Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche Cattedra: Modern Political Atlas Water and Conflict in the Ferghana Valley: Historical Foundations of the Interstate Water Disputes Between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan RELATORE Prof. Riccardo Mario Cucciolla CANDIDATO Alessandro De Stasio Matr. 630942 ANNO ACCADEMICO 2017/2018 1 Sommario Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 1. The Water-Security Nexus and the Ferghana Valley ................................................................................. 9 1.1. Water and Conflict ................................................................................................................................. 9 1.1.1. Water uses ..................................................................................................................................... 9 1.1.2. Water security and water scarcity ............................................................................................... 10 1.1.3. Water as a potential source of conflict ....................................................................................... 16 1.1.4. River disputes .............................................................................................................................. 25 1.2. The Ferghana Valley ............................................................................................................................ 30 1.2.1. Geography, hydrography, demography and agriculture ............................................................. 30 1.2.2. Borders ........................................................................................................................................ 34 2. The Revolution of the Valley: Rise and Development of Cotton and Irrigation From Russian Empire to the Second World War (1868-1945) ............................................................................................................... 37 2.1. The Russian Rule: 1868 – 1917 ................................................................................................................. 37 2.1.1. Motivations and Chronology of the Expansion ................................................................................ 37 2.1.2. Rise and Development of Cotton Cropping ....................................................................................... 42 2.1.3. Irrigation Between Ambitions and Bureaucracy ............................................................................... 46 2.2. Change and Continuity: the Soviet Policy in Central Asian Agriculture and Water Management from 1917 to 1945. ................................................................................................................................................... 52 2.2.1. Revolutions ........................................................................................................................................ 52 2.2.2. Early Soviet policies: Land and Water Reform and National Territorial Delimitation (1918-1929) .. 54 2.2.3. Stalin’s era and World War II (1929-1945) ........................................................................................ 62 3. A New Era in Water Management: The Dawn of Reservoirs .................................................................. 70 3.1. Cotton and Irrigation Expansion in Post-War Central Asia: The Premises For Reservoirs’ Development 72 3.2. Cotton Above All: The Birth and Development of the Imbalanced Water Allocation on Transboundary Watercourses .................................................................................................................................................. 76 3.2.1. The Kasansai Reservoir ...................................................................................................................... 77 3.2.2. The Toktogul and Andijan Reservoirs ................................................................................................ 78 3.2.3. The Tortgul Reservoir .................................................................................................................. 83 3.2.4. Protocol 1980 and 1984: Paving the Way for Post-Independence Disputes .............................. 85 4. The Fragmentation of the Basin: Political Independence and Water Interdependency After 1991 ...... 92 4.1. Tug-of-War Over the Syr Darya: Failure of Diplomacy, Energy Crises and Retaliations ........................... 94 4.1.1. Water and Energy Scheme at the Time of Independence................................................................. 94 4.1.2. The Almaty Agreement and Its Failure (1992-1995) ......................................................................... 97 4.1.3. The Energy Barter: The Annual Bilateral Accords and the 1998 Multilateral Agreement (1995-2005) ................................................................................................................................................................... 103 2 4.1.4. Diverging Energy Policies ................................................................................................................. 110 4.2. STTs and Local Disputes: Case Studies From the Isfara, Sokh and Kasansai Basins. ......................... 115 4.2.1. The Isfara Basin .......................................................................................................................... 117 4.2.2. The Sokh Basin: The Case of Southern Border of Sokh Enclave ................................................ 122 4.2.3. Operation and Maintenance in Transboundary Facilities: The Case of the Kasansai Reservoir 125 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 130 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................... 133 3 Introduction The Ferghana Valley is a landlocked plain in the middle of former Soviet Central Asia, almost totally isolated from the rest of the region by the surrounding mountain ranges. Politically, it is shared by Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Its geographical features, in terms of climate, hydrography and location, has made it a strategic area throughout the history. It hosted an important route of the ancient Silk Road, was the heart of the powerful Kokand khanate in XVIIIth century, and was a relevant economic centre in the Tsarist colony of Turkestan at first, and in Soviet Central Asia later. In the last two decades, the valley has been subject to numerous escalations of violence. From ethnic clashes to Islamic radicalism, it has often been presented as an unstable land. For the purpose of this thesis, another aspect is important in order to understand the relevance of this area for regional dynamics. Indeed, since 1991, Ferghana Valley has increasingly become a hotspot in bilateral relations among neighbouring Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, in competition over water. However, the rhetorical and often summary classification of this kind of tensions as a water conflict should be carefully clarified. There is a rich literature about whether and how water could trigger major confrontations among its users or, more in general, its stakeholders. The answer is not uniform. Besides the evidence of an actual competition over the access to the resource, especially when it approaches a condition of scarcity, a great part of the studies underlines the cooperative response usually adopted by the involved States. One of the pillars of those theses is the ratio between the number of agreements and the amount of conflict events occurred over hydric resources, by far in favour of the former. In this sense, a clarification must be done about the term “conflict”. As explained below, it does not necessarily refer to conventional wars or military confrontations only, but includes a range of destabilising events, from civil unrest, to hostile rhetoric and attitudes between two States. As the following chapters will show, this is exactly the case of Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan, and, to a lesser extent, Tajikistan, relations. In the Ferghana Valley, they interact in a peculiar geographical and hydrographical setting. The valley is crossed by a big river, the Syr Darya, and by several small tributaries, which originate in the surrounding mountains. While the plain, where the minor streams flow into the main stem of the Syr Darya, mostly lies in Uzbek territory, the headwaters of such watercourses are hosted by Kyrgyzstan. This situation, defined in literature as an upstream/downstream relation, presents the highest potential for conflict among the configurations in which two or more 4 States share a water source. Nevertheless, different scholars have provided accurate analyses about the precise features such a relationship should present for a conflict to occur more likely. The geographical configuration is not sufficient. A combination of different factors must be considered in examining the conflict potential of the dyad. In particular, a situation in which the downstream country is militarily superior, in dire need of the water resource, and perceiving the upstream one as deliberately overexploiting the river, emerges as the most troublesome context. According to this kind of analysis, the Uzbek-Kyrgyz relationship appears to be a highly unstable one. As regarding water, they are