Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s decades-old and sometimes bloody dispute over the delimitation of their border may finally be over—the heads of the security services of the Central Asian neighbours on December 4 announced that they had reached an historic deal that would resolve years of tension and conflict, which in September 2022 even descended into “war-scale” fighting on the frontier that left more than 100 dead. 

The announcement was jointly made by Kamchybek Tashiyev, head of Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security, and Saimumin Yatimov, his Tajik counterpart.

Tashiyev declared that all remaining points of contention were resolved. Yatimov said his view was that the border disagreement was “practically resolved.” However, the details of how the agreement will demarcate the contentious sections of the 970-kilometre (603-mile) border have not yet been presented to the public, meaning there is still scope for strong objections from some border area inhabitants.

Working groups will now draft final legal documents. These will in the coming months be presented to the legislatures and presidents of both countries for ratification.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the emergence of the newly independent Central Asian states, there have been sporadic deadly clashes over the border. Access to water and other resources in the remote region have typically been at the heart of diputes.

The governments of both countries stated that they had "reached an agreement and fully completed the drawing of the remaining sections of the Kyrgyz-Tajik state border".

Tashiyev and Yatimov met in the Kyrgyz city of Batken, south of the Tajik border. Their governments published pictures of them shaking hands on the deal.

During Soviet times, officials drew what are widely regarded nowadays as simple, crude administrative demarcations on the map, displeasing many citizens of the mountainous neighbours. Pockets of land home to people who wanted to be in Tajikistan ended up in Kyrgyzstan and vice versa.

Both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are members of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). In 2022, Kyrgyzstan asked Russian leader Vladimir Putin to mediate in resolving the border dispute. Bishkek complained that negotiations were "difficult" because the two sides lacked access to original Soviet-era maps that could clarity where certain border lines should be.

It is not clear if access to these maps was provided by Moscow, but there has been no word that Russian mediation played a role in reaching the announced border deal.