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Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan relations have been tense.[1] Refugees and antigovernment fighters in Tajikistan have crossed into Kyrgyzstan several times, even taking hostages.[1] Kyrgyzstan attempted to assist in brokering an agreement between contesting Tajikistani forces in October 1992 but without success.[1] Askar Akayev later joined presidents Islom Karimov and Nursultan Nazarbayev in sending a joint intervention force to support Tajikistan's president Imomali Rahmonov against insurgents, but the Kyrgyzstani parliament delayed the mission of its small contingent for several months until late spring 1993. In mid-1995 Kyrgyzstani forces had the responsibility of sealing a small portion of the Tajikistan border near Panj from Tajikistani rebel forces.
The greater risk to Kyrgyzstan from Tajikistan is the general destabilization that the protracted civil war has brought to the region. In particular, the Khorugh-Osh road, the so-called "highway above the clouds," has become a major conduit of contraband of all sorts, including weapons and drugs. A meeting of the heads of the state security agencies of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, held in Osh in the spring of 1995, also drew the conclusion that ethnic, social, and economic conditions in Osh were increasingly similar to those in Tajikistan in the late 1980s, thus recognizing the contagion of Tajikistan's instability.
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