Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

Once again Qishloq Ovozi is pleased to present not one, but two, of the up-and-coming authorities in the field of Central Asian studies. Till Mostowlansky reviews the new book by Madeleine Reeves about one of Central Asia's "hot spots" in the Ferghana Valley. I know, and have great respect, for both Till and Madeleine. Both have lived in Central Asia and conducted extensive fieldwork there, and both are members of the Central Eurasian Scholars and Media Initiative.

In the course of the past year, reports of violent clashes and shoot-outs at the Tajik-Kyrgyz border in Central Asia's Ferghana Valley have frequently featured in the news. Since many readers are unaccustomed with the politics of Central Asia, to them the conflict appears as strange and far off. An image of a region ripe with irrational struggle and ethnic strife has been created. At the same time, media coverage has mainly shied away from the questions of why such events happen and what this actually means for day-to-day life in the Ferghana Valley. In her book "Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia," Madeleine Reeves explores possible answers to these questions, based on a decade of anthropological field research.

Reeves's monograph focuses on the borderland of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan at the southern edge of the Ferghana Valley. Marked by enclaves and undefined sections of the frontier, this region is the starting point for a sharp analysis of "border work" -- a term the author employs to describe "the messy, contested and often intensely social business of making territory 'integral.'" (6) At the same time, Reeves also aspires to go beyond the particular case of the Ferghana Valley and to contribute to the global study of borders.

The book manages to meet these high expectations due to its historical and contemporary profoundness. Analysts of Central Asia often locate the source of border conflicts either in the (Soviet) past or the (post-Soviet) present. In contrast, "Border Work" clearly shows that understandings of what borders are and what they are supposed to do have been and are constantly changing. Reeves' critical review of the historical standard narrative of the Central Asian republics' territorial delimitation in the 1920s is a prime example. From this perspective Soviet border drawing in the Ferghana Valley happened in the early period of the union and came to an end in 1927. However, Reeves argues that such border-moving and delimitation actually happened throughout the 20th century and has continued to happen since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In concrete terms this means that particular (border) conflicts in the Ferghana Valley have their specific histories which can be very recent.

Taking one of these small-scale conflicts in the border zone of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as an example, Reeves manages to trace and follow the genealogy of a specific event into intimate parts of everyday life in the region. This particular conflict began to evolve in spring 2005 when two Tajik school boys from a village at the southern limit of the Sokh enclave (belonging to Uzbekistan) got badly beaten by Kyrgyz border guards. The boys had taken their cattle across the invisible border with Kyrgyzstan due to a lack of pastures on their side. After having caught them without documentation, the Kyrgyz border guards taught the boys a brutal lesson for having illegally entered Kyrgyzstan. Soon after, an ethnicised conflict involving Tajiks and Kyrgyz on both sides of the border emerged.

Such an event shows that a hardly noticeable border, which cuts through customary access to water and land, is prone to being contested. It also emphasises that ordinary people are involved and are actively constructing and challenging what politicians and planners once defined as a border. Reeves therefore suggests that we take local people's experiences of arbitrary border enforcement seriously and move away from the idea that better delimitation will also bring more security. In contrast, she maintains that the densely intertwined lives of the border population should be considered in order to establish trans-boundary peace.

The strength of Reeves' argument lies in the fact that she has the ability and willingness to connect ethnographic details from the Ferghana Valley with broader narratives of Central Asian statehood and beyond. This approach makes reading her book a pleasurable and inspiring endeavour exactly because the reader gets an idea of how complex states function in Central Asia, but also more generally. At the same time, she presents a theoretical framework that prevents the reader from getting lost in the multifariousness of ethnography.

Reeves' insistence on looking at the gaps "both in the border fence, and between 'law' and 'life'" (242) renders this study a recommendable read for scholars, policy-makers, NGO workers, and travellers of the Ferghana Valley alike. Against such a backdrop, Central Asian borders and the conflicts that surround them are neither far distant events nor simply "a post-Soviet curiosity" (243). Thus, if anthropologists, as it is sometimes said, should not only be critical scholars but also journalists and balanced advisers, then this is anthropology at its best.

-- Till Mostowlansky

Dr. Till Mostowlansky is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where he also teaches Central Asian Studies and the Science of Religion. He holds a Ph.D in Central Asian Studies from the University of Bern (2013) titled "Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernities along Tajikistan's Pamir Highway." Mostowlansky is the author of the monograph "Islam und Kirgisen on Tour: Die Rezeption 'nomadischer Religion' und ihre Wirkung ("Islam and Kyrgyz on Tour: The Perception of 'Nomadic Religion' and Its Effect") as well as several articles on local history, modernity, and development in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan.

