Border Conflict Prevention Project at the Community Level
Initiated in June 1999 and implemented by the Kyrgyz NGO Foundation for Tolerance International and Tajik NGO Ittifok, this program has offices in Batken and Leilek (southern Kyrgyzstan) and Isfara and Khujand (northern Tajikistan). It targets border communities that have manifested a potential for interethnic violence, and it promotes the prevention of such conflicts through:

• Application of consensus-building processes and the cultivation of the tradition of good neighborhood and mutual trust in managing emerging disputes
• Organization of joint educational, cultural, and social programs among neighboring communities
• Establishment and institutionalization of a regional network of community mediators who can help de-escalate local disputes
• Attracting public attention in the border communities to nonviolent methods of conflict resolution.

Goodwill Ambassadors Networks Project
This initiative's aim is to set up three national networks of unofficial diplomats in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. These unofficial networks promote conflict prevention through:

• Field visits to the Ferghana Valley, on the basis of which they can provide their former colleagues in the official sector with a more accurate analysis of the causes of conflict and sources of tension
• Sharing their experience with conflict management with the local leadership in the different communities, in the hope that this might help reduce the tensions
• Lobbying state authorities about the persistent problems
• Disseminating new ideas and approaches for conflict prevention and management in the decisionmaking bodies of the three countries

This project was initiated in June 2000 and has now established the three national networks. The networks have offices in Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent. The project is being funded in collaboration with the Peace-Building Section of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Rehabilitation of Physical Infrastructure Project
This initiative is being implemented by UNDP in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan through the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and focuses on cross-border social infrastructure rehabilitation, mainly drinking water and irrigation.

Central Asia Media Support Project
This initiative promotes a regional dialogue among journalists, holds training seminars for journalists from all three countries on producing balanced and accurate news on regional issues, and produces bulletins on subregional media issues. It is a joint collaboration between the Geneva-based CIMERA Network and the Osh Media Resource Center.

Preventive Development in the South of Kyrgyzstan Program
The overall objectives of this program are to support the government of Kyrgyzstan and local communities in the south, to identify the root causes of conflict, and take the necessary measures for conflict prevention. It was established by the UNDP and the government of Kyrgyzstan. Though only focusing on four municipalities in the Batken province in south Kyrgyzstan, it is hoped that in the future this program will extend to other areas in the south of the country as well as to Tajikistan. It involves a three-pronged approach:

1. Establish a preventive development center to be equipped with an early warning system.
   
2. Support community-based organizations in carrying out community-wide projects through microcredit programs. Community members will receive training in the creation and management of small business enterprises.
   
3. Strengthen the law-enforcing capacities of the Batken provincial police department through provision of equipment, training, and vehicles.

The International Crisis Group Central Asia Project
The International Crisis Group (ICG) is a private multinational organization committed to strengthening the capacity of the international community to understand and act to prevent conflicts. The ICG project contributes to crisis prevention in the Ferghana Valley through:

• Research and analysis on political and socioeconomic trends in the valley and in the region in general. It opened an office in Osh in October 2000 where its staff conducts field research involving a wide range of sources.
• Publications in the forms of regular briefings and analytical reports including practical recommendations for international decisionmakers. It has so far published five reports on Central Asia and one briefing.
• Lobbying decisionmakers and the international media to keep the former informed about events as they unfold in the region and to build momentum for international action to avert a surge of violence regionwide.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
The OSCE has held a number of training workshops for the purpose of disseminating information about conflict analysis and prevention. Such seminars include a human-rights training program for Kyrgyz border guards, and training in the field of interethnic relations targeting officials in provincial and local administrations in south Kyrgyzstan as well as major ethnic communities. Monthly early warning reports by local monitors trained and employed by the OSCE are sent to the OSCE Commissioner on National Minorities.

Prospects

When covering the Ferghana Valley, the Western media has placed much emphasis on the Islamic threat in Central Asia, which diverted attention away from the root causes of conflict in that region. The root causes lie in poverty, repressive measures being undertaken against opposition and civil-society groups, corruption in the official sector creating a total disconnection between the governors and the governed, and poorly maintained and badly built infrastructure networks in the region. Official policies that focus solely on the Islamic threat and neglecting the root causes previously mentioned further exacerbate tensions and will, if sustained in the long term, lead to conflict escalation.

