The five states of Central Asia, whose borders were artificially imposed long before the emergence of well-developed and mass-supported movements of national self-determination in the region, have begun to develop genuinely distinct national identities only in the past decade. Even now, as ethnicity in the region is increasingly taking on a political face, the process of state-building is dominated by economic and social rather than nationalist concerns. Nevertheless, ethnic and national identities may prove to be the biggest obstacles to the consolidation of these states.

As each state tries to work out its national identity, it is forced to confront the efforts of its neighbors to do the same. Tensions over water usage between Uzbek farmers and the Kyrgyz upstream could lead to interethnic fighting between the two communities, or even between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. More immediately, the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks clashed in Kyrgyzstan's Osh region in summer 1990 over the distribution of land and housing. Riots left more than 200 dead and several hundred wounded. War-torn Tajikistan could never successfully conquer Uzbekistan, but armed Tajik groups could further destabilize an increasingly fragile situation there. These are only two of Central Asia's many potential flash points.

Possibilities for Ethnic Conflict

The legacy of Soviet policies heightens the risk that ethnonational claims among the five post-Soviet Central Asian states will incite conflict. Contrary to their intended purpose, Soviet policies such as listing nationality on passports and maintaining a federative state structure actually served to increase awareness of national and ethnic identity. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, a strong sense of territorial homeland and the desire for greater political, economic, and cultural control have come to the fore.

As Soviet power receded in Central Asia, national movements became more powerful, but they were quite different in scope and support from nationalist movements in the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In Central Asia, these were largely movements for cultural autonomy, political reform (such as the Democratic Front in Tajikistan), or most importantly, religious revival (such as the Islamic Renaissance Party in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and the growth of fundamentalist groups).

Despite small outbreaks of interethnic violence in Fergana in 1989 and in Osh in 1990, the collapse of Soviet rule did not lead to mass interethnic conflict in Central Asia. Tajiks, for example, have not gone to war with Uzbeks. The most violent event in post-Soviet Central Asian history, the 1992-1997 civil war in Tajikistan, was not an interethnic conflict, but a struggle between regional groups for control of the state, magnified by disagreement over the role of religion. The ethnic Uzbek-Tajik dimension to the war has been limited to an attempt by Tajik leaders to minimize the political role of ethnic Uzbeks from northern Tajikistan's Khojand province. Leaders in both countries have successfully prevented ethnic rivalry from becoming a mobilizing tool.

Historic Roots of Conflict

Today's conflicts and tensions in Central Asia reflect shifting historical patterns of ethnonational settlement. Beginning in the late 1890s, ethnic Russians and other Europeans were encouraged to move to Central Asia to occupy "excess" lands used as pastures by Kyrgyz and Kazakh nomads. The resulting animosity was exacerbated in 1916, when the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz were subjected to conscription in forced labor brigades during World War I. In the aftermath of a brutally suppressed mass uprising against the Russian regime, more than half a million Kyrgyz and Kazakhs were deported from the Chu region, and ethnic Russians and Ukrainians were settled on their lands. The commemoration of this uprising now plays a very important role in the historiography of Kyrgyz national culture.

Similarly, the death of several million Kazakhs during Soviet collectivization in the 1930s has been given a place of prominence in newly written histories of Kazakhstan-from President Nursultan Nazarbayev's memoirs to basic school texts. The sense of grievance on the part of the Kazakhs was magnified by the immigration of millions of Russians between the 1930s and 1970s.

The prolonged resistance of Central Asians (dubbed the Basmachi Revolt by the Bolsheviks) during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920 led early Soviet officials to deport whole communities, especially of Tajiks and Uzbeks, across new administrative boundaries. Many of these communities now live in the former Kurgan Tiube oblast (province) of Tajikistan, the site of the strongest Islamic opposition at the time of the Tajik civil war. In general, Stalin's boundaries were designed to strand large numbers of ethnic co-nationals just beyond the reach of the republics that bore their name. In addition, Central Asia received deported peoples from other parts of the Soviet Union during World War II, such as the Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and Meshket Turks sent to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The latter were the focus of riots in Fergana in 1989.

Geographic Sources of Conflict

Some regions of Central Asia are likely sources of conflict by virtue of geography. Kyrgyzstan's border with Tajikistan is potentially tendentious and vulnerable, as is the Uzbekistan-Tajikistan border, in part because after years of civil war, Tajikistan's various communities are more sensitive to their ethnicity than they are comfortable with their citizenship. Uzbeks who live in Tajikistan feel subordinated to both the Tashkent and Dushanbe governments. Most Tajiks also identify themselves by ethnicity, feeling little need to respect the territoriality of their neighbors, particularly if their borders are not well protected. Batken, just over the border in southern Kyrgyzstan, was the site of a protracted hostage crisis for much of the summer and fall of 1999, when Uzbek fighters (long based in Tajikistan) were denied their safe haven in Tajikistan's Pamir region. The government in Uzbekistan has tried to seal off its border with Tajikistan in a number of places. Without precise demarcations, Tajikistan complains that Uzbekistan's fortifications are on its territory, and Kyrgyzstan laments that it lacks the US$26 million necessary to seal its borders completely.

The lingering wars in Tajikistan and Afghanistan have heightened fears of popular rallying cries for a "greater Tajikistan" and "greater Uzbekistan." Again, the long absence of well-established, functioning regimes in these two countries has created a culture of warfare and politicization that leaves people from both countries with less regard for national boundaries than those in neighboring states. There is growing fear of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek fighters from Afghanistan making their way across Tajikistan and into Uzbekistan, which is why Tashkent has introduced highway checkpoints across the country, especially in the southeast. They have also cut new highway in order to avoid Tajikistan on the road between Tashkent and Andijan and bypass Kazakhstan on the road between Tashkent and Samarkand.