Dr. Madeleine Reeves is a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Manchester and holds a Ph.D from the University of Cambridge. She has previously taught in the departments of Sociology and Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology at the American University-Central Asia in Bishkek. She has conducted research in Kyrgyzstan since 1999, writing on issues of language policy, rural schooling, labour migration, and local encounters with the state, as well as on the everyday working of new international borders in the Ferghana valley.

In eastern Turkmenistan's Lebap Province, there is a girl named "Justice" who lives in a place called "Independence."

Sounds like the start to a heart-warming story. Unfortunately, her story just gets worse.

Before we go to a courtyard in "Independence," there is something worth noting about Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan has the fourth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world. The country currently is exporting some 40 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas, but that amount is likely to top 70 bcm in the next 10 years. Turkmenistan sells gas to customers Iran and China at prices lower than usual world rates, but the roughly 30 bcm exported to those two countries should still bring the country at least $10 billion annually. Add in the volumes sold to Russia (at a higher price than to Iran or China) and the figure should be closer to $15 billion.

The population of Turkmenistan is about 5.5 million. So gas sales amount to a bit less than $3,000 per person. The average salary in Turkmenistan is less than $100 per month.

Now let's go to "Independence."

Adalat ("Justice" in Turkmen) Hemdemova is a young mother with a 4-month-old baby. She lives in the town of Garashsyzlyk ("Independence" in Turkmen).

Adalat and her baby live on the street, or more specifically, in a courtyard.

Adalat is unemployed and says is her husband is too. He never appears in the video that RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, filmed about Adalat.

Asked where she resided before finding herself living under the open sky, Adalat points to a door right next to her and says her mother-in-law lives there and she once lived inside also. "My mother-in-law locked it," Adalat says.

Clearly there are some family problems here, but the point of Azatlyk's report was not how this young woman came to be living in a courtyard but rather why there appear to be no social services capable of providing help to people in Adalat's situation.

Adalat's mother appears in the Azatlyk video. She says she couldn't take her daughter and grandchild in where she lives because she herself is living in a one-room flat with a "sibling."

Adalat and her mother say they have been to the mayor's office and the district administration "10 or 15 times" seeking state help. On one recent visit to the district administration building, Adalat's mother says she tried to explain "with tears in my eyes" how desperate her daughter' plight was and she pleaded for help.

"They kicked us out and said: 'You live wherever you live,'" Adalat's mother says. Adalat's mother seems genuinely distressed in the video, lamenting how difficult it is to see her daughter and grandchild living in their current conditions and being unable to do anything much to relieve the situation.

She says she previously asked for a plot of land but was refused.

Still, all there is in the video is their side of the story, and again, there are key details here that are missing.

But in checking Adalat's story, Azatlyk hit a nerve in the local administration.

The district administration knows who Adalat is and what her current condition is, although the person Azatlyk spoke with at the district administration said Adalat's claims were simply a "lie."

The second time Azatlyk called, the person hung up.

After Azatlyk aired and posted the first report about Adalat, a representative from the district administration approached the correspondent reporting on Adalat's case.

This representative said that if Azatlyk would cease publicizing Adalat's situation the district administration would help her and her child.

So far, there have been no signs that officials have moved to assist the young mother.

I mentioned above that Turkmenistan should be taking in some $15 billion for gas exports annually and that will increase substantially once all four planned gas pipelines to China are operational.

It is no secret that very little of that money goes into improving living standards in Turkmenistan, and that includes allotments for social services.

That said, Adalat notes she is feeding her "family" with the money the state provides for the baby.

Beyond that, there appears to be little that the state can or is willing to do for someone like Adalat.

I could write pages about where the gas revenues go, but it is enough to recall the articles on Qishloq Ovozi about Turkmenistan hosting the international windsurfing championship at the Awaza resort on the Caspian Sea.

The point of those pieces was to show how money is spent in Turkmenistan.

Adalat is an example of the consequences.

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Azatlyk has received hundreds of comments on its Facebook page after reporting on Adalat. Qishloq Ovozi is sharing three of these:

Nargiza Nergiz Samedova no matter whom you beg no one is going to help you, take in your grandchildren and send your daughter to turkey to work, you have no other option, the president is not stupid, he won't help you, he is busy celebrating his birthday party and paying billions of dollars to artists [performers].

Aslı Melek her mom probably has a home, she should take her daughter in, and her husband should use his brain and find something to do. What is this, instead of blaming the state, make some effort.

Yaşar Arslan (responding to Asli Melek) what a terrific thoughts, but I worked in Turkmenistan for 10 years as a journalist, I am sorry to say this, there are lots of similar examples in Turkmenistan, you are talking as if you don't know anything about them, if this woman goes to mayor's office today asking for work, she will be told to pay USD 500-1000 and here is your work, sorry to say this, but the state of Turkmenistan is soaked in corruption from top to the bottom.

-- Bruce Pannier, with assistance from Muhammed Tahir, director of RFE/RL's Turkmen Service