Im forwarding this message, originating from the "oxiana-list".
/Christian Berghänel, Sweden
----- Original Message -----
From: Bruno De Cordier <ak_saj@...>
To: <oxiana@yahoogroups.com>; <jamuna@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 8:46 PM
Subject: [oxiana] RFE/RL Features: 'Central Asia: enclave residents face numerous hurdles'
>
> By Antoine Blua
>
> Enclaves are usually small areas of land that belong
> to one country but actually lie within the borders of
> another nation. As living in an enclave generally
> involves many inconveniences, some countries have
> favored their elimination.
>
> For instance, Lithuania gave its Pagiriai enclave to
> Belarus in the mid-1990s after Minsk agreed to
> compensate Vilnius with territory adjacent to the
> Lithuanian border. Many other enclaves still exist,
> however, partcularly in South and Central Asia. RFE/RL
> takes a look at the difficulties residents of an
> Indian and a Kyrgyz enclave are facing in their
> everyday life.
>
>
> Prague, 4 November 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Sahanz Begum and
> her family live in a small village in Bangladesh,
> along the border of an Indian enclave within
> Bangladesh. Every morning, they wave at their
> relatives who live across the border in the enclave.
>
> "This side, where we are living, is Bangladesh. And
> that side is India. We have our relatives there. But
> we can't go there because of the border law," Begum
> says.
>
> Dasiarchhara is a 697-hectare enclave about 3
> kilometers inside Bangladesh.
>
> Reuters news agency reported that its 9,000-strong
> Indian population has no voting rights. There is
> virtually no government, schools, police, proper
> roads, or doctors. The locals survive through
> subsistence farming and get no support from the Indian
> government.
>
> Fortunately, Bangladeshis have been helping their
> Indian neighbors by offering them health services and
> allowing their children to attend Bangladeshi schools.
>
>
> However, residents can go to the Indian mainland by
> producing identity cards, but only after seeking
> permission from border guards on both sides.
>
> Dasiarchhara's top official, Nazrul Islam, says his
> fellow enclave residents are calling for a long-term
> solution. "We demand that India treat us like we are
> their people," he says. "They should provide
> facilities to us or leave us and our lands to the
> Bangladeshi government. We hope Bangladesh will give
> us social services and security, and this is the way
> we want to live."
>
> More than 150 enclaves exist along the
> Indian-Bangladeshi border. Their living conditions are
> believed to be no better than Dasiarchhara's. In 1974,
> the two governments agreed they must exchange the
> enclaves or at least provide corridors to each other's
> territory. But so far, little has been done.
>
> Some 2,500 kilometers northwest of Dasiarchhara, a
> Kyrgyz enclave located in Central Asia's Ferghana
> Valley provides another dramatic example of how
> isolated enclave residents can feel. About 700 people
> live in the village of Barak, about 13 kilometers
> inside Uzbek territory.
>
> In 1999, Barak was cut off from Kyrgyz territory when
> Uzbekistan dug up the road leading to the Kyrgyz
> village of Aktash and blockaded it with concrete
> blocks. The situation improved last year when Tashkent
> agreed to reopen the road, where a minibus service is
> now operating.
>
> But Gulnara Elnazarova, who teaches at Barak's
> secondary school, tells RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service that
> problems persist. "Everything is fine here. We have
> plenty of land, and plenty of water," she says. "The
> only problem we face is the road issue. It is getting
> better now, thank God. [The Uzbeks] are letting our
> cars [registered in Barak] go in and out of the
> village. However, our remote relatives cannot come to
> us with their cars. Another problem is that we cannot
> deliver our cotton [to Kyrgyzstan] in time. We are
> currently keeping our cotton harvest at our homes."
>
> Dr. Nick Megoran is a research fellow at the Sidney
> Sussex College in Britain who visited Barak earlier
> this year. He says he had to wait a couple of hours in
> the heat before Uzbek guards along the Barak-Aktash
> road let him enter the enclave -- a delay residents
> have to endure regularly.
>
> Megoran stresses that road communications are crucial
> for such a small enclave as Barak. "[In Barak] there's
> a village school, there's a [cultural center] and
> there's little shop. But there are no post offices and
> no government buildings or any other type of
> employment. There is no bank," he says. "Barak is
> tiny. Barak is one village (...) dependent on one
> border connection post. There's only one telephone."
>
> Barak is among many enclaves in the Ferghana Valley,
> which extends into Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and
> Tajikistan.
>
> (Tyntchtykbek Tchoroev, director of RFE/RL's Kyrgyz
> Service, and Khurmat Babadjanov from RFE/ RL's Uzbek
> Service contributed to this report
>
>
>
>
>
>
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