Travellers suffer from border corruption

High levels of corruption and tough bureaucratic procedures are making normal border crossings between Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan very difficult for the countries’ citizens. “They took my passport and said that I wouldn’t be allowed to enter Tashkent [the capital of Uzbekistan] to visit my relatives,” Mila, a young Kazakh woman, said, alleging some US $35 had been taken from her in Chernyaevka on the northern Uzbek-Kazakh frontier, about 50 km from the Uzbek capital. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Central Asian countries implemented new immigration and customs procedures on their newly declared borders, which remain largely administrative. In the early years of independence, people living in the former Soviet republics were able to cross the borders more freely. But in the summer of 2000, relations between Uzbekistan and its eastern neighbour, Kyrgyzstan deteriorated, leading to visa restrictions between the two former Soviet republics. Kazakhstan, which borders both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the north, introduced new immigration cards for people in 2003. "Hey, you do not have an immigration card so you have to leave the bus," Kazakh customs official Nikolay Morozov, told one passenger on a bus, while checking passports of passengers crossing the 1,051 km Kazakh-Kyrgyz border. "They [border guards and customs officials] think they are Gods. The use their positions to rob people," Olima Opa, who was going to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s commercial capital, remarked on the Kazakh side of the border in Chernyaevka. However, the new bureaucratic procedures at border checkpoints have also created job opportunities for enterprising locals who offer a variety of services to frustrated travellers willing to pay the price. "Let's go to ob'ezd [to take a detour], it is cheap, just pay 1,000 Kazakh tenge [US $8]. There are several police officers on the way to the border checkpoints, [so] you will have problems," a Kazakh woman explained. Sure enough, just 300 metres from the border checkpoints, there were three police cars stopping travellers to check their documents. Just recently, the three Central Asian states have begun using stamps on the back page of passports – a move customs officials maintain was designed to better control border crossings. However, most travellers interviewed by IRIN complain this was only a ploy to allow corrupt officials to charge more money. In one example, a traveller could have his passport confiscated – only to have a "civilian" offer to help retrieve it for a large sum of money. Meanwhile, corruption amongst border officials in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is fuelling local discontent on all sides of the shared frontiers – making the issue of border delineation, a legacy of the Soviet Union, a contentious one for local residents. "We hope that our governments will understand us and make it easier to travel because people in Central Asia have relatives throughout the region, and what now, should we forget about everyone?" Bahodir Tashmuradov, 56, asked.