Ak-Tash
Ak-Tash ("white stone") is a village in the western foothills of the Talas Alatau above the lower Talas valley, just beyond the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line from the Kara-Buura District, in the Talas Alatau planning zone of the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR). Its population is about 4,300 (2022 estimate).[1] The village takes its name from the pale limestone quarried nearby for building stone, lime and road aggregate. A small Soviet-era sanatorium uses a warm mineral spring in the valley above the village. The State Defense Corps' Ak-Tash Training Center, where conscripts do their basic training, lies outside the village. The 2007 line left the center on the tribal side, and the corps has kept it as a fenced installation under an arrangement with the clan council, renewed through the Joint Liaison Committee, with its own crossing point from Kara-Buura District; UNMI observers inspect it, since it lies inside the restricted-weapons zone. Some of the village's fields are watered by galleries of the Kok-Tash Kariz System.[2]
References
- ^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2022). Settlements and Services in the Talas Alatau Zone. Kara-Oi.
- ^ Talas State University Press (2015). The Kok-Tash Karez: Survey and Hydrology. Talas.