Tension is not new on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, nearly 40 percent of which has not been demarcated in the 30 years since the two countries became independent. In late April, rock-throwing escalated to shooting near a Tajik exclave in Kyrgyzstan, followed by reports of the same in a number of villages along the border. Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, homes and businesses burned.
What exactly happened at the border? How have the clashes reverberated in regional politics? And how do the recent events fit into the larger context of a long-unsettled border and increasingly constrained access to critical resources?
On May 26, Anahita Saymidinova, a correspondent of the TV channel Iran International based in Dushanbe; Madeleine Reeves, a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester; and Aigerim Turgunbaeva, a Bishkek-based independent journalist, joined a live webinar to discuss these questions.