Studies and Projects of International Organizations and Foreign
Governments
The Ferghana Valley needs the international community’s presence, especially on
those issues that require joint decisions by two or more of the valley’s adjacent
republics. Such involvement will be most effective and contribute most to security
if it is cast as a supplement to national and regional efforts to resolve problems,
rather than as an alternative to them.
At present the main countries engaged in economic and social development
work in the Ferghana Valley are China, Russia, and the United States. International
organizations functioning there include the United Nations (UN), European Union
(EU), Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), North American Treaty Organization (NATO),
and others, while international development agencies such as the World Bank, Eu-
ropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the Asian Develop-
ment Bank (ADB) are also active in the region. The special studies and programs
implemented under their auspices address a broad range of issues, from support for
local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to disaster management, ecological
initiatives and business development. Initially, most programs focused on conflict
management and prevention. Today the focus is on a more positive agenda that
serves as both an end in itself and as the best means of preventing conflict. Typical
of such projects is the effort to create a financial basis for cross-border cooperation
and economic growth. At the same time, older programs have undergone qualitative
changes that increase the number and skills of local participants and broaden the
scope and scale of their activities. Programs are also more focused, with typical
emerging themes being primary and secondary education,
10
entrepreneurship, the
management of borders and water resources, and counter-narcotics.
The Ferghana Valley Development Programme of the UNDP (United Nations
Development Programme) was the first international project to seek to develop a
376 BOBOKULOV
comprehensive approach to conflict-prevention in the Ferghana Valley.
11
To its credit,
the project took what might be called a “preventive” approach to conflict, building
conditions that make growth and development possible rather than dwelling on a
host of separate issues and points of contention. The project focused on maintaining
inter-ethnic peace and good community relations, promoting regional dialogue and
cooperation, and regional institutional building. The UN took the general approach
that the official actions of the three Ferghana countries did not provide an adequate
response to the problems before them, nor did the separate actions of civil society
organizations in the three countries. The only path forward, so the UN asserted,
was a cooperative one involving both government and civil society groups in all
three countries.
The project translated its major foci into initiatives dealing with growth and
equity concerns, inter-ethnic tolerance, transparent boundaries, language and
education, and the revival of what was assumed to be a common cultural heritage.
Among proposals put forward were plans to establish tax-free zones, develop crafts
and tourism, and engage local governments and even neighborhoods ( mahallas)
in peace-building. Because the three governments viewed the UN Ferghana Valley
Development Programme as impartial, it successfully extended its work into all
three republics of the Ferghana Valley.
In 1994 the privately funded U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations set up a
Center for Preventive Action to conduct research on conflict-prevention in Nigeria,
the Great Lakes area of Central Africa, the South Balkans, and the Ferghana Valley,
which many regarded as one of the most important conflict zones in the world.
12
Scholars, NGO leaders, and governmental experts visited all three parts of the
Ferghana Valley throughout 1997 and 1998.
The Center’s belief that “conflict-resolution must be a job for U.S. policy in the
region”
13
gave it a political cast corresponding to the position of the U.S. Department
of State at the time. The recommendations that arose from the project were explicitly
directed to the U.S. government; these included the creation of cross-border institu-
tions to promote economic development and interethnic cooperation, support to civil
society institutions and human rights groups, support to efforts seeking intercultural
dialogue, the concentration of foreign assistance on cross-border regional programs
while at the same time maintaining country-to-country aid, and support to foreign
direct investment in the valley.
The results of both the UN and the Council on Foreign Relations programs
were modest at best. This was due, above all, to their refusal to give governmental
institutions any role in implementing the programs. Also, other civil society groups
and traditional social mechanisms in the valley were far weaker than the projects
believed, while the governments proved far less susceptible to pressure from the
outside.
14
Given this, a better course would have been to engage directly with the
three governments, giving them a role in carrying out the projects. But this was not
done. In spite of this, the UNDP and Council on Foreign Relations projects pioneered
the comprehensive study of conflict prevention in this Central Asian flashpoint, and
THE FERGHANA VALLEY AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY 377
significantly influenced the international community to take realities on the ground
as the basis for launching future programs in the region.
