Pillar month
The pillar month is the name given in Irad to the five weeks between the signing of the Bishkek Ceasefire Agreement on 12 September 2007 and the establishment of the United Nations Mission in Irad (UNMI) on 18 October. The agreement froze the "positions held", but no observers were yet on the ground to confirm them, and both sides spent the weeks taking ground that the maps would fix. About 120 people were killed, a toll counted within the total of the Second Iradi Civil War.[1]
Events
The State Defense Corps took the heights above Kara-Bulak on the Kenkol road. Riders of the Popular Front of Irad laid the mines on the Kenkol and Karakoyun passes and pushed down to the foot of the Fergana rim hills. On the steppe, where there had been no front, both sides moved survey stakes.[1][2]
Legacy
The straight steppe stretches of the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line were surveyed from the ceasefire maps, and herders on both sides still say that pillars were "walked" at night that October. Three short stretches have been disputed at the ceasefire table ever since: two on the northern sector north of Merke and one below the Kara-Bulak heights on the western sector.[2] The pass mines laid in those weeks remain the line's standing hazard; two UNMI observers were killed by one near the Kenkol Pass in March 2009.
References
- ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 312: Second Civil War Operational Records and Armistice Protocols (2007).
- ^ Talas State University, Department of History (2012). Lines in the Hills: The Talas–Chatkal Regime Zone and the Qara-Chik Line. Talas State University Press.