Official attempts at conflict management through repressive measures and crackdowns against Islamic groups and civil-society organizations are fueling rather than dampening people's anger and frustration. Visa regimes and mining of borders are further exacerbating simmering social and political frustrations and daily increasing the risks of local outbreaks of violence. Following 11 September 2001, repressive measures against Islamic groups have been on the rise, especially in Uzbekistan. There are valid concerns among the human-rights community that increased cooperation between the United States and Uzbekistan would result in less U.S. scrutiny of Uzbekistan's human-rights record. In the past, the United States has been one of Uzbekistan's strongest critics on human-rights violations. In February 2001, the U.S. State Department reported that the Uzbek government's poor human-rights record worsened, primarily due to the iron-fisted assault on independent political and religious expression. But as cooperation between the two countries increased following the launching of the U.S.-led antiterrorism war, official disapproval in Washington over Uzbek human-rights violations has turned silent. In October 2001, the U.S. State Department chose not to designate Uzbekistan as one of the countries of particular concern. An intensification of the government crackdown on all forms of religious expression might lead to increased popular support for militant movements such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Hizb ut-Tahrir. It might also lead to consolidation of efforts among the two movements and further radicalization of those such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, who have until now espoused nonviolent forms of opposition to the Uzbek government.

Following the U.S.-led antiterrorism campaign, countries in the region, including the three sharing the Ferghana Valley, have imposed additional restrictions on population movements across borders and a crackdown on illegal migration. These new security measures mean more hardship for residents of the Ferghana Valley, impeding cross-border trade and visits. Farmers who have previously depended on cross-border trade are now trying to find new sources of income. People find it very hard to visit relatives in neighboring countries. Border soldiers are trying to supplement their meager salaries with bribes imposed on those who want to cross to neighboring villages. A black-market economy is flourishing, especially in border communities, as small-scale entrepreneurs try to resell scarce goods purchased at a lower price across the border. Local economies in the valley are suffering due to decreased cross-border trade. There is a fear in the valley that poor economic conditions, especially in places such as Osh in Kyrgyzstan, might foster renewed interethnic tensions between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks similar to the ones that occurred in 1990.

Governments in the region have also stepped up their crackdown on illegal migrants as of late September 2001. Kyrgyzstan, for example, deported three hundred undocumented foreigners, mostly Tajiks and Afghans. This behavior has increased interstate friction in the region. Until recently, the drug trade has provided some funding to the militant groups. It has also contributed to the increase in criminal behavior, especially among the youth. Drug addiction is also on the increase, further weakening the region's economy due to the diversion of human and financial resources away from more productive sectors such as agriculture and industry. It is hoped that one of the positive outcomes of the U.S.-led antiterrorism campaign is a termination of Afghanistan's drugs industry. If that were to happen, there would be an urgent need to inject funds into the valley to provide alternative jobs for youth who used to be engaged in drug trafficking and to provide drug rehabilitation and treatment for drug addicts. Otherwise these unemployed youth will become eager recruits to Islamic militant movements. The real threats in the Ferghana Valley remain rooted in internal factors, mainly economic deprivation, lack of employment opportunities, total distrust in their government's ability and/or willingness to improve their living conditions, and anger at their government's repressive measures. One of the few valid generalizations in the literature on social protests and collective mobilizations is that social, violent mobilization of groups occurs when aggrieved groups cannot work through established channels, such as political parties or civil-society groups, to communicate new claims into the political process of authoritative decisionmaking.²⁶ Other factors that contribute to success of violent mobilization efforts include the intensity of deprivation, the resources of the mobilizing actors, the militants' strategic skills, and the counterstrategies of the opponents, i.e., governments. All these factors apply to today's situation in the Ferghana Valley. These factors are further exacerbated by a feeling of hopelessness that is quickly spreading among the population. People do not believe anymore that their respective governments are fair, willing to be inclusive, able to relate to their people, and/or willing to reform themselves to become less corrupt and more accountable. History has shown us that when people feel they are pushed against the wall and they have nothing to lose, they usually resort to drastic and violent measures.

