DUSHANBE, October 23, Asia-Plus -- Uzbekistan has launched a demining operation along its common border with Tajikistan, Asia-plus has learned at the State Committee for National Security (GKNB).

The source at a GKNB said that efforts are now under way to clear landmines along the Uzbek-Tajik border and demining teams of Uzbek ministry of defense (MoD), who are involved in the demining operation on the border, are communicating with Tajik border service.    

Speaking to journalists in Dushanbe last week, Tajik Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi said that Tajik MFA had received note from Uzbek authorities about the beginning of the demining operation along the Uzbek-Tajik border.  The note informed of clearing 14 minefields along the border of the two countries.     

According to the note, demining operation started in the Uzbek Chorsou area, bordering in Tajikistan’s Ayni and Tursunzoda districts in July-August and to date, 65 antipersonnel mines have been destroyed.       

We will recall that Uzbekistan began planting mines on part of its undemarcated border with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in 2000 to stave off incursions by militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).   

In the meantime, Jonmahmad Rajabov, director of the Tajik Mine Action Cell (TMAC), said that the TMAC has not been informed of this step of Uzbek authorities.  

According to him, 71 Tajik nationals have been killed and 84 others have been injured in landmine explosions on the Uzbek border over the past seven years.  “30 percent of the landmine explosions victims are minors,” the TMAC director said.   

A total length of Tajikistan’s common border with Uzbekistan is some 1,400 kilometers

Tajikistan has the largest landmine problem in Central Asia, with more than 25,000 square kilometers of land in need of mine clearance.

  .