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Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, neighbors of Central Asia, spoke on Friday following renewed violence at the border that killed one Tajik citizen. This is the first time that the leaders of the two countries, wedged between Russia and China, go together in the disputed border region.
Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and his Kyrgyz counterpart Sooronbai Jeenbekov shared a symbolic embrace at the border and also spoke with Tajik and Kyrgyz communities, according to press releases from both presidential offices.
The Tajikistan presidency said the talks had focused on "the delimitation of the state border" and "the prevention and settlement of border incidents".
Jeenbekov's office described the meeting as "historic" and urged both countries to "give impetus" to the demarcation talks.
A Tajik citizen was killed after clashes erupted between the two communities on Monday in the Tajik enclave of Vorukh, which is completely encircled by Kyrgyz territory.
Tajikistan's border services reported that a Kyrgyz mob threw stones and used firearms against a Tajik crowd, resulting in death and at least seven serious injuries.
The conflict began after Kyrgyz citizens tried to raise flags inside the enclave, the Tajik border service announced.
The violence continued the next day and a key road crossing the area was only reopened on Thursday after being closed by clashes.
In March this year, at least two people were killed in similar clashes in the same region.
Outbreaks are common at the border, where large areas remain poorly defined. Competition for land and water scarcity also pits ethnic groups against each other.
USSR
The Summit also took place in the Vorukh enclave, one of these two areas, the other being that of Kayragach, to highlight the concerns related to border issues.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were both part of the Soviet Union; border conflicts worsened when the USSR collapsed in 1991.
The total length of the border is 984 kilometers. Another neighboring country, Uzbekistan – also a former Soviet state – has three enclaves inside Kyrgyzstan.
The disordered border with enclaves on both sides dates back to the early 20th century, when the Bolsheviks took power in Russia.
The communist leader Joseph Stalin resorted to a policy called "national territorial delamination", perceived as a divided approach of the different nationalities incorporated into the Soviet Union.
When local leaders protested, a compromise resulted which resulted in a map-making nightmare.
Under the central power of Moscow, latent dissatisfaction was easily removed. But people started talking after the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when all of these Soviet republics became independent.
Consensus
In early 2016, the Kyrgyz-Tajik commission for the demarcation and demarcation of the state border finally reached a consensus on nearly 520 kilometers of the border, about two-thirds of the total.
But at this stage, the work is at a standstill: the parties rely on their own maps and often conflicting sources. Until now, no solution has been found for the remaining parts of the shared boundary.
Taken between the regional superpowers
Meanwhile, the two countries are at a strategic crossroads between Russia and China.
At the end of the Cold War, Moscow incorporated both countries into the now-defunct Commonwealth of Independent States. And in 2014, Kyrgyzstan joined the Eurasian Free Trade Union, Moscow's response to the EU. Tajikistan is a candidate country.
In 2001, China asked Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to join the founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), then called Shanghai 5, now expanded to a dozen countries.
SCO members cooperate in the area of security, but also form stronger and stronger economic alliances. More recently, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were competing for Chinese investment under Beijing's Belts and Roads Initiative.
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