The Geopolitics of Ungar-Too
An Uzbek-Kyrgyz Dispute
Ungar-Too - known in Uzbekistan as Ungar-Tepa - is a modest mountain in physical terms but an outsized one politically. Rising to around 1,500 metres in the eastern Fergana Valley, it sits astride the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border and has long been entangled in the afterlife of Soviet cartography. What was once an internal administrative ambiguity became, after 1991, an international dispute.
For much of the post-Soviet period, Kyrgyzstan controlled the peak, maintaining a Soviet-era radio relay station essential to communications across its southern regions. Uzbekistan, however, contested this arrangement, citing strategic, historical, and resource considerations. The standoff periodically flared - most sharply in 2016, when Uzbek forces briefly entered the area - before giving way to a quieter but more consequential shift.
Between 2022 and 2023, Bishkek and Tashkent concluded a series of border agreements that formally recognised Kyrgyz sovereignty over Ungar-Too, while granting Uzbekistan access rights and compensatory territorial adjustments elsewhere. By January 2026, the issue was effectively closed, folded into a broader wave of Central Asian border settlements, including a 2025 trilateral agreement with Tajikistan clarifying the Fergana Valley’s trijunction.
The Ungar-Too episode matters less for the land it resolved than for what it signals: a region moving, cautiously, from post-Soviet fragmentation toward pragmatic coexistence - without eliminating the ethnic, water, and resource tensions that still simmer beneath the surface.
The Actors: Who Has Power, Who Has Claims, Who Has Leverage
Power at Ungar-Too has always rested with possession, and possession has belonged to Kyrgyzstan. By operating the telecommunications infrastructure on the mountain since Soviet times, Bishkek entrenched de facto control that later translated into legal recognition. Elevation equals reach: from Ungar-Too, signals carry across Jalal-Abad and Osh, giving the Kyrgyz state a quiet but critical advantage.
Uzbekistan, despite relinquishing its formal claim, retains leverage of a different sort. It is the larger economy, a regional energy hub, and Kyrgyzstan’s most important neighbour by trade volume. Its acceptance of the 2023 settlement reflects not weakness but recalibration: access without ownership proved sufficient, especially when weighed against the gains of stable borders and expanding commerce.
Beyond the two states sit secondary but consequential actors. Local communities - ethnically mixed, politically marginalised, and historically volatile - act as latent veto players, capable of transforming elite bargains into grassroots crises. Russia looms in the background as a security guarantor, interested less in borders than in preventing instability from radiating north from Afghanistan. China, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, favours predictability that protects Belt and Road investments rather than adjudicating sovereignty.
In short, Kyrgyzstan holds the mountain; Uzbekistan holds the neighbourhood. The settlement reflects that asymmetry.
The Stakes: What Each Actor Believes Is at Risk
For Kyrgyzstan, Ungar-Too is not symbolic terrain but functional infrastructure. The radio relay station underpins governance, emergency response, and economic coordination across the south. Losing it would not merely be embarrassing; it would expose long-standing internal fractures between north and south, centre and periphery.
Sovereignty nonetheless matters. In a state whose borders remain contested in public imagination, conceding a visible peak would have carried disproportionate political cost. Water access compounds the stakes: nearby reservoirs support irrigation in a region where agriculture remains a primary employer and where scarcity is already sharpening competition.
Uzbekistan’s calculus is more instrumental. Ungar-Too offers vantage, access, and reassurance - but not enough to justify prolonged confrontation. By 2023, Tashkent prioritised regional stability, trade expansion, and diplomatic normalisation over maximalist territorial claims. Retaining access without ownership proved a tolerable compromise.
For external actors, the risks are indirect but real. Russia and China worry less about borders than about spillover - ethnic unrest, disrupted trade corridors, or militant exploitation of local grievances. For residents of the Fergana Valley, the stakes are simpler still: livelihoods, mobility, and the avoidance of yet another externally negotiated settlement that ignores local realities.
The Rules of the Game: Law, Institutions, and Path Dependence
Ungar-Too was governed, ultimately, by inertia. The legal anchor was uti possidetis juris: the principle that post-Soviet borders should follow Soviet administrative lines, however imperfect. Those lines were often vague, the product of mid-20th-century compromises never designed to bear sovereign weight.
What tipped the balance was path dependence. Kyrgyz infrastructure, Kyrgyz access, Kyrgyz administration - these facts accumulated into a status quo that became increasingly costly to overturn. The brief Uzbek incursion in 2016 ended not in escalation but in retreat, reinforcing the lesson that force would not rewrite geography.
Institutions mattered, but quietly. Bilateral border commissions did the work that courts never would. Both states avoided international arbitration, wary of precedent and loss of control. Multilateral forums encouraged settlement without dictating outcomes. The 2025 trilateral agreement with Tajikistan then locked in a broader norm: borders would be settled politically, not litigated.
Reopening Ungar-Too now would not merely revive an old dispute; it would threaten the architecture of regional cooperation built around trade, water, and transport. That, more than law, secures the settlement.
Domestic Politics: Why Leaders Can’t Compromise
Border deals are negotiated internationally but contested domestically. In Kyrgyzstan, Ungar-Too sits within a political culture deeply suspicious of territorial compromise. The parallel controversy over the Kempir-Abad reservoir demonstrated how quickly elite agreements can trigger nationalist backlash. President Sadyr Japarov has the authority to decide - but not the freedom to explain.
Opposition groups, civil society activists, and regional elites frame opacity as betrayal. Even acquittals and reversals do little to rebuild trust once border issues are securitised in public discourse. Stability, paradoxically, constrains flexibility.
Uzbekistan’s politics under Shavkat Mirziyoyev point in the opposite direction but end in a similar bind. Reformist rhetoric and regional outreach enjoy broad support, yet local officials and conservative constituencies resist any narrative of territorial loss. Polls favour cooperation; memory favours grievance.
Authoritarian capacity allows leaders to sign deals. It does not guarantee social consent. That gap explains why compromise is possible - but never cost-free.
The Risks: Potential for Miscalculation and Spillover
The principal risks no longer stem from state ambition but from local friction. Water allocation, access routes, and routine patrols remain flashpoints where misunderstanding can escalate faster than diplomacy can respond. The Fergana Valley’s dense intermixing of communities magnifies small incidents into symbolic confrontations.
Spillover would be economic before it was military: border closures, disrupted markets, labour displacement. In more extreme scenarios, non-state actors could exploit unrest, inviting external mediation and complicating already fragile security balances.
That said, the risk environment has shifted. Trade ties are deeper, communication channels more routine, and precedents for negotiation well established. The calm following the 2025 trijunction agreement suggests not harmony - but learning.
Future Prospects: The Most Likely Trajectories
The most likely trajectory is dull - and that is precisely the point. Ungar-Too will remain under Kyrgyz administration, governed by access protocols rather than sovereignty disputes. Incremental cooperation - joint maintenance, shared water management, upgraded communications - is more plausible than renewed confrontation.
Shocks remain possible. Leadership transitions, economic downturns, or climate-driven water stress could reopen dormant tensions. Yet even these pressures are more likely to deepen coordination than unravel it, as scarcity increasingly demands collective management.
In historical terms, Ungar-Too will not be remembered as a decisive conflict. It will matter as a case study in how Central Asia is learning to live with the borders it inherited - imperfectly, pragmatically, and without the illusion that settlement means resolution.