ALEKSANDR KNYAZEV: “TASHIEV’S STATEMENT IS PROVOCATIVE AND UNACCEPTABLE.” Expert Calls the Statement of Kyrgyz Official About Vorukh Incompetent

Tashiev’s statement (Chairman of Kyrgyz SCNS Kamchibek Tashiev) about Vorukh is basically provocative: to offer what is a priori unacceptable to the other side means deliberately leading the entire negotiation process to a deadlock. And if not deliberately, then this should indicate simply absolute incompetence and lack of ability to objectively assess what is happening, «political scientist and expert on the Middle East and Central Asia Alexander Knyazev told to Asia-Plus.

According to him, the silence of the Tajik side in this situation — «disruptive, to say the behavior of the Kyrgyz side, seem justified: what further aggravate the already virtually unsolvable problems not declare war. “But this statement, according to my observations, rapidly and very sharply exacerbated anti-Kyrgyz nationalist content on the part of Tajiks, regardless of the official position of Dushanbe. I think that the corresponding reaction will not be long in coming from the Kyrgyz side, which means that the general degree of conflict potential will increase, «the expert believes.

Knyazev says that neither the Kyrgyz nor the Tajik side is ready to solve these problems, since the accumulation of contradictions at different levels has been going on for too long — from personal everyday to inter-country.  The only way to solve such cross-border and territorial problems is the agreed exchange equivalent disputed areas. Other options simply do not exist, but now it looks unlikely, especially given the not always adequate behavior of officials. Both sides do not have the resources for a civilized exchange with the provision of the necessary compensation to the population, and this will inevitably give rise to new conflicts, which in each case will be of a social nature, but will certainly be interpreted using the image of the guilty one,» Knyazev said.

According to him, it is easy to guess who will be appointed guilty among the Kyrgyz population, and appoint someone to blame among the Tajik population.

“We need painstaking and step-by-step work, we need at least one positive precedent for the exchange of land plots, «to which one could later appeal and continue this difficult, but, I stress again, the only possible work,» concluded Alexander Knyazev.”

However, the Tajik society was agitated by this statement: users of social networks launched a flash mob «Vorukh will not exchange» and declared that they were ready to defend their lands in any way. Experts and journalists, cultural figures, ex-officials also spoke on this topic. In particular, the former head of the Tajik Foreign Ministry, Khamrokhon Zarifi, went over the personality of the head of the State Committee for National Security of Kyrgyzstan and called his statement complete nonsense.