The Ferghana Valley is now at a critical juncture where effective conflict-prevention efforts might push it away from the precipice to which it is now heading. An effective conflict-prevention intervention must be multisector and multilevel, and focus on structural rehabilitation, institutional reform, and attitudinal and behavioral change. A multilevel approach will involve simultaneously the national governments, the regional/local leaderships, and the civil-society organizations. A multisector intervention will focus on making information more accessible, promoting participation in decisionmaking processes, reforming education, restructuring national and local economies, and promoting governance and decentralization of the decisionmaking process. Structural rehabilitation will involve overhauling and in some cases rebuilding the infrastructure networks that are currently at the root of many of the local ethnic tensions in the valley. Institutional reform aims at eliminating the corruption that is rampant in official circles at the national, regional, and local levels. Corruption has eroded people's trust in their government and contributed to the feelings of injustice that fuel people's support for the Islamic militant groups.

Attitudinal and behavioral change is often bypassed or paid lip service in institutional efforts at conflict prevention. However, sustainability of conflict-prevention efforts rests on the success of programs that aim at changing people's attitudes about others and the conflict in general. Specifically, this implies creating mechanisms for nonviolent adjudication of conflict at the community level, introducing different habits for dealing with conflict, changing people's attitudes toward the enemy however the latter is defined, and strengthening people's collaborative problem-solving capacities and skills.

Recommendations

An effective conflict-prevention strategy should focus on the following tasks:

• Governments and donor agencies working in the region must reinvigorate economic reforms, target immediate humanitarian support to those sectors of the population living in extreme poverty, and create jobs through the promotion of better investment environments. While continuing to push for reforms at the macro level, donor agencies must focus at the micro level on promoting and strengthening the capacities and resources of existing community-based organizations to become the engines of economic growth in their communities.
  
• Establish a joint expert committee from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to assess the impact of the travel restrictions and border controls recently established in the valley. This committee should be funded by the international community and provided with outside expertise and training. While these controls should continue in the short-term to be part of the security measures to counter terrorist and drug-trafficking activities, in the long term they might prove to be counterproductive if they continue to limit cross-border trade and fuel people's anger and frustrations due to the humiliations inflicted on them by the border guards.
  
• Judicial systems in each of the three countries are in need of serious reform. The judicial systems must be allowed to be truly independent from the executive structures; judges must be better trained and paid, and subject to stiff sanctions if they were to accept bribes. In the Ferghana Valley, people view the judicial system as corrupt, inefficient, and incapable of providing an impartial venue for channeling their grievances. In such a context, it is no wonder that people resort to violence.
  
• Efforts at reducing corruption in the administrative and security state structures must be strengthened. Such efforts could take the form of strict legal sanctions for those officials who accept bribes, electing rather than appointing local officials, new standards of personnel management to ensure an educated work force, transparent hiring practices to ensure that ethnic minorities are not discriminated against, and better pay for personnel to help them meet their family basic needs. In the Ferghana Valley, border and customs officers are most notable for their corrupt and humiliating practices.
  
• Establish a multi-issue, multiparty negotiation process to simultaneously address border, water, and energy issues in the valley. This process should be held under the aegis of a respected, impartial third party. In July 2001, a regional effort at dealing with energy issues paid off when representatives from the five Central Asian energy ministries signed a treaty in Bishkek forming a regional energy grid. This grid should foster efficient trading of power resources among the five Central Asian states and is likely to be of benefit to the Ferghana Valley energy problems. This approach should also allow more efficient production and distribution of power throughout the region and facilitate quick decisions about when and where to send surplus power.²⁷ However this regional treaty does not deal with the water issues in the region. Unlike energy, some governments in the region are neither ready nor willing to pay for water. In particular, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan announced that they find the idea of paying for water to be "unacceptable" and a violation of international norms. The United States Agency for International Development has been pushing for a solution linking water and energy, which Uzbekistan has so far found unacceptable. An unofficial process involving trusted experts from the three countries, and moderated by international experts in these issues, could be promoted and funded by the international community.
  
