About 2,500 people in Chongara and Tash-Tobo now live under Kyrgyz jurisdiction. The transfer reduces the number of Uzbek enclaves in Kyrgyzstan and clears the way for a much shorter road across the Batken Region.
For Umitbek, the change first appeared online. Chongara, his home village, passed from Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Region into Kyrgyzstan when the legal border moved.
“We are welcoming the decision with joy,” Umitbek told Azattyk. “Ninety-nine percent of our village is Kyrgyz.”
Umitbek already holds a Kyrgyz passport, while many neighbors have Uzbek documents. Some households include citizens of both countries. The village has Kyrgyz and Uzbek schools, and families have chosen between them.
Kyrgyz presidential spokesman Askat Alagozov announced the transfer on June 23.
“Now registration procedures will be conducted in these villages, after which their residents will be granted Kyrgyz citizenship,” Alagozov said. He did not give a timetable for the process.
Kyrgyzstan transferred plots of equal area to Uzbekistan as part of the settlement. Public announcement did not identify those plots or state their total size.
The two governments also conducted a separate exchange involving 236 hectares. That land will support a road between the villages of Sai and Tayan, and shorten the journey between Aidarken and Batken from 225 kilometers to 55, or about 76% of the present route. Officials have yet to publish a construction date or budget.
A Century Inside Another Republic
Chongara and Tash-Tobo were Uzbek exclaves, pieces of Uzbekistan completely surrounded by Kyrgyz territory. Their unusual status grew from Soviet boundary decisions made a century ago.
Chongara’s administrative link to the Uzbek Republic dates to territorial decisions around Sokh in 1925. Tash-Tobo was also assigned to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic that year. A parity commission confirmed its enclave status in 1955.
These lines served as internal administrative boundaries during the Soviet period. Villages that had shared roads, water systems and family links found themselves divided by customs posts and citizenship rules.
Uzbekistan previously had four exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan: Sokh, Shakhimardan, Chongara, and Tash-Tobo. Following the latest transfer, only Sokh and Shakhimardan remain under Uzbek jurisdiction.
Sokh is the largest and most complicated. It lies within Kyrgyzstan, but has a largely ethnic Tajik population. Roads around the enclave have long shaped travel through the western Batken Region.
A Settlement Built Over Two Decades
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan began formal border negotiations in 2000. Progress remained slow while relations between the two governments were strained.
The process accelerated after Shavkat Mirziyoyev became Uzbekistan’s president in 2016. A 2017 agreement settled about 1,170 kilometers of the roughly 1,378-kilometer frontier. The remaining sections involved land, roads, and water infrastructure.
The two foreign ministers signed a further border treaty in Bishkek on November 3, 2022, which covered sections left outside the 2017 settlement.
On January 27, 2023, Mirziyoyev and Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov exchanged ratification instruments during a state visit to Bishkek. The legal delimitation fixed the agreed line on maps. Physical demarcation then placed that line on the ground.
The 2022 package also covered the Kempir-Abad reservoir, known in Uzbekistan as the Andijan reservoir. The agreement triggered protests in Kyrgyzstan and led to the arrest of activists and opposition figures. The dispute showed how closely border agreements remain tied to land, water, and public trust.
Border specialist Salamat Alamanov said governments may exchange equal areas of land when both states consent, and that a revised boundary should pass through legislation, parliamentary approval, and presidential signature.
The June 23 announcement did not describe those legal steps, and left the location of the Kyrgyz land transferred to Uzbekistan undisclosed.
A Shrinking Map of Enclaves
The latest exchange follows an earlier change involving Barak, Kyrgyzstan’s former exclave inside Uzbekistan. Under the 2022 settlement, Kyrgyzstan transferred Barak to Uzbekistan and received 208 hectares near Kara-Suu in Osh Region. Barak residents moved to a new settlement in Kyrgyzstan in April 2024.
Together, the Barak and Chongara transfers simplify one of the Ferghana Valley’s most fragmented borders, removing three small detached territories from the regional map.
The changes also form part of a wider border settlement across the valley. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan signed their border agreement on March 13, 2025, after decades of disputes and deadly clashes.
Later that month, the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan signed an agreement defining their shared border junction in Khujand. The summit also produced a declaration on friendship and regional cooperation. Together with the Kyrgyz-Uzbek settlement, those agreements have reduced several sources of potential conflict in the densely populated Ferghana Valley.
For Chongara and Tash-Tobo, the immediate work is administrative. Registration comes first; residents who still carry Uzbek documents can then receive Kyrgyz citizenship.
