2018 Border Demarcation Clashes

Seen past the dusty bonnet of a car, armed men on horseback and on foot in camouflage around a concrete well on flat semi-desert, with a wire fence, fallen marker posts and a white watchtower in the distance — Clan riders at a disputed borehole on the Kyzylkum Fringe, June 2018

The 2018 Border Demarcation Clashes were a series of armed incidents in June 2018 between Iradi clan patrols and Uzbek border guards on Irad's western desert frontier, in the rangelands of the Kyzylkum Fringe on the Syr Darya side, facing Uzbekistan. Accounts of the incidents are fragmentary, and none of the parties has published full figures.^[1]

The sections of the frontier with Uzbekistan held by the Autonomous Tribal Regions have never been demarcated, and herders use grazing trails and boreholes on both sides of the Soviet-era administrative boundary that marks the de facto frontier. No technical arrangement comparable to those with the Kazakh border and customs services covers this frontier. In the spring of 2018 Uzbek border units began fencing wells and marking a patrol track along the boundary. Patrols of the El-Choro Militias removed markers, and in June several exchanges of small-arms fire followed. Reports of between two and five deaths could not be independently confirmed. Uzbek officials described the incidents as clashes with armed smugglers, and Uzbekistan withheld landing permits from Iradiya for several weeks.^[1]^[2]

Talks between border officers and clan elders, with UN officials facilitating contacts although the external frontier lies outside the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Irad, produced an arrangement for seasonal grazing corridors and a buffer around the disputed wells. It has been renewed each year since.^[2]

References

^ Talas Herald (19 June 2018). 'Tribal Patrols and Uzbek Guards Exchange Fire on Western Frontier.' Talas.
^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2022). 'Suspended Sovereignty: Irad's Frozen Conflict at Fifteen.' Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 201–224.