• Governments in the region should abandon the repressive measures against their clergy, the political opposition, and members of the civil society. They need take a look at the modern history of neighboring Iran and conclude that such measures did not help the shah in preventing the Islamic opposition from assuming power. There is a fear that U.S.-led efforts to counter terrorism in Afghanistan have led regimes in Central Asia to believe that all forms of oppression against their opposition, as long as the latter are labeled Islamist, would be accepted by the international community. The international community must send a strong message that such behavior is unacceptable. Islam is an integral part of Central Asian societies, and won't go away. Seventy years of communism failed to achieve that and any efforts by these three governments to suppress it will likely fail and eventually backfire on them. The donor community must push for a dialogue in each of these countries involving the government, the Islamic clergy, and the civil-society structures. However, it is extremely important that this dialogue not involve outside voices or "experts." Unless it is locally owned, initiated, and facilitated, such a dialogue will be labeled as a Western attempt at containing the Islamic revival movement in Central Asia.
  
• In addressing the structural causes of conflicts in the region, especially water-based disputes, donors must adopt a twofold strategy. In the long term, the Soviet-built irrigation and water supply networks must be totally overhauled. In the short term, they must focus on the localities where water-based conflicts have taken on an ethnic character and which, if not addressed, might provide the spark for regionwide interethnic violence. Needs-assessment teams including engineers and conflict-management specialists must work together in identifying those communities in the valley most at risk for this type of conflict. The Swiss Development Corporation has been most successful in following this strategy in its "peace promotion for bordering regions" project.
  
• Training in conflict-management techniques must be organized at all levels in the valley, involving the regional and local official leaders, community leaders, and civil-society organizations. These training workshops must focus on fostering in the participants skills of conflict analysis and collaborative problem-solving behavior. Conflict prevention is most successful if done quickly and locally. This requires certain skills and abilities: skills in conflict monitoring, conflict analysis, dispute system design, consensus building, negotiation and mediation, and strategic planning. Civil-society organizations and local experts in "conflictology" lack minimal expertise in this field. It is important that such training programs be designed for regional and local officials, members of traditional institutions such as the council of elders, local staff of nongovernmental organizations, teachers, and high school and university students. These local stakeholders can then provide a local cadre working to promote different attitudes about the "enemy" and new habits of collaborative problem-solving behavior.
  
• Free information flow is essential for equal opportunity, consensus building, and keeping the state structures accountable. Governments in the region must be pushed to honor the freedom of the press and combat the harassment of journalists.
  
• Drug addiction and consequently AIDS are on the increase in the different regions of the valley. Regional antidrug educational programs must target the at-risk communities, mostly involving unemployed youth. Young men and women get drafted into the business due to lack of other employment opportunities and the good pay. It is hoped that with increased attention focused on the region, more aid will flow into drug prevention programs and projects to create alternative sources of employment for the Ferghana Valley's unemployed youth.

Miscellaneous

1. Ahmed Rashid, The Resurgence of Central Asia—Islam or Nationalism? Cambridge, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 17.
   
2. Nancy Lubin and Barnett Rubin, Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia, New York, The Council on Foreign Relations, 1999, p. 41.
   
3. ICG, "Central Asia: Crisis Conditions in Three States," Asia Report No 7, August 2000, p. 2.
   
4. Asad Sadulloyev, "SOS: Jaga Is Going Out," Central Asian News from Ferghana, 2 February 2001.
   
5. Arslan Koichiev, "Skirmishes Suggest IMU Is Changing Tactics," Eurasia Insight, 6 August 2001.
   
6. Lubin and Rubin, Calming the Ferghana Valley, p. 59.
   
7. Arslan Koichiev, "Batken Residents Furious over Secret Kyrgyz-Uzbek Deal," Eurasia Insight, 25 April 2001.
   
8. Anara Tabyshalieva, The Challenges of Regional Cooperation in Central Asia—Preventing Ethnic Conflict in the Ferghana Valley, Washington, DC, United States Institute of Peace, 1999, p. 26.
   
9. Lubin and Rubin, Calming the Ferghana Valley, p. 66; "Incubators of Conflict: Central Asia's Localised Poverty and Social Unrest," International Crisis Group Report, no. 16, 8 June 2001, p. 8.
   
