ABSTRACT
On 1 March 2002, a website focusing on Uzbek news ran two headlines: ‘Kyrgyz and Uzbeks continue talking over frontier’ and ‘Uzbek national song festival ends in Tashkent’.
The first story detailed the slow progress made in establishing the boundary between Kyrgyzstan and its southwestern neighbour. After two years of hard work, a mere 290 kilometres of the 1,400-kilometre-long frontier had been agreed. The Uzbek border was not alone in needing definition: Kyrgyzstan had only signed agreements on the delimitation of its frontier with two states, China and Kazakhstan, and even preliminary consultations had not been opened over what was likely to be its most heavily disputed flank, the border with Tajikistan.