Indeed, a number of other projects aimed at conflict prevention in the Ferghana
Valley were undertaken. Most were bilateral in character rather than regional,
and focused mainly on the south of Kyrgyzstan and to some extent the north of
Tajikistan.
15
The IMU’s 1999 attack on Batken spurred both the Soros Foundation
and the UNDP (Preventive Development Project) to mount projects there, while
also stimulating the International Crisis Group to begin a Central Asia Project with
headquarters in Osh city.
Also notable are the ten projects in all three adjacent Ferghana countries of the
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Swiss State Secretariat
for Economic Affairs (SECO). In Kyrgyzstan Swiss projects provide support for
forest management,
16
the power sector, and agriculture; in Tajikistan they focus on
energy, water and agriculture; and in Uzbekistan they work on water use and the
supply of electric power. Regional projects of the SDC mainly included the cross-
border Integrated Management of Water Resources Management in the Ferghana
Valley (IWMR), Automatization of Channels in the Ferghana Valley, and Regional
Information Base of the Water Sector in Central Asia (CAREWIB).
The major goal of the IWMR project was to engage farming households directly,
not with the issue of how much water is available but with its effective management
as a resource through inter-state cooperation. The IWMR project stretched from
2001 until 2008 and covered three experimental zones along “pilot channels” and
“cross-border small rivers” crossing all three countries. Through public participation
and cross-border water management, the project hoped to foster social stability in
a way that could be applied elsewhere in the region.
17
For the first time in Central
Asia it succeeded in forging a common, integrated system of long-distance sup-
ply channel management. It was implemented in close contact with the important
region-based Scientific-informational Center of the Interstate Commission for Water
Management and International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
18
The international community also quickly engaged with issues of ecology in the
Ferghana Valley. In Soviet times some fifty uranium mines had been opened there,
mainly in Kyrgyzstan’s Jalalabad province and near Khujand in Tajikistan’s Sughd
province.
19
After 1991 mining ceased, but the vast areas where these mines and
mountains of tailings were situated were left virtually unguarded. Many of these
sites are in close proximity to cross-border rivers (Syr Darya, Zarafshan, Mailuu-
Suu, and others), threatening them—and ground waters as well
with radioactive
contamination in times of floods and landslides. Huge piles of radioactive waste
along the Mailuu-Suu River in Kyrgyzstan some 30 kilometers upstream from
the Uzbek border threaten the environment and population of the entire Ferghana
Valley. For years, ore from as far away as the German Democratic Republic,
Czechoslovakia, the People’s Republic of China, and Mongolia were sent there
for processing: 23 tailing ponds and 13 dumps contain 3 million cubic meters of
radioactive waste.
378 BOBOKULOV
Under the auspices of the Kyrgyz government, together with experts from the
OSCE, Potsdam Land Institute, and the Lawrence-Livermore Laboratory (United
States), the World Bank since 2004 has been rehabilitating the ponds and tailings
at Mailuu-Suu at a cost of US$12 million. A German project on “The Prevention of
Emergencies in the Mailuu-Suu City,” which began functioning there in 2005, has
been devoted to the same ends. Another effective program in this field has been the
initiative of the OSCE, carried out since 2003 with help from the UN’s Environ-
ment Programme and Development Programme, and with NATO’s participation
beginning in 2004. The priorities of this program include the development of early
warning systems, emergency preparedness, and the reduction of risks to the affected
populations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and both land and water
resource management in the upper Syr Darya Valley. Overall, the program seeks
to address proactively those environmental problems that can become the source
of conflict between countries, regions, or districts.
20
NATO’s activities in the Ferghana Valley are not restricted to this project. NATO
held international exercises of rescuers and rapid-response forces in the Ferghana
village of Vuadil under the Partnership for Peace’s program “Ferghana 2003.”
21
This was the first time that NATO and UN crisis centers conducted joint exercises
in Central Asia. The Euro-Atlantic Emergency Response Center and the UN’s de-
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