Water water everywhere

We were supposed to cross from here to Uzbekistan today, but we can't because of the water.

Kyrgyzstan's greatest natural resource is its water, which flows down from its Tian Shan and Pamir mountains into the Syr Darya and Amu Darya (also known as the Oxus) rivers that lead to its neighbors. During the soviet era, this water was used mainly for the thirsty production of cotton in the valleys of Uzbekistan. Since Independence in 1991, as the various central Asian countries struggled to make the transition to market-based economies, each has been trying to monetize whatever assets the Stalin-era gerrymandering left them with. For most countries, this is mostly natural gas. Kyrgyzstan, however, has no gas, and so has taken to trying to sell their water to their neighbors: threatening to dam up the rivers for power production if Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan do not provide cut-rate shipments of natural gas.

The predictable result of this has been a very tense relationship between the two countries, which has led to occasional border skirmishes and vastly restricted regional commerce, hobbling Kyrgyztan's economy, and making border crossings very difficult. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the regional political club, has made resolving water disputes a top priority, and some progress has been made, but still the main borders between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are closed -- the two countries' capitals are can be passed only through Kazakhstan.

But we have no Kazakh visas, and so must make our way south, to the only active border crossing, which lies in the Ferghana Valley. Despite taking us a day or two out of our way, this is not an entirely bad thing: the Ferghana valley is one of the regions most interesting areas: it has Central Asia's most fertile land, and as such has been populated by a fascinating mix of Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik peoples. Stalin-era planners tried to manage this potentially dangerous mix by dividing the valley in an apparently haphazard way between the Uzbek, Tajik, and Kyrgyz administrative regions. This seemed to work during the soviet times, but when these regions became independent states, it has had the opposite effect: the Ferghana valley today is one of the most polyglot and liberal areas of central Asia. It's also the site of 2005's "Andijon massacre", where the Uzbek government ham-fisted a protest and killed scores of local Muslims. But more on that when I get there...