10. Ahmed Rashid, "Confrontation Brews Among Islamic Militants in Central Asia," Turkistan Newsletter, 22 November 2000.
    
11. ICG, Asia Report No 14, p. 11; Rashid, "Confrontation Brews."
    
12. ICG, Asia Report No 14, p. 11.
    
13. ICG, "Central Asia: Fault Lines in the New Security Map," Asia Report No. 20, 4 July 2001, p. 6.
    
14. Gregory Gleason, "Tajikistan Minister's Murder Points to Drug-Route Conflict," Eurasia Insight, 16 April 2001.
    
15. Tabyshalieva, The Challenges of Regional Cooperation, p. 27.
    
16. Lubin and Rubin, Calming the Ferghana Valley, p. 79.
    
17. Daler Nurkhanov, "Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan Seek to Bolster Power Generating Capacity, Break Energy Dependence," Eurasia Insight, 2 August 2001.
    
18. ICG, Asia Report No. 14, p. 7.
    
19. Musaev Bakhodir, "Uzbeks Losing Patience: Uzbeks Take to the Streets to Air Anti-Government Grievances," Reporting Central Asia, no. 47, 10 April 2001.
    
20. Arslan Koichiev, "Kyrgyz Soldiers Reportedly Clash with IMU Fighters," Eurasia Insight, 26 July 2001.
    
21. "Uzbek President Urges Tajik Authorities to Sack Opposition Minister," Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, via BBC Worldwide Monitoring, 12 August 2001.
    
22. "Russia Has Misgivings About Shanghai Cooperation Organization," Eurasia Insight, 20 June 2001.
    
23. Barnett Rubin, unpublished document, 2001, p. 36.
    
24. Ibid., p. 27.
    
25. Lubin and Rubin, Calming the Ferghana Valley, p. xii.
    
26. Herbert Kitschelt, "Social Movements, Political Parties, and Democratic Theory," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, no. 528, July 1993.
    
