Endogenous and Exogenous Perspective on Regionalization in Ferghana Valley: Security and Economic Cooperation

Abstract

When it comes to border issues in Central Asia, Ferghana Valley region becomes the main subject of discussion due to its complexity and historical background. The roots of the border issues themselves trace us back to the Soviet times where the central power tried to diversify the region and avoid establishment of homogeneous communities. The collapse of the USSR opened a pandora box, where states had difficulties with processes of demarcation and delimitation, which by itself created a vast range of disagreements among the states based on territorial disputes. Moreover, Central Asia states were somewhat similar to the states that faced post-colonial rule as the central power was based outside of the region, it became difficult for states to consolidate as there was no potential leader among them. Following the collapse of the USSR, most of the Central Asian states focused on building up their own states from scratches while the level of nationalism was at the raise. The problem of border issues has been a central problem in the process of building bilateral relations. These research focuses on Ferghana Valley, where there are numerous amounts of enclaves and has a lot of disputed territories that play a key role in tensions due to scarcity of resources especially water resources. This Thesis focuses on the regionalization process through building security community in the region by increasing economic ties through implementation of the programs based on existing regional organization’s approaches on regionalization and regionalism, which have potential to create better conditions and safer environment for stability in Ferghana Valley. In it also important to mention that due to recent political changes in Afghanistan, the security community theory plays a crucial role in analyzing the existing regional association and they modernization under the current circumstances. Finally, the analysis of various factors and theories lead to the point where it is possible to state that Central Asian states are in the process of regionalization despite the fact that there are some tensions among them.