27. Gregory Gleason, "Mixing Oil and Water: Central Asia's Emerging Energy Market," Eurasia Insight, 27 August 2001.

    Service Information

    NEWSLETTERS AND PERIODICALS:	Central Asia and the Caucasus--Journal of Social and Political Studies, Central Asia and the Caucasus Information and Analytical Center, Sweden; Central Asia--Caucasus Analyst, the Central Asia--Caucasus Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies; Central Asia Monitor; Information Analytical Bulletin, International Centre Interbilim, Bishkek; Reporting Central Asia, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, London; The Central Eurasian Studies Review, the Central Eurasian Studies Society; Turkistan Newsletter, Research Center for Turkistan, Azerbaijan, Crimea, Caucasus and Siberia in the Netherlands;
    REPORTS:	International Crisis Group's Central Asia Project: Afghanistan and Central Asia: Priorities for Reconstruction and Development. Asia Report No. 26, 27 November 2001. Central Asian Perspectives on 11 September and the Afghan Crisis, briefing, 28 September 2001. Central Asia: Crisis Conditions in Three States, Asia Report No. 7, 7 August 2000. Central Asia: Drugs and Conflict. Asia Report No. 25, 26 November 2001. Central Asia: Fault Lines in the New Security Map, Asia Report No. 20, 4 July 2001. Incubators of Conflict: Central Asia's Localized Poverty and Social Unrest, Asia Report No. 16, 8 June 2001. Islamist Mobilisation and Regional Security, Asia Report No. 14, 1 March 2001. Kyrgyzstan at Ten--Trouble in the 'Island of Democracy,' Asia Report No. 22, 28 August 2001. Recent Violence in Central Asia: Causes and Consequences, Central Asia Briefing, 18 October 2000. Uzbekistan at Ten--Repression and Instability, Asia Report No. 21, 21 August 2001. Royal Institute for International Affairs, Western Engagement in the Caucasus and Central Asia, by Neil MacFarlane, 1999. United Nations Development Program: Kyrgyzstan Human Development Report, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Tajikistan Human Development Report, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Uzbekistan Human Development Report, 1998, 1999, and 2000. United States Institute of Peace, The Challenges of Regional Cooperation in Central Asia: Preventing Ethnic Conflict in the Ferghana Valley, by Anara Tabyshalieva, June 1999.
    OTHER PUBLICATIONS:	Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia, by Sam Nunn, Nancy Lubin, and Barnett Rubin. New York, The Century Foundation Press, 1999. Central Asia: Conflict, Resolution, and Change, edited by Roald Sagdeev and Susan Eisenhower. Chevy Chase, MD, Center for Post-Soviet Studies, January 1995. Central Asia's New States: Independence, Foreign Policy, and Regional Security, by Martha Brill Olcott. Washington, DC, United States Institute of Peace, October 1997. Civil Society in Central Asia, edited by M. Holt Ruffin and Daniel Waugh. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1999. Conflict, Cleavage and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus, edited by Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Islam and Central Asia: An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat? edited by Susan Eisenhower and Roald Sagdeev. Washington, DC, The Center for Political and Strategic Studies, June 2000. Political Islam and Conflicts in Russia and Central Asia, by Lena Johnson and Murad Esenov. Stockholm, The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, 1999. The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations, by Olivier Roy. New York, New York University Press, 1999. The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism? by Ahmad Rashid. Karachi, Oxford University Press, May 1999.
    SELECTED INTERNET SITES:	www.camsp.osh.kg/ (Central Asia Media Support Project); www.crisisweb.org/ (ICG's Asia reports are available at this site); www.eurasianet.org/ (An Open Society Institute site that provides an independent source of news and analysis about Central Asia and the Caucasus); www.fas.harvard.edu/~casww/ICG-CAP.html (The International Crisis Group's Central Asia Project website); www.fas.harvard.edu/~cess/ (The website of the Central Eurasian Studies Society); www.ferghana.elcat.kg/ (Ferghana Valley Development Programme); www.fti.kyrnet.kg/ (The Foundation of Tolerance International, Ferghana Valley Listserver Archive, by date); www.icarp.org (Interactive Central Asia Research Project); www.internews.ru/ (An independent news service that covers events in Central Asia); www.iwpr.net/index.pl?centasia_index.html (Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Central Eurasia Resource Pages); www.times.kg (Online version of the weekly English language newspaper The Times of Central Asia);
    RESOURCE CONTACTS:	Vicken Cheterian, CIMERA, e-mail: vicken.cheterian@cimera.org John Gely, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Tashkent, e-mail: johan.gely@tas.rep.admin.ch Jonathan Goodhand, INTRAC, e-mail: intrac@gn.apc.org Altaaf Hasham, Agha Khan Foundation, e-mail: akfgarm@atge.automail.com Raya Kadyrova, Foundation Tolerance International, e-mail: fti@infotel.kg Kamol Kamilov, Center of Youth Initiatives, e-mail: davron@cyi.khj.tajik.net Irene Leibundgut, Swiss Coordination Office, e-mail: irene@swisscoop.kg Rasoul Rakhimov, United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, e-mail: rakhimov@odccp.tojikiston.com Elena Sadovkaya, Center for Conflict Management, e-mail: ccm@online.ru John Schoeberlein, Forum for Central Asian Studies, Harvard University, e-mail: schoeber@fas.harvard.edu Anara Tabyshalieva, Institute for Regional Studies, e-mail: ifrs@elcat.kg
    ORGANIZATIONS:	DATA ON THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THE DIRECTORY SECTION: In Kyrgyzstan: Foundation for Tolerance International; Institute for Regional Studies; Osh Media Resource Center; In Tajikistan: Center for Youth Initiatives, Ittifok; International: CIMERA; International Crisis Group; Office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities

    About the author

    Randa Slim (Dayton, Ohio, USA) focuses on consulting and training in the fields of conflict management and public participation. Since 1993, Slim has been a member of the Inter-Tajik Dialogue, an unofficial dialogue focusing on the conflict in Tajikistan. She is currently the principal consultant for the Inter-Tajik Dialogue civic initiative, a three-year project funded by a consortium of U.S. foundations. She is also a consultant for the Peace Promotion Project in the Ferghana Valley funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Randa Slim can be reached at